Unbuckle your seatbelts and clench less tightly on your hats everybody the wild ride that is the transmedia crisis simulation is over. Now that we have had a day or two to decompress from our first taste of crisis management (or was it?, has anybody dealt with a crisis situation before?) let’s have a look back at our emotions and thought processes leading up to and during the simulation.
Before
So the crisis simulation first crosses our minds - albeit very briefly - in week one, Bridget says your third assessment will be a crisis simulation where you will be placed in teams and will have to make all the decisions as a PR team handling a simulated crisis. You hear this, you think:
- ‘okay that sounds pretty fun’ ...then you think
- ‘wait what am I thinking that will be scary’ ...then you think
- ‘oh well I will worry about that LATER’.
It is about a week until your crisis management simulation, you read through the unit outline assessment description and then you read through the document outlining the assessment. There is a tv on in the background, you have got to go to work or training soon, and you are a little bit hungry, alas, you push through you read through each of the roles and you read through the documents each role needs to submit. You decide there are three roles for you:
You have your eye on spokesperson and social media manager, you feel these will give you the opportunity to demonstrate your ability without the pressure and responsibility of the Lead and Media Manager roles.
- Spokesperson/Social Media Manager Now this depends on the type of person you are, do you back yourself in to stick a sentence together and verbalise it? Or do you back your understanding of social media and your common sense in to produce the right slant to effectively handle these platforms.
- Scribe well this seems very manageable I just have to write down what everybody else does
- Approvals Liason don’t tell anyone else but I’m not sure that these guys have to do anything
The day before and the morning of your crisis simulation arrives now you are really analyzing each of the roles and figuring out which you will be best suited to!
During
Okay and we are off, you have been bunged into your group you’re at the table – Do you know these people well? Have you got any geniuses in your mix? Yes- Yay No- that’s okay you are all in it together now.
You read through the background document – the first time you take in no information, the next two or three some of it starts to seep in.
(Now I can only talk about my role)
We stated as a team okay does anyone have any ideas on what they want to be? I nominated myself as spokesperson having identified it preclass as one for me and was glad to not have to fight anyone for it (I was prepared to fight both physically and verbally). The simulation started and the details become a little jumbled but some thoughts I remember having were:
- ‘wow this is all happening very fast, I’m worried I'm going to fall behind’
- ‘spokesperson is going to have to actually speak in front of everyone.. great’
- ‘I’m not sure I 100% agree with that but im going let it go because we are pushed for time’
- ‘We are each making the decisions together not just purely doing our roles’
And then before I knew it the simulation was and we realized we had made it through unscathed! I was proud of the work the team had done and agree that it was a very enjoyable and valuable learning experience considering how different it was to most classes and most assessments.
Let me know if you agree, somewhat agree or vehemently oppose the comments I have made here.