New Orleans was an information work issue. People had information and they didn't work with it to solve problems before problems became catastrophes. Who knows what we will find from Mattel when the inevitable disclosures reveal who knew what when. In an age of transparency, knowing something and keeping it to yourself is tantamount to testifying against yourself in court. It will leak, you will be connected and the world will know. Be it a company or an individual. I'm not talking about intellectual property or competitive positioning, I'm talking about safety, share holder returns, fiscal frugalness.

So we come to Erin and Dean, one already washing its diminished spiral onto the oil rich Texas Coast and the other heading in the direction of Florida (for more see First hurricane of 2007 season forms in Atlantic).

Let's step back for a minute and get some sense of what we should be hearing now that the storms are on the way.

• What is the state of the oil infrastructure. Rather than being worried in a vague way, can the holders of these drilling platforms share with investors what they can really withstand, so they can know when to worry.
• What is the state of FEMA? Where are the supplies, where are the people and what is the deployment plan. One front, two? Rather than a post mortem on New Orleans-like disaster, let's start the debate now so they can get to fixing things before anything happens. Practice the future now.
• Congress. Did you fund enough to relief and preparedness. Really? Don't start lining up the hearings on what went wrong or didn't until you look at your own checkbook and see how much good will you borrowed from the future by being conservative in the wrong places. Again, rather than talking and talking while strolling or talking while on vacation, why don't you all go back to your staffers and figure out what the real exposure is to FEMA funding, critical infrastructure, communications, etc.
• Infrastructure. Rather than waiting for something to fail like the levies (for more hear Melissa Block on All Things Considered: Wetland and Flooding in New Orleans - a good example of proactive reporting).
• Local attitudes. Are people worried or complacent. Let's get some local activism going. If you know stuff and you aren't willing to fight for it, well let's find out why your think your neighborhood needs help and what your willing to do to tell people about it, fight for it and help guide improvement. All disaster end up being local, and human networks are the best means of identifying issues and helping solve them and recover from various acts of God and man (not FEMA, not actors, not rock stars - local people, both ahead and behind a disaster). If you are in an area where you think you have a problem, start telling people about it. Blogs, phone calls to congress, visits to City Hall are all free except for time. If it is important, you will make the time - think of it as an investment in the disaster you may avert.

I'm not talking about analysis paralysis, which most often occurs when a bunch of people sit around and over intellectualize a problem based on limited information. I'm talking about sharing information in an open way, creating a national debate about how we respond to national disasters. The presidential debates are pretty underwhelming and status quo at this point for me. Let's give these guys and gals some homework:

Hold an entire debate about what we know, what we are doing about what we know about national disaster preparedness (including what they think is OK and what they don't think is so good - and what they think is near tragic) and their plans for fixing it. A single topic debate that will demonstrate leadership, analysis, planning, team-building (good plans to come from individuals) and transparency - we make high school students show what they learn before the graduate, and doctoral students display their intellectual wears before they are conferred a degree - so let's have the presidential candidates move away from rhetoric into a scenario-based future where they have to demonstrate how they think and lead and coordinate, now just say what they have been coached to say. And maybe through that process, we will get some information about our current state of national preparedness and how that might evolve if we elect one of these candidates.