The runaway campaign (part 2)

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Breakdown

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Monday morning

After a sleepless night Emily arrives to work. She has been thinking about the problems with MillChat and doesn't quite know what to do. The people using the forum are grown-ups after all and who are Age Aid to say that they shouldn't have a bit of fun? But at the same time, MillChat was set up to help protect the health of the locals through swine flu and 'find a friend' was central to this. She thinks guiltily, "I should have seen it coming. I've heard about enough forum horror stories. I should have taken steps to protect Age Aid. How have I managed to cause this mess. The virus was only last month. I must be terrible at my job."

A visit to Joan's office

Emily knocks on Chief Executive Joan's door. "Come in, sit down. You look awful, what's up? You haven't got swine flu have you?!"

"No, nothing like that. There's something I need to tell you about the forum over the weekend." At that moment, Joan's phone rings. It's a journalist from the Mercury. "No, I think you have the wrong end of the stick, 'find a friend' is about swine flu…. We're not in the business of….Yes, older people want some romance in their lives….No, we're not saying that…."

Joan puts the phone down. "I think you need to tell me what's been going on". As Emily talks, Joan's expression is hard to read. "I thought something like this might happen. If you give people somewhere to talk, someone will always take advantage. Don't we have rules on the forum? Isn't there any protection against inappropriate behaviour?"

"Well, we set it up so quickly. Will and Geoff found an open source forum, I don't know about its security or terms and conditions." Emily realises that she should have checked and should have made sure Will knew what he was doing. Afterall it wasn't his job to know to how to manage a charity's forum, it was hers.

Damage limitation

"There's no harm done as far as I can work out." Joan continues, "But we need to plan our next move. The Mercury will no doubt go to town on this if we let them and do us a lot of damage. It's a terribly awkward situation, especially after last week's frontpage story. While of course we support the older members of our community in their quest for 'love', it is not exactly the basis on which we were awarded our charitable status. But we are here to support them living fullfilling lives.

"Can you ask Gary and Sunita to join us for an emergency meeting so we can decide what to do. We need to deal with this activity and also get the swine flu campaign back on track. Then we'll need to counteract any negative publicity. And can you ask Pam to get me the phone numbers of the Trustees. I think I'd better  let them know what is happening. Right, let's get started."

Have your say

What do you think Age Aid should do?

• What would you advise Joan and the team?
• How might Age Aid capitalise on this?
• Was Emily at fault?

Have your say on the Millcaster Tales forum. 

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