Association VISOV

Marina Tymen, Association VISOV General Secretary, also in charge of communication for the association and relations with the ministerial authorities in France, paints a rich picture of VISOV as a vibrant not-for-profit French speaking NGO in SMEM.

In May 2015, VISOV launched a new website built by Ms. Tymen herself. At the same time VISOV published a new Social Media for Emergency Management Guide in French, a work that involved many contributors working diligently together with professional translators over many months.

Based on a document first published in the English language by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology, the Virtual Operations Support Group supported the translation project in a small way by helping to secure the legal permissions necessary for a French translation and adaptation to be published outside U.S. federal borders. Such is the dedication and commitment of the volunteers behind Association VISOV, some members chipped in personal funds to ensure the document’s production values met a high professional standard, and that the finished product could be shared freely with French speakers not only involved with VISOV, also those in the U.S. and throughout the world. It has been very well received with some 200 downloads to date, including many institutions.

The grass did not start growing under the feet of the association after the translation project was complete. On the contrary, VISOV continued to move forward at a pace, achieving all of the following (and no doubt more) in a mere 3 months since:

• Co-launched a Weather Radio Station on the web, La Radio Météo,
• Developed a new methodology and tools by using WhatsApp more intensively
• Activated three times for floods in South of France
• Launched the “WhatChat” SME live chat series
• Won a prestigious Citizen Award in France
• Collaboration with VOST Spain to help build out VOST Europe, including:
  • VOST Belgique — early stage development support for an independent team
  • VOST Greece — early stage development support for an independent team
  • Nice VOST – early stage development support for a team operating under VISOV umbrella

Complete details of these outstanding achievements are available on VISOV’s own website in French, and there follows below highlights from some of these unique milestone moments.

Partnership with La Radio Météo – The Weather Radio

La Radio Météo  is France’s first web radio station dedicated to weather news. On air 24/7, the station is run by an association of young journalists and enthusiasts, led by Alexandre Bourasseaurun. The VISOV |  La Radio Météo collaboration has built an amazing following over a short three month period, around 150,000 cumulative listeners at the time of writing. Like VISOV, La Radio Météo team is entirely voluntary. 

Once an orange or red alert affecting a number of departments in France is triggered, entertainment (music) is suspended. The station switches to news weather bulletins every fifteen minutes.  Announcers read out tweets, broadcast live reports, and even responding to live tweets and posting in Facebook, using information from verified and official sources and government institutions, including Météo France.

VISOV first coordinated with La Radio Météo to keep the public and firefighter partners informed during severe weather events in July and again in August. VISOV’s public safety messages, such as preventative measures for those affected by the hazards were shared across multiple social media accounts.

On September 7th, when VISOV and La Radio Météo formally signed a partnership agreement, VISOV President Ludovic Lux said (to paraphrase) that this new partnership between the two associations demonstrates to all involved in social media in emergency management that it’s possible to combine media outlets such as web radio with SMEM, resulting in a stronger organization to keep the public informed 24/7.

New Methodology and Tools

There have been significant changes in VISOV’s methodology and tools.

Effort has been focused on establishing closer working relationships between volunteers who do the monitoring, and subject matter experts (SME) who have first hand information of an emergency or disaster situation. A new category of member within VISOV’s organizational structure has evolved to accommodate partners and SME invited to integrate with the rest of the team, although they are not automatically expected to enroll for monitoring and other duties associated with a routine VOST activation.

VISOV’s three main tasks remain as follows:

1. Gather information published on the web in a deployment file (Google doc)
2. Mapping (two types of collaborative cards used)
3. Disseminate prevention messages on social media prior to incidents.

VISOV has also re-evaluated the team’s toolkit for communications and coordination at local, regional, and international levels. VISOV alerts, general discussion, training and coordination are now managed in four WhatsApp chat rooms, with +/- 50 members in some rooms.

1. Blue: General discussion forum – members mute chatter as needed.
2. Red: Activation alerts and and urgent messages posted by the Board – required for all members. No discussion. No mute. (In parallel, a new WhatsApp group using the name of the activation is launched and available for members to be inducted.)
3. Formation MSGU: Training room to focus on monitoring tools and techniques only.
4. VISOV Board of Directors and selected advisors.

The VISOV website,  Google Group and Docs, plus proprietary geolocation software, are also all part of the basic VISOV operational toolkit. VISOV also still manages a legacy Skype room for members, but this is no longer the platform of choice for most members.

Finally, for the most urgent activations, even during the overnight period, VISOV board members have a special alert app called Vialert (by Cedralis), which enables mobile calls even when the device is switched off or put on silent mode.

VISOV is fully transparent about its membership, complete with a published membership roster, comprising mini-bios for some fifty multidisciplinary volunteers, and there’s more information about the methodology they’re using here.

WhatsChat

September also saw the first of a planned series of bi-monthly VISOV hosted evening events, also on WhatsApp, which Ms. Tymen has called “WhatsChat”. This is in addition to the French #smemchat on Twitter, called #MSGUchat. The idea is to invite volunteers with the most expertise to talk about their specialism, which also builds the connections necessary to bring competence to VISOV and the most timely first hand information from the SME member to the operational team if something happens.

The inaugural WhatsChat event featured Remy Bossu, one of France’s most eminent Seismologists. Mr. Bossu is also Secretary General of the Euro-Mediterranean Centre Seismological (CSEM), a not-for-profit scientific NGO and provider of rapid earthquake information which invites eyewitnesses to share their experience and pics. Based in Paris, but working globally, he talked about his specialism and connections with the public authorities, including the atomic center in France. CSEM has developed an independent App called @lastquake, which VISOV members all now have and is available to download from Last Quake.

During the one-hour Whatschat session, members wrote their questions to the guest who answered by voice messages instead. By all accounts, it was a great success.

French High Committee for Civil Defense – Citizen 2015 Award

As part of the recent Expocrise, the only French show fully dedicated to crisis management, VISOV was awarded the Trophy for Citizenship 2015, at the 5th edition of the Corporate Awards for Social Resilience organized under the French High Committee for Civil Defense. This trophy rewards VISOV for the support it provides to authorities in the management of social networks in times of crisis.
The award was handed to Ludovic Lux, President of VISOV by General Philippe Boutinaud of Pompiers de Paris, congratulating the association and its volunteers, saying he considered VISOV as

” ..a kind of citizen start-up that makes us open our eyes to the structural and organizational changes needed in the field of security and civil protection.

Mr. Lux gave an eloquent speech, accepting the award as recognition for all the volunteers of the association, noting the great honor and pride for members of the association VISOV to be the recipients of the Citizenship Award 2015. Extracted from the full text of his speech, and roughly translated, he said:

Since 2012 and essentially on our personal time, we have taken our pilgrim stick to the institutions (ministries, prefectures, firefighters, …) to convince and demonstrate the value of social media in emergency management. Since this summer, we have united with other communities of volunteers also, such as amateur meteorologists and VISOV counterparts in European countries, with the recent creation of a VOST Europe. I conclude my remarks by simply quoting from the civil security modernization law in France, “The citizen is placed in the heart of the civil security system, the first player in their own security and, consequently, that of others. This is what VISOV is all about.”

Photo credit: VISOV

JLane

Juan Diaz, Panama City.

RELEASE

Preliminary Communication No.1

Panama, September 10, 2015.

The National System of Civil Protection informs the general public that the rains today in the capital city La Chorrera produced floods, landslides, fallen trees on roads and housing, as well as flooded streets. The affected areas are listed below so far as where staff are on-site evaluating situations.

We ask the population to stay calm and report emergencies to * 335 or 316-0080

Damages and Government assistance for affected families in the following areas:

Floods:

-El Crisol, calle Barcelona.
-San Miguelito, Torrijos Carter, El Progreso.
-Ciudad Radial, Corredor norte, Kilometro, calle 1era: landslide and flooding
-Samaria, sector 4d, puente rojo, sector 1/ Floods and landslides
-calle 5ta, Ciudad Radial.
-Loma de Mastranto en La Chorrera.
-San Miguelito, Domingo Espinar y Nueva Libia.
-sector calle A, Villa Venus, Nuevo Hipódromo.
-Condado del Rey.
-Arnulfo Arias, sector calle 27, Altos del Urracá.
-Santa Clara.
-Juan Díaz, El Trébol.
-Nueve de Enero-San Miguelito.
-La Fula, San Miguelito, Escuela San Martín.
-Quebrada Turín, Belisario Porras, Don Bosco.

Landslides:

– Torrijos Carter, El Progreso.
-Ernesto Córdoba, Las Cumbres.
-Las Cumbres, Colegio Las Belemitas.
-Gonzalillo, sector 9A.

-collapsed wall in Chivo Chivo, behind the Park of Remembrance.

Trees on roads and housing:

-sector 3, the Cabima.

-Arnulfo Arias, industry 27th Street, Upper Urracá.

– Torrijos Carter, El Progreso. Roberto Duran. -Valle Magpie.

– Hidrometerología Etesa reports that the rainfall condition will remain because Panama is receiving the influence of the activation of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), just south of Panama that it is activated by the passage of a Tropical wave in addition to a low pressure over the entire country.

People who live in areas vulnerable to flooding and landslides should take preventive measures.

Original Release (Spanish)

While Dave’s impassioned response made me feel good, the conversation brought back some dark memories from a time as fire chief when I was publicly challenged by a city appointed citizen’s budget advisory committee to justify what we did and how we did it. The committee was tasked with coming up with creative cost saving ideas for city services at a time when the national and local economy was swirling down the toilet. With the third largest general fund budget, my department was squarely in the cross hairs. While the process was excruciating, it gave me great insight into how political and philosophical views influence perception and acceptance of facts. It also made me regret not signing up for my high school debate team.
Many of the assertions in the Washington Post piece echoed committee statements and questions about my department’s operations. Below are just a few of the many challenge questions asked during this process, and my explanations. See if any of these ring true in your community.
“We don’t have hardly any fires anymore, so why do we need the same number of firefighters and fire trucks?”

True, building fires are much rarer today. Yet, when they do happen their impact is more catastrophic. Fire burns faster, hotter, and produces much deadlier smoke. This means firefighters need to get to the scene quicker and have more capability to attack with much greater force to stand a chance… unless of course property/business owners are willing to pay for installing fast acting fire sprinklers.

“Why don’t we just let the buildings burn? It would be much cheaper to pay the increased insurance premiums for no fire protection than to pay the exorbitant taxes for a service I will likely never need to use.”

(I have to admit, this one floored me)
Numbers may look good penciled out on a spreadsheet-until your property and family/employees are threatened in real time-by fire or other catastrophe. Mankinds innate fear of fire and it’s spectacularly brutal impact will always require we combat it. The concept of firefighting was started by the Romans, and volunteer fire companies were initially created centuries ago by insurance companies to protect subscriber properties. If we reverted to pre-Roman era fire protection I’d wager the insurance companies would charge a lot more than what we pay for public fire protection.
“Why does a fire truck come to my house when I called for an ambulance?”

Actually, that is a really good question. First, most firefighters are also EMS first responders.  Our stations are located to provide fast response to the highest risk areas, regardless of the type of emergency. Depending on the situation, our firefighters may respond to your medical emergency in an ambulance kept in the same fire station as their fire engine. This saves wear and tear on expensive fire engines, but adds cost on overall fleet maintenance and upkeep. It also adds “surge” capacity when multiple emergency medical calls occur simultaneously. In life threatening emergencies, medically trained firefighters usually arrive first, and perform lifesaving procedures until higher trained paramedics arrive and take over. The firefighters then support the paramedics as they perform their advanced skills. The more critical the medical situation, the more personnel are necessary in providing this care.
“Many of the adjacent fire departments rely on volunteers. Why do we have to pay for employees when other departments do it with volunteers?”

Surrounding departments are struggling to find and keep volunteers. Today’s volunteer firefighters are now required to meet the same training and certification standards as full time paid firefighters, and respond to a significantly greater number of emergency calls than even 20 years ago; most of them medically related. In addition, today a large segment of the urban-suburban population commutes to work, severely reducing the available pool of potential volunteer candidates at home.  The increased number of households with double incomes is also a significant barrier for volunteering. The economic squeeze of the middle class is also a time squeeze.

“Can’t we close Station X? It has the fewest number of calls, so it isn’t as needed as the other fire stations.”

Tell that to Joe and Jane Citizen who live or work there. Typically, fire stations with the fewest number of calls are located in less populated areas. Yet, citizens expect the same level of service regardless of their location within a jurisdiction. Try and take it away, and you will hear about it. Good luck with that…

“How fast are you really? Show us your data.”

BOOM! Here you go…. Here is a square mile map of our city, complete with the location of every single call, identified by call type for the past three years. Furthermore, each square mile section shows the percentage of time the first in engine company or paramedic unit ambulance arrived on scene to critical situations – reported fires or high acuity medical/rescue situations, and also how long it took to get all of the responding resources on scene within eight minutes. As you can see, the densest areas of the city have the best response times. This is because; 1. The calls were located in a smaller geographical area, and 2. There are fire stations located closer together to protect the highest economic value property risk in the city, and provide backup response coverage when the primary unit is not available to respond due to a concurrent call, training, mechanical issues, etc.

The outlying stations have a lower call volume and longer response times because of larger response territory, less density and greater distance from adjacent fire stations.

These are just a small sample of challenging questions I faced as fire chief during the “Great Recession”. While our department had to absorb cuts, we were able to receive support and funding for maintaining our essential fire protection/EMS services and staffing- including our fire code enforcement resources.
But, man did I learn some valuable lessons during this process;
• You better have good response/performance data; geographically analyzed to show any disparities resulting from geography, artifical barriers, stations locations, etc.
• Don’t get emotional or defensive. Explain the facts logically, and in lay person terms (I once used a large paper map and toy fire trucks and ambulances to show how our units respond to various call types).
• Focus on your agency’s core mission, and do it well. Don’t allow special programs to dilute from primary mission delivery; Fire protection, emergency medical services, fire prevention/education and firefighter safety for example.
• Get IN FRONT. Be accessible and engaging. Get out of the station and into the community, and I’m not just talking about fire chiefs. Line firefighters should be out there as well, and not just on IAFF union sponsored activities. My old Executive Fire Officer instructor, Linda Willing, has some great insights on this in a recent fire service article that can be found here.

Lastly,
• Never, ever take public support for granted.

Professor McChesney’s superficial article, and a similar one published in 2002, were nothing more than shots across the bow of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF). But, he did the fire service a favor by reminding them of the importance in continually monitoring and analyzing service delivery, keeping an open mind to new service delivery ideas, and maintaining a strong community presence. Do you have any “McChesney’s” in your community?

Of course, the Monday morning quarterbacks are out in full force, condemning or supporting the decisions of the crew, criticizing the level of discipline administered by the fire chief and the waste of taxpayer dollars in responding to this frequent flyer.

Make no mistake, I question the engine captain’s decision to load up a drunken guy and drop him off alone in the toolies (ahem…in another fire department response district). There must have been better options.

I know how frustrating it is to deal with frequent flyers who can’t, or won’t help themselves. Back in the day I dealt with my fair share, including one woman suffering from agoraphobia who called us 10 times in an 8 hour period. As a newly minted EMS captain, I had to come up with a creative strategy in helping her gain access to appropriate treatment, instead of the resentful band aid care of tired engine company crews and paramedics. Only after several days of inter-agency and medical provider discussions were we able to get her the suitable help she needed, and lo’ and behold the calls stopped.

The fire service can be its own worst enemy. Cats in trees, removing heads stuck in playground equipment, running cardiac arrest protocols, rescuing livestock, cutting people out of cars, cutting rings off fingers, you name it, we do it. Yet, we continue to use a response system developed in the early 70’s, when doctors made house calls, families took care of their own with gauze, masking tape and magazines, and funeral homes ran local ambulance services. Today, a minor rash may trigger a call to 911 for help. When are we going to figure out that things have to change?

Some departments are changing how they do things. With a proud nod to my career alma mater, the Bellingham Fire Department recently implemented their Community Paramedic Program , intended to deal with the exact type of situations confounding the Everett, Washington Fire Department. The Los Angeles Fire Department has taken it one step further, deploying nurse practitioners on specially equipment ambulances to help patients with non-emergent medical and social support needs.

With the reductions and elimination of mental health and substance abuse programs across the US, it’s high time governments get on board with implementing creative response programs to take the pressure off of frustrated hose jockeys, paramedics and dispatchers

(Note: as you can tell I haven’t posted in a while. The epic summer up here in the PNW kept calling me outdoors. So, a little summer sabbatical was thoroughly enjoyed. I’m now hopefully back in the blogging grove.)

Battery widget reborn

It doesn’t really matter if you use a smartphone with good battery or not, it is always a good idea to check what’s going on with the battery, how fast the level drops, the percentage of battery life left, when it’s completely charged and when can we expect the battery to become completely drained. There are many apps that can tell you some of this stuff, but experts claim that Battery widget reborn is one of the best on the market because it looks great and comes with many different features.
The developers are constantly upgrading its appearance and all of its features in order to provide the best experience for the army of users they have. You can choose between few different designs.
This application can be to check battery consumption, temperature of the smartphone, the speed of charging/discharging, power consumption as a percentage on the notification bar etc.

Helium

This is one of the best and most useful apps that allow synch and back-up without root access. All you need is a USB cable and laptop or desktop computer. You will first need to install the so-called Helium Desktop app on your computer. After that, all you need to do is to connect your smartphone to your computer and the application will start. You can choose all the apps that you want to back-up in the menu.
This back-up is available until you turn off the smartphone. Every next time you will have to use the cable. The application is free although there is a paid version with few more features.

App cache cleaner

This is a really simple cleaning removal app that can be used to organize your internal memory. In case you have limited internal memory space on your mobile device or you have some unnecessary files that are produced by some of your apps, you can try this interesting application. You’ll be surprised by the amount of free space you will get once you finish the procedure. You can use the Auto Clear option in order to allow this app to clear unnecessary files in a certain period of the day.

Wi-Fi manager

People usually use this app because of the useful widget. You can check which Wi-Fi networks are available, the strength of their signal and whether they are locked or not. You can use the option to adjust the update interval, take a look at the Wi-Fi network strength in percentage or decibels, turn on notification about available free Wi-Fi networks and much more.

Social media is now a common tool emergency management and response organizations turn to in order to interact with the public before, during and after a disaster event. However, testing the use of social media during exercises has proven to be problematic. Agencies are reluctant to use their own social accounts in a live environment because they do not want to confuse or scare their followers with exercise updates; fake social platforms often fall-flat in terms of realism.  In today’s post, I want to suggest a third alternative.

Using Real but Unidentifiable Accounts

You can provide an exercise environment that allows participants to engage with content online, with social platforms agencies use everyday. This can be done by utilizing real but unidentifiable social media accounts in a closed or semi-closed environment (e.g. Twitter protected accounts and Facebook groups marked as private, closed or secret, and a blog site set up with disabled search engine indexing). In a recent exercise, my team and I employed a total of 7 different types of online platforms in order to accomplish our goal of providing as realistic as possible news and social environment. However, for the purposes of this post, I would like to focus on the processes we used for Twitter, Facebook and WordPress.

Protected Twitter Accounts

Our team used protected Twitter accounts to provide participants the ability to operate in a social platform they were used to and it gave us the ability to limit access.  “Accounts with protected Tweets require manual approval of each and every person who may view that account’s Tweets”  (support.Twitter.com). Twitter states the following:

When you protect your Tweets, the following restrictions are put in place:

• People will have to request to follow you; each follow request will need approval. Learn more.
• Your Tweets will only be visible to users you’ve approved.
• Others will not be able to retweet or quote your Tweets.
• Protected Tweets will not appear in Google search; protected Tweets will only be searchable on Twitter by the account holder and approved followers.
• @Replies you send to people who aren’t following you will not be seen by those users (because you have not given them permission to see your Tweets).
• You cannot share permanent links to your Tweets with anyone other than your approved followers.

For the exercise, we took the following steps:

• Created numerous fake protected accounts for the simulation cell and for the participants (we also had to create new Google accounts to provide an email address);
• We ensured all pre-created protected accounts followed each other;
• Other approved exercise participants were allowed to follow the accounts at the start of the exercise;
• Content was developed in advance and pre-scheduled based on the exercise timeline, however, the simulation cell followed the stream and interacted with the participants in order to push them to achieve the desired outcome.

There are some pros and cons to using protected Twitter accounts versus a simulated Twitter environment, or unprotected accounts:

Pros:

• Real Twitter user-interface
• Users saw their own stream as well as exercise content, which added realism
• People did not have to be re-trained on how to use the platform
• Content never was accidentally released into the agency’s real stream.

Cons:

• Cannot ReTweet a protected Tweet
• If exercise participants (other than those designated to interact with the stream) wanted to see the content they had to have their own Twitter account. They were also reminded to “view only”.

Closed Facebook Groups

Facebook was actually quite easy to use in a closed environment because closed groups are fairly common. To take full advantage of this feature, we did the following:

• Created a closed group and invited designated participants via email;
• Wrote content in advance and populated the page based on the scenario timeline. As with Twitter,  the sim-cell interacted with the participants “live” in order to provide realism to the exercise environment.

Pros:

• Real Facebook user-interface
• People did not have to be re-trained on how to use the platform
• Content could not accidentally be released into the agency’s real stream.
• Content posted in a closed group does NOT show up on the user’s personal/public timeline.

Cons:

• If an exercise participant wanted to view the content they had to have their own personal Facebook account.
• Fake Facebook accounts are not as easy to establish, so the sim-cell also used their own personal accounts.  By doing this, however, the timeline of the FB page can look a little lop-sided and less realistic. For large exercises, this issue could be addressed by simply adding the entire sim-cell team for the exercise to the FB Group and asking them to post pre-scripted content.

WordPress

A common complaint of exercise participants is that they get lost in the scenario. Scenario-time jumps and fast paced injects can mean that participants are aware of their own ESF actions, but often don’t have the situational awareness provided during real events by news and social media, which is often displayed in EOCs on large screens. In order to help address this issue, we utilized a blog site as a hub for all information. (I should note that during the exercise we also used a Flickr stream to broadcast to the EOC over 500 scenario-specific images, displayed multiple YouTube videos we created to portray the scenario, and provided text messages with scenario weather information and updates directly to everyone’s cell phone.)

The blog site was open to anyone who knew the URL, but we did limit the site visibility by selecting the option available in WordPress.com to discourage search engines from indexing the site.  We did not have any issues regarding information getting released to the public or news media.

We did the following:

• An exercise-specific blog served as a foundation for the exercise for everyone to view the situation manual and other relevant documents including maps, etc.
• During the exercise, participants were encouraged to use the blog to post content they were developing including press releases, updates from their ESF (e.g. road closures), shelter locations, etc.

Pro:

• Served as the main site for “exercise” situational awareness. Allowed everyone to understand what was happening on the timeline.

Con:

• Developing content for a blog can be much more time consuming than writing Tweets and Facebook posts since stories versus sentences have to be developed. However, it should be noted, news stories from real-world disaster events make great starting points.

I hope this post is helpful for anyone interested in using social during their next exercise. If you have any questions, please, let me know.

Aside from solid VOST interest from people in Oregon, we’re getting lots of interest from Washington state emergency managers. This has made the Oregon OEM PIO and I reconsider our strategy, and we’re now thinking of a possible regional VOST that will train both Oregon and Washington folks at the same time. We’ll be talking this week with representatives from Washington about the possibility of a regional team and how that would work.

I’ve reserved some VOST team names on twitter, facebook, Instagram and WordPress to be ready to use as needed, since we’re now moving relatively quickly towards having a team (or teams?) to use these resources; first for outreach, then for training, then for regular use by the team as needed. Some of the VOST names reserved are ORVOST, WAVOST and CascadiaVOST. It’s important to acquire these accounts on all major platforms so that they are not grabbed and held by others who may not be part of our actual VOST movement (this has happened recently; some VOST account names are being held by unknown parties.).  Since these newly forming teams are not yet official and functioning, and the possible team names are not set yet, they are not yet registered with VOSG.us, which for the time being is the place where VOST logos and teams are sharing team info and entering the VOST system.

I look forward to a day in the near future when these tentative VOST resources are official and being used regularly to help emergency managers and the communities they serve, and the disaster survivors that we all want to help. When that day comes, I know that our new VOSTs and VOST Team members will be welcomed in the All Things VOS Skype room where we all discuss VOST-related activities and news, and to the VOST Leadership Coalition. I look forward to registering those new VOST accounts as active, official VOSTs.

We’re getting close to the day when that will happen, and I appreciate the help of all who’ve been so welcoming to our new VOST friends. Thanks to all of you, both forward-thinking emergency managers and the amazing, talented, enthusiastic VOST volunteers who I’ve so enjoyed working with and learning from. I look forward to continuing to work with you all on building the VOST concept out for all who want and need one of these teams of awesome people.You all inspire me. @sct_r

The user who wears these glasses/helmet has a feeling that they are present in some other space because the only thing they see in their sight is the environment created by a computer. Although this model is designed for further development, it still represents a sufficiently developed product because it is based on the same technology used in smartphones.

In this case, Oculus Rift DK2 users are looking at a Samsung Note 3 display through two lenses. The sense of three-dimensionality is complete because the visual experience is equally transmitted to both eyes. The ability to turn around and look things to the side provides a complete sense of presence at the scene.

There is different content specially designed for Oculus Rift and some of them include rollercoaster experience whose stunts will definitely prepare users to play in this virtual reality. The feeling that perhaps is most fascinating is the virtual G-Force which provides the sensation of falling or moving although the player actually sits in an ordinary chair.

Although this is not a final product, this bet version of Oculus Rift represents an important step in the development of technology related to this new media. The product currently has a 1080p screen, an image with 75fps, short persistence pixel brightness, insertion of dropped frames and many other features.

According to the latest news, the first version for users should appear this fall and it will have a display of 1440p, speed of 90fps, incredible design and a price of about $250.
The story of this new type of media started about three years ago when the promising young developer Palmer Luckey decided to materialize his idea. He presented a tablet connected with two lenses of magnifier with the help of box tape. In this way, the image fills almost the entire visual field of the user and every movement of the head is being escorted with the same sensors through which smartphones and tablets recognize that you are in a landscape or portrait position.

The user cannot see the edge of the screen or the outside world in these moments, but only the edge of the mask which makes the brain believe that the person is in a real world that is actually generated by a computer. This phenomenon is called virtual reality. John Carmack, a famous innovator and creator of the first software which allowed creation of 3D games, was impressed by this discovery and decided to create a project which resulted in Oculus Rift.

It is worth mentioning that this is not a new idea and people have started similar projects in the 1960s, but this is the first time for humanity to be so close to experiencing the true meaning of virtual reality.

In the fall of last year I started converting one of my mountain bikes in to a utility bike, and have been working at it all winter so that I could not only start using my bike to get groceries and run errands, but I also have set it up so that I can haul two five gallon buckets of water and a lot of other stuff, hopefully at least up to 100 pounds, as is required to enter the “cargo hauling category”.

Here’s where my bike is now:

I have a few more tweaks to perform, but it’s basically ready, and now I just need to start riding with increasing amounts of weight on to get used to hauling more than a moderate load of groceries.

And now it seems that I may be able to incorporate some social media and VOST in to the DRT 2015 event.

Emma Stocker who’s leading the Portland DRT 2015 event approached Cory Grogan (Oregon Office of Emergency Management Public Information Officer) and I with the possibility of getting our newly formed Oregon VOST team involved in the event this year. We’re beginning discussions and not sure how we’ll use the team besides message support and amplification, but I’m very excited to see how VOST can help with this event. Mapping? Damage Assessment? If you have ideas let me know.

Here are some Disaster Relief Trials links and resources (more soon):

Disaster Relief Trials facebook page

Cargo bikes reach new heights at ‘Disaster Relief Trials’

Disaster Relief Trials Video

another Disaster Relief Trials Video

More blog posts and videos on the BikePortland blog

In recent weeks, I’ve been working on drafting social media policies for several new organizations that I work or volunteer with. And while each organization uses social media differently, one common thread has been evident in each organizational training:

User Responsibility

While an organization can easily say “here is how we will engage in social media,” it is important to realize that your employees, your volunteers and your social media administrators will all contribute to your agency’s reputation in the social space.

But you cannot assume that all of your employees or volunteers understand how to most appropriately engage in social media. This is why training and orientation to your social media policy is of serious importance.

Here are some basic guidelines to consider:

• Employees and Volunteers are responsible for their personal engagement and their privacy settings in social media.  Not only should this be said out loud to employees and volunteers, but there are a couple of very specific recommendations that I make in this area. They include recommendations to:
  • Conduct the “privacy review” of your settings on Facebook every 3-6 months. Facebook is notorious for changing its privacy settings regularly and it’s important for you to be in touch with these changes as they occur.
  • You should look at your Facebook profile from the perspective of a non-friend. Are you exposing more than you wish to? Often people don’t realize that both profile pictures and cover photos show up publicly on your timeline, including all of the comments of your friends.  You can choose to hide each of these from your timeline so that no one on the outside can see these pictures.
  • It’s also important to look at the “timeline & tagging” setting on Facebook. Did you know that Facebook employs facial recognition in pictures and will ask your friends to verify your identify in pictures? You want to turn this setting off. To do this, look under the “Timeline and Tagging” setting, look for the “Who sees tag suggestions when photos are uploaded that look like you” and turn that setting to “no one”
  • On Twitter and other platforms, don’t be afraid to block or report spam-like accounts. How do you determine if an account looks spammy? If their Twitter handle seems convoluted, they have an egg-like profile picture or if their tweets are highly repetitive, feel free to block these accounts. You don’t need to have spammy accounts following you, even if they share your content.

• Employees should think twice before being “friends” on social media. This issue can be tricky because, often, people spend so much time with those that they work with that it seems natural to also follow each other on social media, right? The reality is that because you spend so much time together, you probably shouldn’t follow each other on social media unless you truly are friends outside of work.

• Employees, with different levels of organizational authority, should disconnect from each other. If one employee is responsible to evaluate the performance of another employee, social media posts may present some awkward moments, particularly when employees post after calling in sick to work. It’s often easier to become friends later when you no longer have a power differential in your relationship.

Beyond these recommendations, it is important for your employees and volunteers to understand that you all share in your agency’s reputation online. This means that if they post content that they might regret later, it could also influence how others feel about your organization. If employees and volunteers feel part of your agency team, they will be important supporters and protectors of your agency’s image well into the future.

Bottom line? Good social etiquette is everyone’s responsibility.

You may think that I’ve disappeared from the #SMEM scene as of late, thanks to the lack of updates on this blog. However, that is not the case.

What is true is that I’ve been busy working on a number of projects which have been just a little more behind the scenes, but now is a good time to resurface for a brief moment and chat about these endeavors.

• New Job: As you may remember, I moved from the emergency management profession and into a 9-1-1 technology career. While still mystifying for some, the next huge phase in the 9-1-1 community is wrestling with the advent of Next Generation 9-1-1 which is essentially the incorporation of #SMEM directly into the public safety community. It is fun to be on the forefront of some of the planning conversations which will someday bring text, video and imagery right into the hands of future 9-1-1 dispatchers.

• New Training Classes: Despite the new job, I’ve also had the pleasure of being involved in the development of a new training course that is currently in the pilot stage for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, entitled “Social Media Engagement Strategies.”  This class will have several pilots before seeking final course approval.  The next pilot is on March 19th in Cincinnati, Ohio. And according to the NDPTC training website, there are still 8 seats left in the course, if you’re lucky enough to be within a commutable distance.  Pilot #1 occurred in Washington State in February and the feedback was very encouraging and positive.  Intermediate Social Media Tools, taught by Kevin Sur, is also occurring the day before and has 5 seats left at this writing.  For other pilot deliveries, keep an eye on the NDPTC site for future announcements.

• New Association:  For the past year, I’ve been working with a number of #SMEM folks to create a professional association that wholly models and embodies the use of collaborative tools and technologies.  With a vision to provide an umbrella to emerging technology initiatives and to solve age-old emergency management issues through truly incorporating a whole-community approach, it is an exciting initiative. And, at this juncture, we’ve seated a Board of Directors, adopted By-Laws and a Strategic Plan and are currently jumping through the hoops to be fully registered as an operational 501(c) organization. Our goal is to soft-launch this membership-based organization late summer 2015 and host our first in-person conference in 2016 or 2017. Much more to come on this very soon.

• New Award Nominations: And, in other news, I’ve been honored to have several of the initiatives nominated for awards being handed out by the first Government Social Media Conference (#GMSCon) which will be held in Reno, Nevada at the end of April. Nomination, however, appears to be just the first step and now the general public gets to vote on the awards. I’d personally ask you to support voting for 3 categories specifically by March 6th

1. Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOST) were nominated in the “Social Media in Emergency” category.  Vote at this link –>  http://conference.governmentsocialmedia.com/golden-post-awards/social-media-in-an-emergency/
2. #30Days30Ways, the National Preparedness Month game facilitated by the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency was nominated in the “Social Media for Citizen Engagement” category.  Vote at this link –>  http://conference.governmentsocialmedia.com/golden-post-awards/social-media-for-citizen-engagement/
3. And finally, I was nominated for the Top Government Social Media Leader (Non-Elected) category.  Vote at this link -_>  http://conference.governmentsocialmedia.com/golden-post-awards/top-government-social-media-leader-non-elected/

It continues to be a pleasure to work among such amazing people in the #SMEM community. I look forward to seeing and meeting even more of you as I travel to a variety of locations in 2015.  As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out and chat with me on Twitter at @cherylble or via email at cherylble@gmail.com.

May each of you have an AWESOME 2015! Thanks for reading.

Flooding was rampant yesterday for what seemed like half the country. Social Media was buzzing with images, safety tips and information about the event as it continued to get increasingly worse as the day wore on and the rain seemed unending.

Using social networks to communicate emergency, safety and preparedness information has now, in 2014, become a standard operating procedure for quite a few emergency management and response organizations. As with any standard procedure, each event can provide an opportunity to understand how to improve and adjust. As a person on the receiving end of the information stream yesterday, I noticed three things that could be improved upon.

1.  Ensure posts are “Mobile Ready”

On a day where the situation is changing rapidly, as it does with flooding, people will be looking for information anywhere they can get it. It is important to keep in mind that there is a high likelihood that those searches will be occurring on a mobile device. According to the Pew Research Center “The growing ubiquity of cell phones, especially the rise of smartphones, has made social networking just a finger tap away.  Fully 40% of cell phone owners use a social networking site on their phone, and 28% do so on a typical day.” Of course, the deluge we experienced yesterday was anything but typical, so that percentage was more than likely much higher.

With this in mind, when posting content about road closures, for instance, make sure the user does not have to go to another site to get the information, as seen in this Facebook.

“[County X DPW reports] eight (8) roads closed as of 6:00 a.m. this morning. Crews working to re-open all roads today. For complete list of road closures visit: http://YouCan’tSeeThisOnYourPhone.gov”

There were only 8 roads closed–why not list them all? If you are using a micro-blogging site, such as Twitter, that won’t allow listing all roads in one post–do 8 separate posts.

2. Use Images to Make Your Point

A warning about the dangers of driving through standing water is good, such as the one below.

“A reminder to motorist; please watch for standing water this morning during morning commute. Do NOT drive through standing water.”

However, a picture of a water rescues or a stranded vehicle might be more of a deterrent.

3. Reinforce Where Citizens Can Find Information–On Every Platform

There are many ways communities can reach their citizens with emergency information: a website, reserve calls, social media, door-to-door (if necessary). It is important to keep in mind that no single source will reach all of your citizens. Younger people may search social media for news and information (as shown by the Pew Research Center results) and older individuals might not ever look at your website.

However, linking and reinforcing all of those information outlets is important because you do not know where the citizen will start their search. I’ll use my own community as an example. Quite a few cities and counties have the service that allows them to call citizens on home phones or cell phones to provide updates about the situation. In my community, the call yesterday ended with a note to call the “Hotline” for more information. Unfortunately, there was no mention of their own social media sites that were up and running and providing vital emergency information and regular updates.  A quick visit to the county website also yielded disappointing results–there was no mention of the emergency at all and no easy way to navigate to current information. When choosing the “Facebook” link on the homepage, their emergency management page is not even on the list.

Conclusion

In terms of providing information to citizens via social networking the emergency management community does seem to “get it.”  We are now in a position to tweak and refine our processes in order to best serve our communities versus debate whether or not these are useful tools. That’s a good thing. Let me know, what lessons have you learned from recent experiences?