More Ducks Land on Oil Sands Leases – News Sources You Should Follow

Well, the investigations are under way and the information is slowly making it’s way out about landings by waterfowl on multiple oil sands sites.

News sources to follow while this story continues to evolve are:

• On Twitter with @Mix1037FMNews – they’ve been doing a great job of getting information out on Twitter (nothing from the companies involved btw)
• Online News – Google News Search of “ducks tailings pond”  for up-to-the-minute news on the story from multiple sources
• Syncrude Newsroom
• Suncor Newsroom
• Shell (Albian) News Releases
• Alberta Environment Newsroom
• CAPP News Releases
• Pembina Media Releases
• Blog  – Straight Outta Edmonton (via @Avnishnanda)

And while not a link to a news source, here is a link to the Federal Migratory Bird Act (if you were interested).

From a communications perspective, it’s going to be interesting to see how industry, government, non-government and the public react.

From a political/policy/regulations perspective, it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

From my own personal point of view, this sucks.

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Did I miss some news sources you think should be on the list? Let me know, post a comment below or grab me on Twitter at @myoilsands

Why oil sand web sites need to support Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Hey Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), I’m looking at you. You don’t use RSS. This is why you should. (what’s RSS?)

Background

I am trying to effectively consume oil sands information from a variety of sources, and CAPP runs two sites I’m interested in:

http://www.capp.ca/ & http://www.canadasoilsands.ca/

I have been trying to build a social media cheat sheet using RSS feeds, but the problem is that CAPP does not seem to have embraced RSS.

So What?

Well, what this means is that organizations that do not have RSS feeds, like CAPP, are at a severe disadvantage when trying to get their message out. With no RSS, it means they are waiting for someone to just surf on by and read their information.

The web doesn’t work like that anymore.

Other folks like Greenpeace, the Pembina Institute, the Oil Sands Developers Group and the Government of Alberta get it – using RSS, they are able to get info out as fast as possible, to as many people as possible. Their news is going out to the readers rather than forcing the readers come to them. Make it as easy as possible to get your message out. RSS helps you do that.

Again, So What?

Well, it means that for those people who rely heavily on RSS feeds from multiple sources will never see CAPP-based info. Little Johnny could have all of the best intentions in the world to try and put together an informed opinion – learning from multiple different sources etc. – but he’ll never come across information from sites such as CAPP if he’s only using RSS. And that’s not good enough.

The message is simple. Any organization that is trying to compete in the world of instant communication needs to use all of the available tools. And in order to do that, they need to embrace RSS.

Articles About RSS/PostRank

ReadWriteWeb – 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock

NetRegistry.com.au – Benefits of RSS

ReadWriteWeb – PostRank: Find The Best Blogs on Any Topic