The 'Wiki Encyclopedia of CityReaching' is collaboratively sponsored by the 'Center For Urban Innovation'... "Producing Innovative Multicultural CityReachers."

What do we know about Indianapolis (Christian) 'Communications'? 

Top 10 'Protocols' = A very few communications team rules we ALWAYS (try to) live by.  Primarily below we're trying to work out our most important communications protocols... in the event of an urgent&important emergency-mgmt situation.  It may lead us to some great principles for other applications as well.

• #1  Accessible Contact Info -- Always have your main main main people's contact info available in your go-kit (and cellphone, wallet, etc). 
• Here's our 'READINESS ROSTER (CENINDY contacts). 
• Here's the MEDIA CONTACTS LIST  we're helping compile.

• #2  Personalized ToDo's List. [Your communications plan in an emergency -- who to contact right away] Carry it in your wallet or phone.  Copy in your go-kit.  Copy with your accountability-partner.

• #3  Clarity is everything.  More is not necessarily better.  Corollary: It may not be so important that you be entirely understood, as it is that you not be MIS-understood. A high 'signal-to-noise' ratio is our objective, ie, urgent/important/pure/truth/decision-support/actionable info... with a mimimum of extra communication.  Think 'Sergeant Joe Friday', especially in critical communications.  Remember, there's a big difference between 'interesting' info and 'actionable' info.

• #4  Vital Messages --> Communicating in a bullet-proof sort of way (direct individual contact/response), go through our official communications grid... CEN/ICS tree of commander, staff, committed partners & communicators.  [More about this later when we better understand & design our official CEN grid.  But for now, see geo-grid at Indy_Sizeup.]  Main idea though: communicate up-the-chain, sideways, or down-the-chain as necessary. [As we discuss the 9-county grid, in order to keep the ICS structural scope manageable, we'll very probably use Marion County (the middle point of communications), and then firstly distribute core messages to North, East, South, West counties (Hamilton, Hancock, Johnson, Hendricks)... and rely on those counties to emanate info further to their partner-counties (clockwise) = Madison, Shelby, Morgan, Boone.

• #5  Centralized messages/content.  Right now @CENINDY is our centralized starting point for all official messages/content.  #CENINDY is the official tag for the wider interaction.  [And emergency-alerts will go our via our @IndyPrayer mobile-alerts system. Make sure you're set up to receive those alerts on your mobile device.  To do that, please immediately now go text the phrase 'ON INDYPRAYER' (without the apostrophes) to 40404.]   We will work toward training our communicators to use this wiki-knowledgebase collaboratively to keep the most useful, decision-support info up to date.  [Considering this Indy Size-up grid]

• #6  Each One Reach One.  A good system has to be able to scale.  And like our life-on-life Operation Timothy discipleship process, we should always be developing/mentoring someone else.  Besides, someday they may need to step up and take over for you when you're unavailable.

• #7  Not Email. At least not as our primary method. It's unreliable. And gets easily out-of-date, especially in emergencies.  Think how many mis-information scams are rampant via email; it's because it's not publicly posted; and not easily validated.  Moreover, many people have inboxes filled and overflowing with messages, and cannot know for sure they've seen all the important ones.  So although we will probably email info out (eg via a 2nd tier of communications, and sending Press Releases to some media-outlets), it will NOT be among our primary communications protocols.  Stay tuned.  And for those of you who really really like email and might be willing to do second-tier communications to proliferate our messages, great, let us know.  Indeed we want to use every means possible to communicate pervasively. But email these days (especially for mobile communicators), is second-tier at best, just like snail-mail is 3rd-tier at best.

• #8  Social Media -- Use social-media to extend your network and/or develop a narrow-casting capability, to announcement urgent/important messages, and to ask important questions & listen for immediate feedback of helpful information.  (The following is an excerpt from NIMS IS-29 course...) 
• "Two-way communication with the audience. Feedback can be immediate—you know what the questions are and what people want to know."
• "Vast and varied distribution system. The social media “menu” allows each person to select a preferred method of contact."
• "Cross marketing. Social media sites can link to Web sites and Web sites can link to social media sites. Social media sites can also point users to traditional media. Therefore, the audience can be redirected for more information or a different communication experience."
• "Transparency. Social media are another way to demystify programs and policies by making the information even more accessible."
• "Rapid response capabilities. Inaccuracies and misinformation can be corrected quicker using social media than may be possible through more static types of news media."

• #9  'Quick-to-Listen'... Our Feedback system -- "Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." (James 1:19)   Who do we listen-to?  Who do we read?  How will emergencies get reported into our info-loop?  Perhaps provide helpful pictures & video during an emergency... or provide decision-support-info to an ICS unit during an emergency?   Similarly, how to effectively use social-media and the available feedback therefrom.  No doubt we'll need our own social-media peeps who can find & tag info so that it gets properly filtered & distributed to emergency mgrs & PIOs.  Tags add value by helping other team-members expedite info.  Think CERT folks tagging (marking) houses as they process them.  Remember the tagged forest trail analogy?  Stay tuned.

• #10 NON-PUBLIC Communications -- Use secured CEN group for Indy on ChristianEmergencyNetwork.

Other Resource Links...

• IS-29 Training - Introduction to PIO Communications 
• CEN  Training - ReadyChurch PIO Communications 
• CEN INDY MODEL  
• Best Practices for An Individual Communicator, Develop a DASHBOARD to Promote an Event or Project.
• Best Practices for An Individual Communication, Develop an EMERGENCY DASHBOARD. 
• Church Emergency Communications (H.E.R.T.) 

  'MEDIA' tagged items.

'COMMUNICATIONS' tagged items.

*************** For old notes & links... see Communications2... a 'science-experiment' that we found growing in the back of our fridge... LOL********

Delivering key communications directly to cityreachers' cell-phones should be a key objective.  Btw, the more of you that build a 'community tv' player like this, the more shows each of us will have available.  I'd especially like to see us develop 9 (county) players. [or align with 7 FHL Regions].  So think about getting a LiveStream acct and let's talk more about that, soon.

Emergencies & Disaster Relief...

One of the competencies we need to build is one of immediacy... urgent & important.