Last Saturday I attended a seminar on Online Public Relations, with a focus on Crisis Communication.  The seminar was run by Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications, and included a timely presentation by Darragh Doyle of Boards.ie on communication in crisis management in the wake of his very own personal experiences as a result of an attack on Boards.ie the previous Thursday.

All in all the seminar was an interesting day, with a wide range of people representing all sorts of industries and backgrounds.  The content was for the most part familiar to anyone who keeps up to date with Damien’s blogging as he is particularly unselfish with information.  However it was great to be able to throw a few questions his way, in true form Damien was happy to throw the questions back into the crowd to leverage their own expertise and knowledge. 

It was interesting to touch on some areas I had never really spent time with, including sites that help plan an advertising campaign online such as Google Ad Planner.

The focus on Crisis Communication came to the fore when Darragh Doyle gave a presentation in the afternoon.  Kudos to Darragh for being so open and honest about what worked for Boards, and what didn’t - what they could have done better and what they have learnt from the experience.  All in all it was an interesting debate and following discussion. 

However what did strike me was the fact that from a company perspective (Boards.ie) this certainly was a crisis, and for a number of users it was a concern - I was left wondering how much of an impact this really was to the users, in that it may have required them to change some other passwords, and stopped them accessing the site for the day.  I’m sure the users appreciate the communication, however it struck me that if the security breach was of a more sensitive nature such as financial information held by a bank the outcry from those affected would have been far more intense and I wonder how the communication would have been received in such circumstances.  Notwithstanding that it is clear that ongoing communication during crisis management is an established strategy and best practice.

Thanks to Damien for organising the day, you can read more on his company blog.