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So, What Do You Do?

Adam Anderson

Adam Anderson

Columns

Adam Anderson

It is a simple fact of American life that, whenever you meet new people, someone will ask, “So, what do you do?”

And though I’ve worked for Priority Dispatch® for over a year, it is only recently that I found a way to answer this question without someone thinking that I am an emergency dispatcher or that I sound pretentious. I’ve finally settled on, “I write training materials for emergency dispatchers,” and while that’s perfectly fine for small talk over Cheez-It® crackers before playing Dungeons and Dragons, for people who know what dispatching is like, that’s not quite the whole story.

Chances are, despite my short tenure, that you have or will read something that I’ve written. Whether it’s the user guide for the latest AQUA® release or the ProQA® practice guide for MPDS®, FPDS®, or PPDS® (if you think the language in the scenarios is a little stilted, trust me, I know; sometimes art must be sacrificed for accuracy), I’ve written, edited, and sometimes even typeset myriad training materials.

The only training materials my team produces that I don’t have an official hand in creating are the Advancement Series lessons, though I still help to edit and revise where I am needed. You may have even heard me narrating some of the Advancement Series lessons.

But the work I’m most excited about, I’m not saying anything about. I’m not sure how much information I can share before it’s released. I am currently developing and writing the next generation of software training for AQUA and ProQA users. But don’t get me wrong, it, like everything else I do, is a team effort, and I get to work closely with talented programmers, artists, designers, and other writers to make this training a reality.

I can’t wait to share it with you. And though I can’t share any details right now, trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.

So, I guess “I write training materials for emergency dispatchers” just about covers what it is I do here, but I do so much more, too. At the core of what I do is our company principle “Be the Solution.” I want to make sure that what I do and what I write is useful—that it answers some question somewhere that someone may have. Emergency dispatchers save lives, and I’m proud to be a part of that, however small.