Decisions For Heroes Blog

We’ve added an enhancement to the calendar on request of a team. When you select a start date for an activity, the end date will automatically jump to that page of the calendar! We’ve also made it impossible to select a end date ahead of the start date.

-Robin.

I’m running out the door to go to an exercise in cliff rescue, this afternoon I should have a second post up on our latest features (hint: attendance system updated!). In the meantime enjoy this great article about us in our local paper…

Thursday, 02 October 2008, Full text.

A YOUNG Northside entrepreneur has combined his talent for computer programming with his passion for the emergency rescue services to create a new potentially life saving technology.
‘Decisions for Heroes’ is a new computer management system, which Robin Blandford hopes will help emergency services save lives by allowing them to make better decisions in the field.
Howth local Robin is a cliff rescue climber as well as an experienced programmer and he now hopes to combine his talents and become a young entrepreneur.
Earlier this month Robin spent a week at Seedcamp, an event where business ideas compete for funding from venture capitalists.
The Decisions for Heroes team, consisting of Robin and his business partner David Doran, weren’t selected for funding at the end of the week, but Robin says he learned a lot and met some of the top names in the industry, leaving him more determined than ever.
“There were over 400 applications from across Europe and we were among just 23 people who made it to the final selection process,” he told Northside People.
“From this, only seven groups were able to win but we still got to meet teams of advisors as well as some of the top executives in the business.”
Robin came up with the idea for his programme while volunteering as a cliff rescue climber with the Irish Coast Guard in Howth.
He gained professional experience in digital media after leaving university, being identified early in his graduate recruitment cycle at Thomson Reuters as “one to watch” and placed on an accelerated management programme within the company.
“I realised that there were no good rescue team management applications which could analyse rescues and help decision making,” he explained.
“I decided that I would work on it and create something for my team to use, I was so happy with my work that I thought I would make a business out of it.
“The good thing about it is it’s based on practical experience of how search and rescue operations work and what they need.”
Robin’s philosophy is that things should be kept as easy to understand for the user as possible, believing user requirements to use his application should be nil.
“Nobody likes reading manuals - if we have to write one, we’ve got too complicated,” he said.
“Before this there was an awful lot of paperwork involved in rescue which could not be instantly accessed.
“Instead of archiving the information as paperwork, we act as a platform, generating real-time profiles of members, available resources, and activities.
“Decisions for Heroes uses this data to deliver live and intelligent information to devices in the field.
“It is a powerful application and I am lucky to be working with David as he is young but is one of Ireland’s best developers.”
The Decisions For Heroes application is currently being tested out by a number of groups and Robin hopes to begin charging for it in the coming months.

-Robin.

(Image Credit: Northside People)

You can now send emails to your team. Just pick the member group, qualification, availability level or individual from the drop-down menu. Type your email, we’ll do the rest to deliver it to your team.

We protect your teams email addresses - unless you have permission to see private fields (Member+, Editor, Owner) a member must first set the sharing of their email address to ’share with team’ before receiving any mail from other members.

You can opt to receive a copy of every mail you send to your own address, or use our ‘Sent Mail’ box feature which will list them all for you, linked directly into user profiles.

Benefits:

• You can now choose recipients by group e.g. send to ‘Boat Coxswains’ only, ‘VHF Holders’ only etc. This will allow the team to send more targeted mail rather than have everyone get hit with everything on a single list.
• You can revert to ‘make private’ your email address at any time to stop the emails, note that Member+, Editors, Owners can still contact you in this mode.
• You don’t have to update someone’s email in your address book when they change address. We will just send mail to their newest one automatically.

As always - please submit improvement and feedback and we’ll do our best to adapt!

Six teams asked for it, and they got it! Our new team whiteboard allows teams to leave messages for each other on the dashboard. We took the following properties of a whiteboard…

• Anybody can write on it.
• Anybody can clear messages.
• Everything is in full view of everyone.
• You can use different colour pens.

And with your help, we looked at how we can improve it digitally!

• We added a ‘valid-until’ date so notes get erased automatically on a date without you having to do it manually.
• Added permission levels so only you or someone with higher permission can only delete your own notes.
• Automatically sign and timestamp everything, so you know who wrote it and when.
• No limit of space (but we’ve limited notes to 140 characters to keep people short & sharp!).
• Added a history, so you can see everything ever written if you want. It’s not lost when cleared.
• Tell you what’s new. We highlight what’s changed since your last login.
• Allow you to colour urgent messages with a red pen!
• Decide who see’s what. Writing a message about using a vehicle? Then only display it on the dashboards of your licensed drivers.

You end up with a place to post messages to all your members!

Make sure to continue to leave feedback.