This goes out to all those AREDN salesmen out there. The dreamers on the front line.
I know there has been times where you get that one chance and your talking to the city or county emergency manager and you have 3 to 5 minuets of his time and he has no clue what this tool is.
What do you do? What's your elevator pitch?
I have done this now a few times some painful and some successful. What is the way you can break down AREDN in a few words or a few sentences that hits home? This is something that all of us do, some better than others but most importantly how can we do it better?
What say you..
I know there has been times where you get that one chance and your talking to the city or county emergency manager and you have 3 to 5 minuets of his time and he has no clue what this tool is.
What do you do? What's your elevator pitch?
I have done this now a few times some painful and some successful. What is the way you can break down AREDN in a few words or a few sentences that hits home? This is something that all of us do, some better than others but most importantly how can we do it better?
What say you..
[Warning - longish post]
As we were expanding our network several years ago from hilltop to hilltop we threw up a camera or two we had laying around, just for fun.
In December of 2018, the Thomas Fire broke out in Ventura County, California (about 60 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles).
As "luck" would have it, one of our bullet cameras happened to be pointing at the point of origin. We were able to stream the video from this mesh network camera to YouTube for a couple hours. During that time, we spread the word across social media, and many non-hams in the area were able to view it. That fire proceeded west across the county and ravaged a good part of the town of Ventura.
Subsequent to this, the Ventura County Fire Department requested the URL of the YouTube video. I passed it along and we subsequently learned that it was the first video extant of the fire, and that the FD found it useful in their investigation.
The following June, in their annual proclamation of Amateur Radio Month, the county supervisors specifically mentioned this video. So not only was it helpful to the community, we amateur radio operators got some good publicity out of it (which not only eased our efforts to gain access to a few sites but also helped fundraising efforts).
Subsequent to the Thomas fire, we applied the lessons learned to the network: at a minimum battery backup at all sites, and Pan Tilt Zoom cameras deployed at new and existing sites as resources permitted.
Almost like clockwork, 12 months later the Woolsey fire broke out on the eastern border of Ventura County. We had a PTZ camera on the network that was able to track it as it proceeded west, then turned south and destroyed many homes in Thousand Oaks, and then Malibu. This video was streamed out to YouTube for a couple of days, and advertised across social media. A number of people reported back that they were getting better, more timely info from our video stream (and ham radio in general) than the traditional news media.
There are many other ways to add value to emergency communications via our ham radio network (Winlink, VOIP, etc), but for us, this wound up being the most visible feature of our network buildout efforts.
Orv W6BI
Here in Whatcom County we have a unique situation. We have nearly no natural oh human disasters. Is that a good thing, Yes. Is it good for emergency preparedness, No! The second thing is trying to get people to stop for three seconds and share with them why they need a solution to a problem they don't have. The biggest issue we have here is flood and a distant chance of an earthquake. The flooding is an easier one to chase and build upon.
All of that said. How do users who don't have a real world success story yet and I hope we don't have earthquakes or flooding, sell a tool that the general public here kows nothing about. That's where the elevator pitch comes in.
Hi my name
Who am I and why am I bugging you
We have a tool (explain it in simple words)
How it will help them!!!
Someone out there has this nailed, I know they have! I have used the format above and haven't been able to sprinkle enough sugar on it. So far it either sails over there head and they are lost or its a vacuum sale and they have hardwood floors, you get the point.
Got to figure out the pitch.......
A disaster doesn't always mean all the telephone lines are down and all the cell sites are gone. It could mean that the demand is above the capacity the system is designed to handle. Why? A fast moving or wide-spread emergency with everyone trying to reach loved ones at the same time that responders are trying to reach command posts will overload the system.
So, a well-trained team of hams can quickly install a telephone system at a Red Cross shelter, the county or municipal OEM and a local hospital, then get out of the way and let the responders communicate and do their jobs.Hams provide the communications infrastructure a person can use without training and the responders respond.
Everything you have shared is spot on! I just need to compress it to a couple of sentences to get it through the door in that initial conversation. I guess I will go back to the drawing board and see what I can come up with.
If we had a disaster to operate off of I could sell this in a minute. In the meantime I'm going to have to get really creative.
73,
kf7vol