It's Wisconsin, it's January, and our famous state lived up to its reputation last week.
We had a snow day...big deal.
But something interesting happened at my kids' school that tells a great deal about what's going on in communications today.
School was cancelled at noon that day, because the brunt of the storm would be hitting during normal bus transportation time.
At 11:00 one of the students (who had run home during a free period) saw the announcement on the news that schools would be closing at noon.
She picked up her cell phone and text messaged another student Cori, who happened to be in physics class to give her the good news. Cori, (in typical teenage fashion), felt her phone buzz, read the message, then stood up and interrupted the teacher to announce that school was being cancelled. Cheers erupted.
The teacher told her to sit down and stop disturbing the class, as the teachers would certainly know about these things before the students would hear about them.
Cori sat down, but instead of taking physics notes, she text messaged ("texted") another student in another class, who announced it to her class, then texted it on to others.
5 minutes later, almost every student in the school knew they were going home.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, the announcement was made that school was being cancelled.
Why is this a big deal? Because it's a symbol of what's happening in today's world.
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It used to be that communications were controlled by a few powerful individuals, companies, and governments.
But today's media makes it not only possible, but a fact of life, that many key events will be communicated through direct to consumer means, putting key elements of the message out of the power of the big shots of the world. As a result:
- Students, using the technologies in their pockets, know announcements before the teachers and the staff.
- Bloggers tell the world that documents about Bush's National Guard record were forged many hours before the national media picks it up, making it virtually impossible for CBS to sweep it under the rug, resulting in the firing of 4 key staffers this week and early retirement of one of the world's media icons.
- A cabin full of passengers learn of 9/11 plots via cell phone in time to storm the cockpit and take a plane down into a field, rather than one of the US national symbols, possibly saving thousands of life.
It's not just cellphones and blogs. It's an entirely different world out there. It's Internet, it's hundreds of cable channels, it's unregulated satellite radio.
It's pushing power over information down to the people.
And it's the future of our PR industry.
You can either learn about it, and use it for your own good.
Or you can ignore the obvious, stick to your old-school thinking, and become road-kill on the information superhighway.
Which will you choose?
To get you started on your way, I recommend that you check out Blogging For Business - a guide to using blogs to build your business and to generate publicity for your company.
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