Working Together
While we give pause and thank the Men and Women who have given everything as part of the United State Armed Forces, we can step back and admire the most substantial and capable fighting force the world has ever known. No small part of this successful military is its ability to obtain, share, and act upon information nearly instantaeously.
Now, as we reach for our mobile devices in our bags or in our pockets, we can ponder as well the awesome connectivity afforded a substantial fraction of people on the planet today… unmatched abilities to obtain, share, and act upon various kinds of information, often with far less noble goals. Yet, with so much technology, literally at our fingertips, connected such that speaking with live video to multiple people at different points on the planet is now commonplace, are we using this tool bounty to communicate and collaborate better than ever before? Maybe not.
This Episode
Modern Collaboration via Anchor.fm
Recorded 31 May 2021, Published 31 May 2021
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Fight Crime
This is the specific incident, which is very clearly effective enough to be repeated as though a script is being followed (it seems that way):
Las Vegas couple warns public of kidnap scam after 7 hours of terror
As I (Dan) mentioned, this is precisely what happened to someone else I know, down to the use of the MoneyGram service to send the funds at the back of a nearby Walmart.
There exist various “crime mapping” tools online, which aim to visualize crime in neighborhoods and cities. Here are two such examples:
and there are others. Many, with different reporting sources (usually official police reports, often as a paid service through local government and law enforcement, sometimes unofficial accounts from people involved or nearby, perhaps unverified submissions, etc). These are location-based information sources, however.
How to better share information between normal people who might fall victim to this sort of crime? Outside of official law enforcement announcements (which are likely based on geographic locality), the casual person on the ground can attempt to reply on discovering updates via social media, which may or may not yield any results unless and until this happens to a “friend” on one of these platforms.
Giving Care
As each of us lives life, we will perhaps become responsible for one end of a home health care situation. Either someone will look after us (if we’re lucky), or we will look after someone else, either alone or with other family and perhaps friends or confidants. Let us begin someplace helpful (this is very clearly not intended to be an exhaustive link list):
Family Caregiver Toolbox via the Caregiver Action Network
Checklists, videos, helpful links… this is where the uninitiated begin the journey, taking on awesome responsibilities for another without the training and experience that our professional, paid counterparts have at their disposal in the hospitals, care centers, and billing offices with whom we shall become so much better acquainted during our on-the-ground training.
A search for Workplace Collaboration will turn up many thousands of times more results for tools and platforms and methods and entire companies built around this, than will a search for home caregiver collaboration tools, perhaps (as asserted) because workplaces have a profit motive. Either way, collaboration in the workplace, especially when it comes to health care, is where the money is, and it is where the money goes. There is a gap when it comes to normal people.
Got Crisis?
One can never be completely certain when a crisis will unfold, sometimes in our lap or in our front yard, or our neighborhood or city. As it turns out, there is a very, very small percentage of the population which volunteers to learn a little bit about to do when everything goes south.
Community Emergency Response Team via Ready.gov
CERT is one example of collaboration enabled by way of preparation, by people who take the initiative to contribute their time beforehand, and who (if all goes to plan in the presence of chaos) will apply what they learned to collaborate with their trained peers to help their fellow humans in need. Ironically, perhaps, this will likely take place without the technology we’ve all grown accustomed to. Power and Mobile Data become luxuries at inconvenient times.
The willingness and ability to contribute that time and effort beforehand is also a luxury not always available to all, which makes those who can prepare that much more valuable in a time of crisis. This, though, shines yet more light on what does NOT work.
The Gap
With some combination of tools and technologies (our mobile devices, the wireless internet by way of WiF and Cell Towers) and training and motivation, collaboration between individuals and groups, geographically or virtually near oneanother, is possible, even ad-hoc, if there is that level of preparedness to provide famliarity and a common basis of communicaton for advancing the cause.
In the case of formation of the Incident Command Center in a local crisis, your CERT volunteers are told (in fairly short order) to form a hierarchy and perform recon (in pairs or groups for safety) and establish a triage area for the injured, and so on. With this basic famliarity, if a crisis unfolds nearby there will be a small group of individuals who have at least heard the terms and seen the slide show. This is a minimal start.
Given the other examples discussed, and so many more, the lack of preparedness combined with the lack of useful infrastructure and tools to take advantage of the technology we have at our fingertips, leaves the casual individual on their own when they need not be alone.
If we agree that this is a part that does not work, what do we do about it?
To be continued…
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Episode Art
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