Archive for the ‘Crisis Communication’ Category

How to put SecondLife to good use: plan and run emergency drills on your virtual campus

Lately, I’ve read more and more negative comments about SecondLife. Many inside and outside of higher education have questioned the return on investment of SL campuses for universities and colleges as Jeff Young from the Chronicle of Higher Ed wrote a few days ago in the Campus Wired Blog: More than 100 colleges have set […]

Higher Ed Experts donates $4,300 to the Virginia Tech Hokie Spirit Scholarship Fund in the name of the higher ed community

Just a quick post to let everybody know that I’ve made a $4,300 online donation to the Virginia Tech Hokie Spirit Scholarship Fund in the name of the higher ed community. The funds were raised via a $100-per-attendee donation made by people who attended Crisis Communication 2.0 Week a few weeks ago. Attendees paid $250 […]

Calling all good souls going to EduWeb on July22-24: Guest blog the conference for collegewebeditor.com!

Are you going to the 2007 EduWeb Conference in Baltimore on July 22-24? Well, you’re lucky, because you’ll get a chance to listen to Mike Dame, director of web communications at Virginia Tech, presenting a shorter version of the webinar he presented for Higher Ed Experts: From the Inside Out — Lessons Learned in Web […]

Higher Ed Experts Update: Crisis Communication 2.0 Week Webinar Series is On

Just a quick post to let everybody know that Joe Hice, Associate VP for Marketing and Public Relations at The University of Florida gave a great presentation today to kick off “Crisis Communication 2.0 Week,” the first webinar series offered by Higher Ed Experts. Close to a hundred people were in attendance as several participants […]

Higher Ed Experts Update: YouTube Webinar — the good, the bad and the ugly

It’s been about 2 hours since the first inaugural webinar of Higher Ed Experts ended. As I said to the attendees at the beginning of the webinar, this free session was also a “stress test” for the web conferencing application… and it succeeded in pushing my stress level to the roof. The whole webinar experience […]

Virginia Tech Tragedy: Evaluating VT Web crisis communication plan

Inside Higher Ed is running this morning a must-read piece for communication professionals titled “Evaluating the Response.” Written by Andy Guess, this article reviews the tragic events from a crisis communication standpoint, provides a link to the University Relations crisis communication plan (last updated in February 2002) used Monday, and offers some light on the […]

Virginia Tech Tragedy: Has your institution posted a statement about the tragedy? Virginia Tech Web team wants to recognize your support on its website

I just got an email from Michael Dame, Director of Web Communications at Virginia Tech [I interviewed Mike last year for my UB column about website redesign], asking if I could pass the following message to all of you: We are aware that countless IHEs have posted statements about the Virginia Tech tragedy on their […]

Could Twitter be used as another communication channel in case of campus emergencies?

In the wake of the Virginia Tech Tragedy, many questions about crisis communication have been raised in campuses across the country and the world. Today, on u-webd listserv, a few Web professionals discussed possible text-messaging solutions. One of them (I didn’t get a chance to ask him if I could share his name) announced to […]

Virginia Tech Tragedy: Crisis unfolding on the website homepage

Yesterday I posted a screenshot of the homepage of the university website when I heard the news — only early in the afternoon as I was working on deadlines far away from any news sources. This morning I was able to retrieve an early version time stamped at 9:58 AM from Google’s cache. I’ll try […]

Virginia Tech Tragedy: Crisis communication on the university website homepage

I’ve just read about the news… on a listserv. I worked on deadlines all morning and ate lunch in front of my computer far away from any news. In the listserv message, there was just a mention of a crazy event with 22 dead including students (33 according to the latest reports) at Virginia Tech, […]

Crisis Communication with the blogosphere: lessons learned at UMR after a bomb/anthrax scare

Andrew Careaga and its PR team at the University of Missouri Rolla went through a crisis a few days ago after a graduate student claiming to have a bomb and anthrax was subdued by campus police, then arrested and charged with six felonies. In his very nicely titled post “UMR, the media and the war […]