No doubt these conversations are taking place at all levels of most universities...
It seems to me that we're (we on the NAG list, techies) are naturally inclined to technological solutions. I'm not sure this problem is susceptible to a quick technical fix.
Note how many cell calls won't go through when everyone in Spartan Stadium tries to place one.
Note how Blackberry just went through a multi-day outage of their North American operations, with many millions of messages undelivered.
Call me old-fashioned, but what's wrong with having the campus sirens go off, having trained people to turn to WKAR radio for further information? Use broadcast media for broadcast messages. Use the Emergency Broadcast System -- remember that? Heck, also use e-mail and pagers and cells and SMS as additional channels if you think they'll work. But old-fashioned radio can reach 15,000 or 50,000 or the entire population of an area without feeling any additional load.
Later, when folks are safe, visit
www.msu.edu for updates...
Virginia Tech did an awesome job of using its Web site to communicate throughout all this whole ordeal. I'm just so upset with the recriminations we're already seeing towards VT. I can only imagine what the last few days have been like for the folks on staff (and the campus) who coped as best they could.
/rich
On 4/18/07, Matt Kolb <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Additionally, I would be surprised if this hasn't already been discussed
in some detail by the President and her advisers--I wonder if they are
planning to make a public statement about this (perhaps they have via
the paper and I missed it).
./matt
