What if the Red Cross has a Geek Squad?

[vrimj]

One of the things that I really enjoy about exercises is not so much that they feed us lunch, although that is nice, it is that there is a lunch line. While it is often dull, on occasion you stand next to someone who needs what you have to offer or vice versa

Comments

[freyley]

Did you see interdictor during New Orleans?

[vrimj]

No I missed that, that is interesting...

[freyley]

Well, if you want to connect EM with IT, you want to talk to (big) ISPs and datacenters, many of which have emergency preparedness folks. Half of the difficulty of engineering an ISP or datacenter is making sure that it is always available. They do a really good job most places. Datacenters often aren't satisfied with a single generator, and the bad datacenters are still likely going to be up for hours into a disaster.

[vrimj]

Well these are people we can get to play with us already. The problem is not so much the big infrastructure things it is that often we need basic geeks to help do things like set up wireless at field operations centers or deal with digital photos

In addition your basic gaming geek even without tech skill is someone who typically spends a fair amount of time each week figuring out how to do things and solve problems with limited resources, which is basically what being there pos-disaster as a community responder is about. Figuring out what needs to be done and communicating it if and dealing with what you can.

[freyley]

Ah.

Then you want to connect with groups like this: Personal Telco.

And what you really want is a game, like this: Fold It

There was a news article, 4 or 5 years ago, about a disaster simulation program that Portland (OR) was using to give leaders a sense of how their responses affect situations. My immediate response was to think "they've got that backwards." They should really use the tool both to train and to pick EM folks -- people who respond well in such games should be good candidates for further training.