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To sign-up for the Disaster Resource GUIDE, go to: Creative Outreach to Improve Readiness—Using Internet Radio We recently caught up with Rick Tobin, the President of TAO Emergency Management Consulting, to ask him a few questions about his newest venture: an internet radio show he hosts for an hour at noon Pacific Time, each week, called the Road to Ready. The show has been broadcast for several months now on VoiceAmerica. It has created considerable interest from the public and also from emergency management professionals in both government and the private sector. We were curious why he started such a venture while also continuing an active career in consulting. DRG: Rick, what led you to start the Road to Ready? Isn’t there already enough information available on the Web regarding emergencies and disasters? Rick: The basic reason for starting the Road to Ready is outreach. Outreach is a very tough task, and is one which every emergency manager has a responsibility to perform. Often it is a shotgun approach—print huge numbers of materials and hand them out at booths or pack a website with documents and links, and then hope the contents reach someone. I’m approaching it differently. Although I am busy with my own consulting work for my clients, I also believe there can never be too many voices carrying the banner for preparedness. I’ve done radio before. I know the business. It just made sense. You are also right about the tremendous volumes of information on the Internet. I was an early adopter of the Internet. In fact, my son Ryan and I wrote a cutting-edge book in 1997 called Emergency Planning on the Internet. At that time the book had the same purpose as the Road to Ready: break a large topic into small pieces and let the users decide what they want. By the way, access to the live shows and past show archives and materials are available at: www.ricktobin.com/roadtoready DRG: What about other radio shows on the Internet and other talk shows? Aren’t there already too many of them? Rick: Actually, I did my homework very carefully before starting on this path—or Road to Ready, if you like. There are some programs online that address emergency planning, and some even have some stock video, but they are not targeting the extended reach I am on the Road to Ready. My show covers topics that will interest the general public, professional emergency managers, government officials, and private sector operations. It is amazing to me the numbers of people and the variety of listeners who are coming to download past shows and materials from the Road to Ready—especially the foreign market, which now makes up at least 12% of my listeners. I’ve had response from the general public, my emergency management colleagues, non-profits, large industrial interests and surprising amounts of military facilities. No, the show is unique at this time and will grow and change quite a bit in the next year. My take has always been that it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. But have no doubt, outreach is tough. It takes time and lots of creativity. DRG: Yes, outreach is very difficult. The Disaster Resource GUIDE, and its affiliated partners, work hard on this constantly trying to reinvent the path to reach an audience that is often overwhelmed with data each day from so many sources. How is your approach meant to improve this challenge? Rick: On the Road to Ready I focus each week on a topic that allows for a closer look at listener’s concern. I attempt to be topical and ahead of what is coming next. I provide a short guide for each discussion that allows the listener to take some proactive steps to limit their liability to a threat. The “First Ten Plays” are intended to give the audience a way to organize their actions—and most of all, to actually take action, rather than just listen. I also personalize the shows with my own Lessons Learned section. Very soon the Road to Ready will go live. Listeners can then interact with the guests and the host. Direct contact is always more dynamic than simply providing instructions on paper. That’s where I believe outreach needs to go—interactive collaboration with and between the interested stakeholders. That is a piece that is missing in much of the current outreach. Chat and typed forums are interesting, as are canned video programs, but people want to hear the immediacy of the human voice as it reacts live in a conversation. As one of my wise colleagues, Ted Buffington, always says, “Everything starts and ends with a conversation.” DRG: How do you avoid repeating the same things everyone else is saying, and won’t you eventually run out of topics to address? Rick: The Road to Ready is just that, a path. It doesn’t have an end point. All of us can do a little more each day to improve our current readiness. I’ve been involved in this field for over thirty-one years, even long before that in my teens in North Dakota as a civil defense shelter leader, and yet I learn something new every single day about emergency readiness. No, there are more topics than I’ll ever be able to cover, and certainly not enough time to cover them in great depth in one hour. While I pick out great ideas from here and there I always add my own spin to my coverage based on my own scar tissue from having lived through more crises than I care to admit. I want people to settle safely into the 21st Century. I attempt to act as their scout or wagon master on the trail. There is a saying used in my business that, “The pioneers got the arrows. The settlers got the land.” There are thousands of emergency managers working hard everyday to ensure that the public lands safely in disasters, without the arrows. DRG: So how does this radio show assist the different audiences, especially emergency managers? Rick: The public needs some hand holding, but they aren’t stupid. Just because someone isn’t prepared as well as we would like doesn’t mean they don’t care. The average person is focused on the immediate—the job, the mortgage, the bank loan to buy the next tank of gas. The Road to Ready is meant to coax and awaken, not frighten. I’ve seen the fright tactic used nationally for years. I simply won’t support that on the Road to Ready. As for emergency managers, they are always looking for a new spin or a new tool. I expect that the Internet hot-link references and superb guests on the Road to Ready provide some new insights and save them time from sifting through the piles of new materials received in their offices each day. I also want to support the splendid work of IAEM and DRI to elevate this profession. Twenty years ago I had to explain to friends and relatives what I did for a living and why I was forming my consulting business. Since the Northridge Earthquake, 9/11, and Katrina no one asks me that anymore—they just want to know how to get into the business. My secret desire is that the Road to Ready will truly assist a critical target audience: the young professionals coming into this field. I want the fresh faces to this profession to know how important their work is and the career they’ve chosen. Anything I can bring to the table to aid the new kids on the block will be my most lasting legacy. Rick Tobin is the President/CEO of TAO Emergency Management Consulting, Spring Branch, Texas. Information about the Road to Ready radio show, including direct access to live or pre-recorded programs can be found at: www.ricktobin.com/roadtoready/  |