This version of Super Duper Powerpoint festival drew an interesting mix of people whose job title includes words like Security, Critical Incident Response, Business Continuity Planning, disaster drill devising, as well as a smattering of other planners, researchers,mental health practitioners and assorted people involved in community education, nonprofit disaster services, and miscellaneous ordinary citizens.
Most of the people there because it's their job description were the sort of probably overwhelmed public servant who feel the weight of their responsibility so much they do not necessarily have much room for sense of humor. This can be a challenge for the public education types. While there is not necessarily anything terribly funny about large-scale social, economic, ecological, and other disruption, what gets people through such upheavals is ineffably social, with humor and sensitivity needed all over the place to burnish the edges of stress, upset, and totaly overwrought. And the way to cut down the stress, upset and totally overwrought is to prepare, to build connections ahead of time, and rathr than having to figure out every detail in advance, to get the information where it is needed and to engage everyone in preparedness and in being able to work together to figure things out.
RantWoman herself was there on behalf of a community education project involving herself and many friends and neighbors. RantWoman is likely to post separately about that. Be forewarned, there will be mention of underwear issues and encyclopedic knowledge about the wheelchair accessibility of every men's room on the I-5 corridor. Somehow this will wind up relating to disasters! But first let us speak to the conference side of this intercultural experience.
Consider such staples of conferences everywhere as The Venue, The Lingo, the Vendors, and The Evaluation.
The Venue was the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center , a new edifice in the south end of downtown Tacoma. RantWoman really likes downtown Tacoma for its views, its gentler pace than Seattle, and some quaint charm. The Convention and Trade Center is a worthy addition except for one comical point on its website. The website mentions the new free Tacoma Light Rail and completely overlooks other very nearby bus stops. RantWoman arrived thanks to her previous knowledge of Tacoma and a small quota of guesswork.
Since Thwack the Badly Behaved White Cane was on the job, at least at the beginning, RantWoman connected first with very helpful janitorial staff and then a very helpful representative of the conference to help with RantWoman-specific needs. RantWoman figured out the general lay of the land without too much difficulty but was quite grateful for help finding a place to sit in the crowded lunch and plenary area.
Next take The Lingo. There is a whole cottage industry devoted to implanting a specific set of disaster biz jargon into people's heads. The implantation of terminology comes with all manner of levels and codes and colors. This arcana comes with certifications and academic study and for all RantWoman knows secret rituals in large chambers with the lights out, only a few token non-flammable light sticks, and no experienced blind person to offer suggestions about getting around. (RantWoman does not count herself as an expert in the latter. Everything she knows about getting around under poor visual conditions she learned from sharing a bedroom with Little Sister, and RantWoman on the whole considers herself very lucky to have the level of vision and sense of space she does have even if she does sometimes bump into people when Thwack is not being a proper chaperone.)
RantWoman went to one session which was intended as a cheap easy, around-the-table conversation exercise to force disaster responders to make fast decisions about priorities during very challenging circumstances. The audience of 70+ people got divided into 4 groups to practice the exercise. RantWoman noticed that about a third of the people in her group immediately broke out their special disaster lingo without bothering even to try to clue those around them in and had to spend a whole increment of time deciding how the disaster lingo applied to the scenario described.
RantWoman on the other hand found herself chatting with another teammate about how either we would either already be so well-prepared that all imaginable emergencies within our span of control were well-handled or that we would at least know how to organize ourselves to just start dealing with the elements of the scenario even if we were for whatever reason not communicating with other people it might be entirely logical to need to communicate with. After all, communications difficulties, technical and otherwise as well as the imperative to act regardless would probably be highly topical in any event the exercise is intended to simulate.
Having dispatched the Lingo, hopefully without the conversation degenerating into debates about Code Peuce, Code Mauve, Code Cocoa Butter, and Code Chartreuse, RantWoman moved onto the Vendor area, also known as Communications and Costumes.
Communications involved both several kinds of information provision, since they were government agencies via presumably accessible websites, and the kinds of technology packages that, RantWoman supposes, get parachuted in or plugged in when a disaster has knocked out the usual modes of communications. There were 3 or 4 such vendors and RantWoman collected business cards but did not quiz in detail at first. At first, RantWoman just had to steel herself about the sight of all the inaccessible devices she observed getting plugged into these systems and remind herself that as far as she knows all the more accessible mobile devices she might like to acquire speak the same geekery enough to be connected as well. Later after mention in one session of video relay interpreting RantWoman realized that support for interpreting would be a totally obvious thing to quiz the communications hardware vendors about. After one fun conversation in this vein, RantWoman realized that there could be a lot more conversations to be had and she is considering how to get those moving.
Disasters of course are all about drama, and what good is drama without costumes. There were a couple of vendors who seemed to specialize in different flavors of vests for identifying people in key roles. RantWoman lost interest in the vests quickly after she learned that the level of reflective material tended not to be ANSI-compliant for road service or easy visual detectibility under limited light conditions and hence not useful for ordinary pedestrian safety needs. See RantWoman does not see a lot of point in sinking money into things that are mostly going to sit around in closets or warehouses. Build response plans that can use what you have on hand. If you think you need to distinguish people in different roles, use baseball caps, bandanas, or the all-important ad-hoc armband. Oh sorry, RantWoman realizes the Vendors want to make money. Keep trying.
RantWoman is also familiar with the need to mark off a large space into smaller areas such as medical, administrative, communications or whatever, but RantWoman would probably do this on the cheap with a combination of plastic tape, baseball caps or bandanas of different colors, cheap multicolor tablecloths from the party store or maybe if one is feeling especially flush colored tarps.
Finally, we come to the evaluation which like everything else is administered by computer. Perhaps the most amusing point here was the form's insistence that RantWoman fill out an evaluation for her own panel. Oh hell, if you insist, of course we were brilliant and should be invited back! We will not discuss nearly strangling one panelist with the mic cord, tripping over our Powerpoint, and a couple near-tantrum moments for RantWoman at the beginning when the flash drive with the presentation on it in the pouch with one of her magnifiers decided to burrow all the way down to the bottom of a bag.
Please, please, now that RantWoman has filled out her evaluation, how soon can we get real data, not just RantWoman placeholder stuff....
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