July 2010 Blog Archives

Welcome Donnchadh



Donnchadh officially joins the company today as a permanent member of Decisions For Heroes. Our regular followers will be familiar with his voice on the phone as he has been instrumental in helping with the on-boarding of new Voluntary Search & Rescue teams over the last year. You better watch out, we're now letting him loose on the National and State teams!

Donnchadh (Not of the Irish dialect? Don't worry about trying to say his name right, it's pronounced 'Dun-aka') joins us having held a full time position at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) Head Quarters in Ireland. He previously worked managing training schools and as an instructor in many outdoor training centres. Donnchadh is a volunteer boat helm and cliff rescue climbing instructor with the Irish Coast Guard and has provided certified training to their crew and helms.

You've never met a bigger 'rescue geek'. We challenge you to give him 10 minutes with a photo of any rescue boat, vehicle, aircraft, or team - and he'll come back to you with make, model, base, pros, and cons. Dare you! His email is donnchadh.maccobb@decisionsforheroes.com (save in your address book - might be useful later!).

I speak for everyone and all our teams when I say we're delighted to have him on-board!

Emergency Contacts, Pager Numbers, Phone Formats



Members may now optionally list up to 2 emergency contacts on their profile. These numbers may be used to contact family or next of kin in an accident involving the member. A PDF phone list of emergency contacts is available for printing by Member+ and above. Emergency contact details are hidden from all other members levels.



Contact details have also been updated to allow fields for pager phone numbers and pager email addresses so they can be kept with all other member contact details.

Phone numbers in United States with the format 1XXXXXXXXXX will now be automatically displayed as (XXX) XXX-XXXX.

Thanks to the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Unit in California for advising on these changes.

Live Video from Dot Conf



Today Donnchadh and Robin will be speaking about D4H and Passion For Your Ideas at the Dot Conf in The National College of Ireland.

You can follow them on Twitter @robinb and @dmaccobb and watch the live video stream of the talk.

They're on stage at 4pm Local Time in Ireland.

Click here for Live Video Stream

The Awesomeness Methodology



Decisions For Heroes presented "The Awesomeness Methodology" to an audience of 350 at the Dot Conf at the National College of Ireland yesterday. The talk was about idea generation, working on something you're passionate about, and a demo of 'Decisions For Heroes'.

We've since been asked to repeat the talk for a number of groups.



The response on Twitter was incredible. Here's a sample!

mbehan: Loving the presentation by decisions for heroes. Too many ppl shy away from awesomeness #dotconf

@Dan_ONeill: Those who left #dotconf early. I reckon missed close to best talk of day = decisions4heroes.

AnnieCorriveau: @robinb I loved your talk at #dotconf - the notebook definitely is key! ;)

BrianGreene: #dotconf top talks (for me) inspriational heading. @marklittlenews@destraynor @robinb

level5design: Also inspiring talk by Robin Blandford @robinb from 'Decisions for Heros' at #dotconf - create thick value

kevindevine: well done everyone involved at #dotconf. Inspiring talk from @robinbat the end

JoergSt: Very good inspiring talk by Robin Blandford @robinb at #dotconf

ManAboutCouch: Superb stuff from @robinb. Audience engrossed and now enthused. #dotconf

Rowan_Manahan: Hugely enjoying @robinb's presentation at #dotconf - saw him do his stuff at TEDx Smurfit and he's getting better with each iteration

darraghdoyle: Laughed out loud at @robinb's presentation at #dotconf - his first piece of advice "buy a really expensive notebook - you'll value it."

coryannj: Had to leave #dotconf early, but tuning into the livestream for @robinb's talk - should be good!

Penhire: Though I like & admire @robinb a whole bunch, uncomfortable with some of the way he sees the world (of enterprise). Need to examine why!

JoanMulvihill: #dotconf great speakers and so perfect to finish on DecisionsForHeroes
JoergSt: Very good inspiring talk by Robin Blandford @robinb at #dotconf

carmelg88: Huge congratulations to @robinb and @dmaccobb for executing an engaging and enlightening presentation yesterday. *Claps

liamdunne: #dotconf Great motivational talk by the decisionsforheroes guys!

Dan_ONeill: Loving this. How web technology helps in the real world. #dotconf really interesting idea. And great idea process too.

mbehan: Loving the presentation by decisions for heroes. Too many ppl shy away from awesomeness #dotconf

niamhsmith: #dotconf the guys from Decisions For Heroes are up next

dermdaly: @dmaccobb yesterdays talk was great. D4h always impress.

D4H Provides Optimized Rescue Data for €500 million helicopter bid.



On Thursday, Decisions For Heroes attended the €500 million CHC Helicopters contract signing for the new generation of Sikorsky S92A Search & Rescue helicopters for the Irish Coast Guard. Today we can reveal that Decisions For Heroes played an important role in the bid by supporting CHC's requirements for mission based analytics software. CHC, the largest commercial helicopter company in the world and winners of the contract used the D4H to analyse SAR missions, capturing key patterns and trends.



Managing Director of CHC Ireland, Mark Kelly says,

"The Decisions For Heroes software allowed my team to analysis rescue mission data very quickly, easily and in great detail. The software was amazingly flexible, D4H are to be commended".


Director of Decisions For Heroes, Robin Blandford explains how their software works,

"CHC were able to automatically analyse SAR mission data to determine the most common injuries treated and medical techniques used".


Click Here to read the full Press Release

About Decisions For Heroes:
Better decisions save lives. Decisions For Heroes helps emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. Decisions for Heroes is a collaborative emergency response team management tool, that helps record and analyse rescue operations. Instead of archiving information as paperwork, the software generate real-time profiles of members, available resources, and experience levels. Decisions for Heroes uses this data to deliver live and intelligent information to the field.

Get your organisation started instantly for free www.decisionsforheroes.com

Live Chat Support For all Users



Today we're launching Live Chat support (thanks to Snapabug) for all our users. It's important for us to be as close and available to you all as much as possible.

On every page in D4H you will find a [Help] button on the right. This will open a dialog for you to contact us. You will always have the option to send a question to us by email. We respond to these as fast as possible.



You will also be able to press [Live Chat]. This will connect you to someone in the office who is able to answer your query in Real-Time. If there is nobody available to answer immediately, we will get your query by email as usual.



Q: How is this different from your "Improve-It" area?

A: Improve-It is for submitting feature enhancements and requests. This is for support queries, or questions, help, or 'just a chat'.



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