IABC Café

I was glad to read the email yesterday from IABC headquarters, inviting me to participate in an online survey regarding Internet networking sites. It is a good move on IABC’s part, to inquire of its members whether we would find value in a site run by IABC.

The survey did not allow for comments. I sent an email inquiring about that, and the reply from Lee Anne Snedeker, senior vice president, Membership and Market Analysis, was:

[Our] focus was on gathering information that we could use quickly. Unfortunately, reading, compiling, and analyzing comments in a survey takes hours and hours, and we wanted to get a pulse of member thinking before then. We certainly will spend time gathering ideas from members as we move forward.

The desire to move quickly may be, in part, due to the intense comments that went back and forth regarding the future of associations including the IABC, in light of the emergence of popular sites like The Communicators’ Network, MyRagan, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you need to get up-to-speed on that discussion, I’ll suggest reading Shel Holtz’s blog post.

I hope that many IABC members complete the IABC survey. If comments had been allowed, I would have said that I don’t think that IABC should create a social networking site like those I mentioned above. The field is already crowded, and people will not be able to maintain an active presence on every social networking site that springs up. I think it is too late for IABC to get into that particular game.

IABC can still provide value to its members, and perhaps it can find a way to excel in offering some version of the functionality that we’ve seen in networking sites–some of which, like an online forum, blog, and podcasting, already are part of IABC’s mix.

As I mentioned in my CommaKazi Speek blog, it was an eery coincidence that I was moderating a comment here from Gerard Braud just minutes before the first shots would be fired on Monday morning at Virginia Tech.

Gerard and I today recorded a podcast on the topic of crisis communication that you can hear on my podcast site. I’m looking forward to learning more about the importance of leadership in crisis communications when I join a group of communicators this June to participate in Gerard’s pre-conference workshop and bus tour prior to the start of the IABC International Conference in New Orleans.

Allan Jenkins has written a provocative post in which he flat-out refuses to see the need for bloggers to be bound by a single code of ethics. Read his post, read my reply, and then leave your comments here to create some discussion about this timely topic.