Listen to Claudia Hammond researching the psychology of team dynamics by interviewing the London Air Ambulance as they are called out to the scene of a teenage stabbing.
Prof Rhona Flin from the University of Aberdeen studies group dynamics in the emergency services. How does this team manage to make decisions quickly and effectively?
Today we deployed calendar pop-up’s site-wide. This is the most requested feature so-far, and makes a huge difference to data input. Just click the calendar button to pop-up a calendar. You can then click the month name to open the navigator, this will allow fast selecting of any month and year.
To make time entry easier, we’ve added an auto-complete clock. Once you start typing, we’ll start trying to guess what time you’re entering. You can then select from the list or keep typing yourself.
There’s no better way to understand a product than use it yourself. The entering of invalid times used to be possible - no longer!
In other news, we hit a good milestone today as we managed to send and receive the first realtime SMS messages from the application to Irish handsets.
-Robin.
(Interested in how? We are using YUI… if you wanted to try it yourself.)
This is a real killer feature you’re going to love (release v139)!
On the [Activities] -> [Incidents] , [Exercises] , [Events] pages you can now export your data as a .csv spreadsheet (available to member+ and higher) or .kml to view in 3D for Google Earth (available to all members).
Selecting [Spreadsheet] will download a .csv file to allow you to import the selected date-range into your favourite spreadsheet application…
Selecting [Google Earth] gives you a .kml file. You should open these in Google Earth (download if you don’t have it - it’s free).
Coming Soon! Exports for members, qualifications, and thanks to one of our users Robert (he’s our hero!), we’ve got maps with UK & Irish OS grid references coming very soon. These will be enabled automatically for all teams who have selected IE or GB as their country in [Configure]->[Team Talk].
D4H is entering a competition called Seedcamp, you may have seen a video pitch last week. As part of the competition, Seedcamp offered a place in the interview round for the top voted video pitch (and we had a go!). If D4H win in the finals, we receive top mentors and funding for the business.
You can now vote for the Seedcamp Video pitches.
Please vote for ‘Decisions For Heroes’, but only if you actually like it…
Cheers,
-Robin.
We’re excited to deploy the much requested ‘non-operational member’ status today (release v97). This now splits your members into 3 status levels - Operational, Non-Operational, Past (Retired).
This new status is for members who server on a committee, on probation, or unavailable for an extended period of time (just like I am in Chicago right now!). They typically would not be on-call/operational.
To move a member to non-operational, click [Update Details...] on their profile, and change their status.
Please post any additions you need to this feature in the [Improve It!] discussion forum inside.
-Robin.
CHICAGO, UNITED STATES - Avon and Somerset Police in the UK have taken a leap and published hoax 999 calls on YouTube. They claim to receive over 400 a year, blocking their phone lines for real emergencies. This effort of putting the recordings online is an attempt to show people what a complete waste of time hoax calls are.
It is great to see emergency services adopting the internet like this.
You can subscribe to their channel here, or have a listen to this selection of calls:
“There’s a squirrel with no hazelnuts”
“To complain about very sore feet, due to no buses.”
“An injured pigeon.”
Great stuff. What hoax’s have your team been tasked to?
D4H is entering the SeedCamp competition in London. As founder, I was required to do an elevator pitch to try and win a spot on the Seedcamp short-list. You can’t pre-record it (you can try as many times as you want), but it’s just you and your webcam live.
Think of it as a way to get peer-feedback and low-risk practice so that when it does matter you’ll be prepared.
The winner is based on audience voting. They haven’t got a system worked out yet, but if you involved in the web-scene, it would be great for me if you showed some love towards it in the comments on their blog. Tough love is ok too.
D4H Out.
-Robin.