I completely agree that multiple communication channels are a fact of life. I just want to, in a way, set expectations.

“If it takes 2 minutes to send the alert using Twitter, why not do it?”

Because you are taking a big risk by adopting this mindset, assuming that mindset is to use anything that the students use. 2 minutes multiplied by an ever-increasing number of services is the road to insanity for the small number of people who will be charged with “getting the message out.”

“The platform is available, so why not use it?”

There are literally hundreds of platforms. You can’t use them all. You can’t even use the top 10%. How do you choose what to use? Most schools at this point have clearly established policies on what they will use for official forms of communication. Right now, ours is e-mail — as I suspect is the case for a number of other schools. Everybody gets an e-mail account. It’s universal to the population. I don’t think that can be said for any other medium, not even cell phones.

But again, it’s about effective communication. How can you reach the largest audience, quickly, with the least amount of effort. There is no easy answer.

But yesterday I set up an account and we’re playing with it now.

I reposted something from our internal blog about multiple systems of communication.

An important thing to remember about twitter is it doesn’t have to be billed as your emergency solution. You can still make certain methods of contact primary.

But imagine if your school got even 5% of the students to subscribe to a twitter “school closings” feed. Now that method is in place for other things. It’s there if you need it.

Have a toolbox of communications tools is messy, but it allows you to route around damage effectively.

Pat,

I think the need for multiple communication channels is a fact of life… whether we like it or not. If it takes 2 minutes to send the alert using Twitter, why not do it?

Again, I suggested Twitter (which I personally don’t use) as a possible temporary solution. Obviously, you will have to get the word out in your campus community, but I think it will be very easy to set it up in a matter of days.

The platform is available, so why not use it?

Besides, this tragedy confirmed another fact that administrators were not ready to admit just a few days ago: the importance of facebook, myspace and blogs as communication tools for our students.

Can you imagine the outcry when a message goes out over Twitter before some other service that is used by more people? Look at the backlash happening already over the lack of an immediate e-mail, as if 100% of the campus is hitting ‘Check mail’ every 5 seconds.