ABSTRACT
Over the next few days the Eurocontrol Twitter feed went from a few hundred to thousands of followers, many of whom were asking for urgent help and advice. The organisation had no established procedures to deal with the questions that were now flooding in on Twitter, so Aurélie did what she thought made sense: she improvised. Luckily she speaks four languages – including Chinese – and is a closet geek, happy to quietly play around with new technology when others are busy writing procedural reports and other vital documents. Without any guidelines at all she decided to follow the adage ‘better to ask forgiveness than permission’, and so she started to engage with the people asking questions on Twitter. But she did not just engage in the bland and neutral way that company spokespersons usually do: she offered people the most precious commodity that, in the circumstances, she had – relevant information to help them find a way home.
