It’s August 27th, 2012 in New Orleans. In two days it will be the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and again we are bracing for impact. This time it’s Hurricane Isaac.
There are a number of differences this time around. Most importantly, while Isaac has followed a very similar track to Katrina, it is a much weaker storm. Most people are not evacuating, choosing to board their homes and ride out the storm with canned goods and bottled water.
What has been most interesting to me is the use of forms of social media (that didn’t exist in 2005 when Katrina hit) to keep in touch with news, forecasts and family/friend activity. I am following local alerts on Twitter and getting updated hurricane tracking, evacuation and school closing information on Facebook. Some of our New Orleans television stations have iPhone apps to keep citizens up to date. Individuals who were not as technically savvy before are taking advantage of these tools in ever greater numbers. (I’ve seen my mother on Facebook more in the past few days than I have since it started…)
The consumerization of IT and adoption of new technologies can apparently be event-driven (as with weather emergencies), and it raises even more customer expectations for business mobility and social media collaboration when the new adopters return to normality at the office.
In general, I am seeing more focus on mobile access and social media integration in interactions with customers and with analyst groups like Gartner. In the latest Gartner MarketScope for Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications, an entire section is devoted to PPM mobility. The trend seems to be higher expectations from users for access via tablets and smart phones, as well as new means of communication amongst teams using social media channels such as Chatter.
For now in New Orleans, we are battening down the hatches in preparation for what we hope will be just an opportunity to spend some quality time with kids home from school, and you can be sure (as long as the power and internet service lasts) that we will be up to date on all the latest storm information via Facebook, Twitter and weather websites.
You can get the referenced Gartner report here. My thoughts are with everyone experiencing Hurricane Isaac.
+Gartner Inc., MarketScope for Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications, Daniel B. Stang, June 26, 2012
IT Sparks 