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:
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…
And with your help, we looked at how we can improve it digitally!
You end up with a place to post messages to all your members!
Make sure to continue to leave feedback.
SMS is live! But not enabled in your accounts yet. We’re currently testing with a selection of Irish teams.
Exciting Times!
-Robin.
Jemima Kiss from the Guardian interviewed us on the final day of Seedcamp. You should read the entire article on the Guardian site. Below is an excerpt about D4H…
Decisions for Heroes wasn’t selected for funding at the end of the week, but ByteSurgery founder Robin Blandford made it clear that the project is not dependent on that funding to go ahead. It’s a unique idea and one that polarised the Seedcamp crowd, said Blandford. “We save lives. We run a rescue team management application that helps rescue teams reduce their response times and help them make better decisions while they are on a rescue,” he explained.
The mountain rescue, coastguard and lifeboat teas around the british Isles organise their rescues through an ad hoc system of texts and phone calls. Decisions for Heroes coordinates that, so that if both the doctors on call register that they are offline for the next six hours, a warning message will be sent to the team leader. “We’ve gained a huge amount of confidence from meeting these guys,” said Blandford - himself a volunteer for the Irish Coast Guard. “We had an hour with Marten Mickos of MySQL and Andy McLoughlin from Huddle - to have people that senior say that they love your idea is a huge confidence builder.”
“The application has the element that the end user could be a charity or a publicly funded body, and that has polarised a lot of people about how big the potential market is. Some people saw the ision as much bigger, like Umair Haque - he said we should work with the Red Cross over in Asia so they can bring tranparency to disaster relief.”
It was noticeable that there didn’t seem to be anyone from UK Trade & Investment at the Seedcamp wrap-up session. Blandford said that if this had been in Ireland, he would have expected to see the equivalent people there. And he has a meeting today with Dublin’s Hothouse programme, which could offer Decisions office space, salary subsidies and more funding.
“I think there were some teams at Seedcamp who were reliant on winning to get funding, especially the ones that are a consumer play who needed who needed the promotion. But we’ve got revenue starting to come in the next six to eight weeks - we’re hoping to convert 30% of our trail users to pay accounts.’
Is Robin back in the office today? He’s on call. He might even be dangling down a cliff face on rope right now.
We’re at Seedcamp in London this week as one of the top 23 European Start-ups.
We’re blogging the event live here on Twitter and with full commentary and video on our development/company blog.
-Robin.
DUBLIN, IRELAND - I’m writing this post in advance and have it scheduled to post on Monday morning. If everything has gone to plan, I can tell you that D4H flew out last night to London, and David and I should be sitting in University College London’s new engineering building listening to Jyri Engestrom and Michael Birch speaking on a founder panel.
We’ve not been able to announce it until everything was confirmed, but considering the event has already started I can now tell you Decisions For Heroes was made a Seedcamp Finalist and listed as one of 23 top European start-up companies for 2008.
Once a year we will bring together Europe’s top young founders and a world class network of mentors in one place. We will provide access to seed funding, but more importantly we will expose these teams to the collective experience of people who can help inspire the next generation of Europe’s future serial entrepreneurs.
Brilliant.
(sorry it took so long to announce)
-Robin.
(Image Credit: D4H in London for Seedcamp interviews)
We’ve been tweaking the privacy levels on personal profiles and are glad today to press ‘deploy’ on our latest release v213. By visiting your own profile you can now choose how people see your details. While team administrators - member+, editors & the account owner, can always see your details, you can choose what the rest of the team see.
Once on your profile, click [Edit Profile]…
You can now select ‘Share with…’ [Private] or [Team] on each detail. The choice is yours…
Whichever items you’ve selected to share we’ll display on your profile - cool huh!
Of course, we’ll also let your admins know by email if you’ve updated any contact numbers. This will save you telling them at the next training session.
We’ve also made it very easy to see what only you and your administrators can see about you…
…and we’ve taken the numbers off the charts that everyone can see on your profile - so now it just shows stats relative to you, rather than putting any quantitative value on it.
Enjoy!
It’s now much easier to see how many members in each group are available. On the left, is the number available right now - this box turns red if the group fall below their required level. The chart on the right gives percentage availability. In the example above you can see only 50% of the key holders are available.
Within qualifications you can see who has valid qualifications. In the example below David is available (green left tick) while his qualification has expired. Meanwhile Robin is unavailable (red cross on left) but has a valid qualification. Neither is available for response.
