#EMVine Challenge

I never thought I would admit this but…I love vine.  If you ever saw my first post, one sad afternoon in June, you remember that I entered the Vine world kicking and screaming.  I mean, really?!  Six second looping video clips?  Who wants to see that??  It was very reminiscent to my introduction to many types of technology.  The world wants to change and here I am content, but eventually I give in and hate myself for not being the first one to do so.

 Honestly? Will Sasso made me do it.

Another thing I’ll admit, but am slightly less surprised to do so, is that emergency management is not a message we can expect people to seek out sans current disaster.  And even then the information that is sought is always too late in terms of preparedness, and more response and mitigation based than anything else.

Emergency preparedness is on the average individual’s mind, oh about, never percent*.  It seems to me that if we want to change the culture of community preparedness, we need to be in the middle of that culture.  We have to be fun, interesting, engaging, captivating and relevant.  I know I’ve said it a hundred times, but we have to meet people where they’re at.

That’s not exactly what I had in mind…

Last week, following the most excellent National Capital Region Social Media in Emergency Management (#NCRsmem) conference, my fellow blogger and Twitter friend @Preparedness2Go wrote an interesting post about the use of hashtags in emergency management.  The post was spurred because one of the presenters had an amazing recap of their response as the tweeter for the Boston PD, but personally didn’t like to use haghtags.  While I understand (and even rejected them as a nuisance to read through in my earliest Twitter times), my response was that sometimes we do things we don’t want to do, or we don’t like, because that is what puts us in the middle of conversations that are going on about us without us.

But without a disaster, conversations are just going on without us.

I think we have some opportunities to insert ourselves into those conversations. So long as we’re being interesting and relevant, people will listen to what we have to say.  Take, for example, Gloria Huang – Red Cross Tweeter Extraordinaire.  She nailed this during Sharknado, making quick-witted, off the cuff live tweets during this SyFy masterpiece that made preparedness interesting, fun, and very noticeable!

My challenge to my fellow #SMEM lovers is to spend a little time during September and make National Preparedness Month our excuse to join those conversations.

For the month of September, I’ll be attempting to combine my love of Vine and emergencies by researching trending topics and creating Vines that are both relevant and preparedness driven.  By hashtagging a trending topic and #EMVine, it’s possible to join a popular conversation and create a buzz about preparedness.

I’m not even gonna ask permission!

Since many of my Twitter friends and followers, as well as my own MRC units, will be participating in 30 Days, 30 Ways, a preparedness game that encourages followers to complete daily tasks for prizes through social media outlets, I thought it would be the perfect connection.  Not only are we sneaking in creative entries into the game (snicker!) we’re also creating six-second public service announcements that, if interesting and visible enough, have the ability to lead others to seek out what this “preparedness stuff” is all about.

And sure, maybe they won’t care.  But you can only ignore a redundant message for so long before you’re curious.  And I have my sights set on the assistance of the “Vine Famous” …

Tanya

P.S. You can always follow @tjlasagna and Vine at Tanya Ferraro or Tanya Ferraro MRC!

*Not a scientific measurement.