We continue to be amazed (and pleased) with the response to our first-of-the-year post where we made 10 predictions for alerts and notifications for 2010. The post continues to be viewed often. So, as we approach the mid-year point, we thought we ought to check ourselves to see how we're doing. So far, pretty good...although we probably need to keep our day jobs and not become fortune tellers (or stock traders). Here's our report card:
1. "Move from proprietary, stand-alone systems to highly-integrated systems." The concept is catching on. More people embrace it. A good example is the City of Philadelphia recently winning an award for their integrated notification solution. The award was The Emergency Management Digital Distinction Award given by Center for Digital Government and Emergency Management magazine.
2. "Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) will continue to take hold." We wouldn't say CAP has taken hold yet, but certainly awareness is growing. Anticipated approval soon by FEMA of CAP version 1.2 will help, as well as first of tests conducted by the new laboratory stood up to test vendor products for compliance. (See our post, "Common Alerting Protocol Seal of Approval".)
3. "IPAWS will become more visible." If emergency management and public safety officials don't know about FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, it's not because IPAWS isn't trying. IPAWS representatives are showing up regularly at trade shows and other events to explain their vision and plans for an enhanced national alerting system.
4. "New industry leaders will begin to emerge." No real evidence to support this prediction. However, while helping a state agency build a short list of potential notification vendors, we were impressed with some of the demos we saw - including from a couple of companies we didn't know before. We'd still, however, like to see more impressive new concepts announced by industry.
5. "A highly-visible failure will occur." We're glad we haven't been right about this one...so far. Unfortunately, we're confident this prediction will come true...sooner or later.
6. "Growth in the use of social media for alerts and warnings." Since the first of the year, we've seen a number of communities announce plans to start posting emergency information on social media.
7. "Further commoditization of notifications including 'free services'". At least we figured out what makes one of the more visible of the "free services" tick. Well, perhaps we didn't figure it out. They told us. See our post, "Solving the Mystery of Nixle".
8. "More procurements for independent help." We've seen a few. For example, one capital city county we're aware of has notified a consulting company that they've been awarded a contract to analyze the county's mix of notification systems and make recommendations. (Full disclosure: our company, Galain, is a sub-contractor on the project.) Others are brewing.
9. "More patent lawsuits." We may have been wrong on this one. As far as we know, none has been filed beyond ones we reported on last year.
10. "Other large-scale systems announced." With funds so tight, few new initiatives have been announced. But, we know first-hand of several initiatives developing in large cities and states.
So, we'll give ourselves a B, maybe B-, for our mid-year report card. If we've been too kind in our self-evaluation, let us know.
By the way, this represents our 100th post for Emergency Management magazine. We're most appreciative of this opportunity. We're also pleased that this forum has helped our understanding of what's going on. In addition to making us stop and think for a few minutes here and there, we're given good feedback from the people who follow the blog. We thank you!
All the best,
Rick
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