Having set up Cloud Citizen, there are two things that continue to strike me. The first is how inevitable is its requirement that business should account to the will of the people for its environmental impacts, rather than deciding this unilaterally and continuing business as usual.
The second is what a nightmare the new social media will create for the public relations representatives of the current generation unused to its ways and unable to engage in anything other than old-fashioned one-way media diplomacy. Retaining its authority is something the media itself is wrestling with.
PR is, however, traditionally a one-way communication exchange. I as the journalist want information about which I can write a story that tells my audience something you as the PR don't want it to hear. News is what someone wants to suppress; everything else is advertising, as the saying runs.
In this game, if I am lucky, I'll be able to get a tip from an extra source, corroborate my information and run with it as truth, giving my reader something worthy of their time. Playing this game, me attacking, you blocking, is what both you and I get paid for.
Another key part of this game lies in the time in which the journalist requires the information they've asked for. The first question the PR will ask is, what is your deadline? That gives them a get-out. If you plan to publish on a given date and the PR would rather not answer the question they can stall and simply wait for the deadline to pass. This can be upended in social media, however, where stories are no longer finite pieces with a given word length and a publication date but can become running issues on which anyone can comment and to which anyone can contribute. The environment and how companies manage their relationship with it is just such a topic. It isn't going away anywhere fast, and its relationship with their enterprise's activities is going to be hard for many to manage, or to explain.
So, what happens when the audience has access in theory to unlimited points of contact within your organisation, some actively leaking material and not all of whom have its management's interests at heart? How can you defend it when a crowd is on the attack and pulling together in a number of directions apparently all in opposition to your business's wishes?
How can you defend against rumour and innuendo when even management itself hasn't laid out the grounds for a decent defence, and you're the one in the middle? Defending your organisation on the environment looks like this when you've got no policies in place and no documentation to assist in proving a fragile case.
There are many Sydney businesses who when suddenly faced with a wholly different order of questioning are going to find this quite discomfiting.
