I would agree.  Other than the dorms, which we do have a sane list of phone numbers for, we have no idea about the contact information that students give us during registration.

 

Heck, even when my sister was at MSU as short as 2 years ago, she gave my parent’s address and phone number as her local and permanent information.  MSU has no idea if the number she gave was a cell phone, a land-line or even a voip line, or even whose number it really is.  There has never been a need to know that information before. 

 

To broadcast a message to an entire community, we should rely on technologies that everybody knows and uses – telephones, television, loudspeakers (paging systems), and personal contact.  The problem with IMs, Text Messages, and even emails for that case, is half the population have no idea how to use them, or have access to them away from their computer.

 

E-Mail is often brought up as the best solution to communicate to mass-amounts of users.  Is email a good solution to let students know that class is canceled 15 minutes before it happens?  Not if every student doesn’t have some sort of smart phone like a Blackberry where email is pushed to the user.  IM and Text Messaging won’t work because not everybody has an IM client (let alone the interoperability of those systems), and not everybody has a cell phone, let alone a cell phone that has text messaging enabled.  These newer technologies, while being cool and useful are not universal to all.

 

Now, that being said, setting up some sort of forum where newer details can be discussed, and are not ‘mission-critical’ to our users is a definite plus.  Setting up a web-page, Chat-room, Breezo room, or even twitter account to disperse additional information about an event would be able to help those who are close to the event keep in touch and informed. 

 

All these options need to be listed in the MSU Disaster Recovery Plan.  These are the plans that are being discusses, planned and strategized as we speak.   DPPS, among others have been implementing and testing their systems (like the Reverse 911) and scenarios long before this week. 

 

-Nick Kwiatkowski

 MSU Telecom Systems

 

 

 

I spent the last couple of days in Washington, D.C. at a conference.  The Virginia Tech massacre was a local story, and weighed heavily on people in the area. 

Today's newspapers (Washington Post, NY Times) offer all sorts of second-guessing and proposed magical  answers. I was especially  distressed  at one letter in today's NY Times suggesting that if his cell phone provider could text message him about his late payment, then Virginia Tech could've text messaged potential victims. 

To the NYT cell phone advocate:  do you understand that universities only know cell phone numbers of students if they've supplied them to the U, and that most do not do so?

People are human, including early responders and even <gasp> administrators. 

To those who propose technological solutions to a tragic human problem:  consider broadcast solutions instead of narrowcast.  Sirens, not podcasts. 

/rich