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Robert Patterson
Blogger Robert Patterson explored the technology and culture behind the innovative online wildfire coverage by KPBS San Diego. |
Last October, San Diego public radio station KPBS made a bit of a splash in the online-media world with its
innovative use of Google Maps and Twitter to cover major wildfires in its region.
Blogger Robert Patterson recently posted an in-depth two-part series exploring the technology KPBS used and, most intriguingly, the organizational culture that allowed this innovation.
A few points from his "culture" post, which featured an interview with the station's associate GM Deanna MacKey that I found particularly interesting:
"What was vital was that the team had a year to get to know each other, to gain the trust of the senior management and to 'play' with some of these tools in their own time. If the fire had happened just after the team had been assembled, I don't think they would have had the cohesion, the confidence and the knowledge to act as they did."
"...We did not have Twitter or Google Maps in our inventory, but the team had been playing with these tools on their own time. They all had their own blogs. Twitter had been discussed and in the week of the fire, we had planned a brown bag lunch to talk about Twitter. Our manager had played a lot with Google Maps and had been fascinated by their power. You can't train for this -- you have to hire for it."
And: "Twitter enabled us to go beyond 'air' and to become a two way station. It suddenly became very important as we went off the air. We lost access to our tower to the fire (The power lines burned up) -- and so for 24 hours, we lost our ability to reach our audience conventionally. Very graciously, a commercial station (Channel 94.9 ) later lent us their frequency so that they could carry our news as they thought that news was more important than music. In the interim, we had to rely on streaming and on Twitter.
"Without the Web channels, we would have gone silent. As it was, we could be in instant two way communication with thousands of people -- getting updates and sending updates to people's computers and to their cell phones. We never were not in the center of the communications mission."
Also of note in this series is this lengthy, informative comment left by "GG," a telephone systems engineer, explaining why text messaging is like the telegraph, and exploring the pros and cons of various telecom technologies for emergency communication.
