By Mike Rigert
Got social media?
Perhaps like many of you, I began dabbling in social media a few years ago, mostly with Facebook, but also daring to explore the puzzling waters of Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar platforms. More recently, I discovered that Pinterest isn’t just for women and that “pinning” can be quite addictive.
It goes without saying that in 2015, for society in general and the comm. center, technology, for better or worse, is king. Technological tools, ideally, assist us in our job, make our tasks more manageable, and create greater economies and efficiencies for response during the emergency dispatch process. Similar to how ProQA software integrates your use of the emergency dispatch protocols with your comm. center’s CAD, social media is a tool that enhances your individual and organizational communications with friends, family, co-workers, professional network, common-interest groups—essentially anyone that you want to interact with.
As you may have noticed in recent months, the Academy is increasingly using social media to get the word out to you and those in the industry about new Priority Dispatch Corp. (PDC) product launches, Academy research, International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED) news and events, NAVIGATOR highlights, and to keep members abreast of when new issues of The Journal and related publications are available. We maintain an IAED Facebook page (facebook.com/InternationalAcademiesofEmergencyDispatch) and also IAED (@TheIAED) and IAED NAVIGATOR (@IaedNavigator) Twitter accounts. Many of you may have “liked” or “followed” us, respectively. We also operate a LinkedIn page and a YouTube channel (NAED911).
Ultimately, the usefulness (and fun factor) of these social media platforms is content-driven, meaning the more “stuff” we have to share, the more helpful and successful they’ll be. Successes and achievements taking place at comm. centers around the world is one type of content visitors to the Academy’s social media platforms love to see. In other words, if you’ve got a great story about how using the protocols made a significant impact on a call or if your center is a new Accredited Center of Excellence (ACE), for example, please send those stories and photos (photos are a big hit on social media) our way so that we can share them with visitors around the world via social media. All submissions, photos, and ideas for content can be submitted to editor@emergencydispatch.org.
And if you haven’t checked us out on social media, give it a try. After a little time and tinkering, you’ll likely find that using social media isn’t only beneficial, but that it’s also fun, rewarding, and slightly addictive.
