And other ways of enhancing your players’ voice at the table — In the last post, I compared session 0 to that of a syllabus day and how both of these forced moments of interaction are often bereft of anything truly useful. At most, I would probably add, they are useful for one reason, “Do I stay or do I go?” …

And other ways of enhancing your players’ voice at the table — I have been obsessing over how to bring players into #ttrpgs lately but it has implications larger than a roleplaying game as we’re also talking about anything and everything you have to learn in order to understand what you’re doing, wherever you are. As a teacher, I hate syllabus days…

We need a better approach than what we’ve been using. — In the past few years, i’ve been working on better defining how technology and emergency management (EM) can play well together. It is a project that feels mostly like trying to get fire to be wet or convincing the color orange to be purple. Current technology is often bloated in…

It isn’t about learning to write code or compile — One of the most pernicious issues aspects of the concept of, “Technology in Emergency Management” is that most of the products created aren’t well-conceived for the use context emergency management needs. Smashing a shiny new piece of software into every Emergency Operations Center in the country is a lot like…

And other ways one could help others find one’s position in the thick of things. — My journey into how people learn and know things has been fraught with peril, confusion, fury, and a variety of having to deal with weird decisions authors make while writing these texts. However, despite those setbacks, there are also moments of enlightenment. …

Reaching an audience that doesn’t want to be an audience in an effort to teach skills that audience doesn’t understand, want, or acknowledge. — Recently, I signed a book contract. I’ve never really wanted to write a book, nor have I wanted to deal with the logistics of it. As an academic in the sociotechnical, my folks do not tend to really write…books. But as someone struggling to really enjoy academia, I find myself…

Games Based Learning or Games Based Training, some suggestions on finding things to play that can help you think about Emergency Management — Since 2013, I have been digging around the various aspects of emergency management as a researcher. In 2019, I began to move from research into practice because it was not enough to look at how people react and communicate during disaster. I needed to understand how emergency management worked.

Or stop trying to “save” emergency management by coating it in Technology — Starting in 2013, I began to work in and around information communication technology being used during emergency response scenarios. I think my first paper was called, “Run Amok: Group Crowd Participation in Identifying the Bomb and Bomber from the Boston Marathon Bombing.” The folks I worked with did and still…

Syllabus Next! — This article outlines readings, multimedia content, and resources of interest for a course called, “Technology and Disaster.” In the previous articles attached to this project, I explore the philosophical underpinnings of why this course is necessary. Those articles can be found here: A Course on Emergency Management and Technology: Getting…