Chief Bill Boyd is getting to be an increasingly recognized name in emergency management circles, largely because of his strong advocacy of using social media. Nothing new about that, but what is different is Bill is not a "just" a communicator, he is a fire chief of a mid-size city. He has 28 years of experience in fire service and Incident Command, so when he speaks about emergency management it's not just another pie-in-the-sky PIO speaking.
There are a couple of new opportunities to learn from the Chief's experience in using social media in numerous real events. One of those is a FEMA webinar that is coming up on January 18. Bill will join 2 or 3 other speakers to talk about social media in emergency response put together by Emergency Management Institute of FEMA. This seminar does not require registration but is limited to the first 300 callers so you may want to consider getting a group together in a room.
I've had the opportunity to hear Bill speak about these issues, and since we are friends, also had the pleasure of chatting about these issues on several occasions. That's why I arm twisted him into letting me put a little 6 minute video together that has him addressing chiefs, emergency managers and elected officials directly. The core message is simple--today with social media spreading info and mis-info at the speed of light "you can't be fast enough" in getting correct information out. Excuse the production quality--I'm still learning--but I think this is a valuable contribution to the on-going discussion and education effort on this topic that is very important. I hope that every communicator who sees this passes it on to every fire chief, police chief, emergency management executive, Incident Commander and elected official they know. And if you are a chief or in emergency management, send this around to your team to help everyone get on the same page.
Some of you may wish to have a copy of the video to download so you can run it from your system rather than on the internet. I'd be happy to accommodate that. You can request it at training@agincourt.us or give me a call at 360-303-9123.
Also, Bill and I are working on some additional training videos and manuals so if you want to be alerted to the availability of these, you can register for updates at www.agincourt.us.
