Pretty funny stuff from Saturday Night Live this weekend, as they brought on fake Bjork to represent Iceland and share her thoughts on the eruption/disruption with fake Larry King.
Larry King: “Now, let me get this straight. First, Iceland’s economy collapses, and you ruin all the banks in Europe.
Larry King: “Now, Bjork, has anything positive come out of this.” Bjork: “Yes. Iceland is now the world’s number-one exporter of volcanic ash. Previously, our main exports were reindeer bones and giggles.
We also get an appearance from Sir Richard Branson and lullaby to the volcano from Bjork. Well played, SNL. Almost as good as the time Bjork joined Charles Barkley on Iconoclasts.
Typical airline insurance policies would cover damage to planes if they flew through a volcanic ash cloud, but so far no plane has been damaged because of the ban on flights in the vicinity of the cloud, insurance companies and experts said. And airlines don’t have insurance for grounding planes due to natural events because policies would be very expensive, they said.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled into and out of Europe and hundreds of thousands of passengers have been stranded at airports throughout the world since Wednesday. Though those passengers may have trip insurance, the airlines cannot file a claim for this major business interruption (their business interruption insurance, if they have it, only covers the grounding of planes due to physical damage to the aircraft).
The airlines are facing huge losses in revenue at a time when the industry is still struggling with reduced demand.
The Air Transport Association, or IATA, which represents some 230 airlines and 93% of scheduled international global air traffic said that at current levels of disruption, its initial and conservative estimate of the financial impact on airlines is in excess of 0 million per day in lost revenues.
However, it said airlines would be hurt further as it they will incur added costs for re-routing of aircraft, care for stranded passengers and aircraft at various ports.
But there isa silver lining, however thin. Scandinavian ferries are fully booked and hotel owners are charging upwards of $800 a night while taxi drivers pocket $5,000 fares. So while airlines lose millions, stranded passengers confront desperation and the European economy takes yet another hit, there are those making the best of this natural catastrophe.
For our October 2009 issue of Risk Management magazine, I wrote a cover story on the risks of social media. We called it “The New Wild West” given the lawless (or at least “precedent-less”) nature that today’s online world shares with the days of Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
Our main goal was to introduce the topic of social media — and all of its many risks — to an audience that may not be as familiar with this emerging threat as it should be. Companies and risk managers are always racing to keep up with the latest tech risks, but preventing viruses and securing databases is generally a responsibility for IT. Well, even though social media exists in the digital domain, many of its risks are old-world issues. There are real compliance, legal, reputational, privacy and intellectual property concerns in addition to all the IT exposures.
In the weeks and months to come, we will be taking an in-depth look at each of these issues individually in our Risks of Social Media post series, but, to kick things off, I just want to punctuate the key takeaway from what I wrote in October.
“Employers are going to be held liable for the behavior of their employees,” said Simonson. “Is harassment going on in social media? Breach of proprietary information? Employees can easily leak trade secrets.”
These things are not new risks, per se, but it is now much easier for one foolish error by an employee to become a significant issue. Once an employee hits the “reply” or “post” button, the information is now public and, because it is digital, it is essentially engraved in stone on a server somewhere.
“Users are becoming their own unedited publishers,” said Simonson. “I don’t think the risks are all that different from the past. There’s just a much greater chance for it. In the past, controlling all published material was easy.”
As always, what your company does can hurt you. And that includes all the individual actions of all your employees. Now, many of those actions just happen to occur outside of the physical world — and they occur instanteously and with less forethought than ever before, which makes them inherently more difficult to manage.
But you can do it. First, you just need to understand exactly what these risks are.
In addition to reading my aforementioned article, I encourage you to watch the video below from a panel discussion I recently participated in. (I’m the bald guy with the beard.) We gave a 90-minute presentation for an event hosted by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), and the clip is a 10-minute “best of” video that offers some nice insights into (1) monetizing opportunities, (2) restricting employee access to social networking sites, (3) who should “own” social media, (4) the legal risks of social media, and (5) “going viral.”
And, most importantly, be sure to check back here regularly to read more from our Risks of Social Media series. (In the meantime, you can also see some of our previous social media coverage here.)
For more on social media generally and how it is transforming how we interact with one another and distribute information, watch this video.
Listen to the staff of Risk Management magazine discuss newsworthy events. Topics covered include the West Virginia coal mine disaster, an employee strike at the Carlsberg brewery plant, airlines charging for carryon baggage and bathroom usage and the link between Tiger Woods and reputation risk.
