Ike Pigott is scheduled to be a presenter on August 24 at our NIOA Conference in Nashville. In this interview he shares a few great success stories.

Have you planned to attend the conference? Visit the conference page for more info!

I received this document today from Joe Laud of Houston PD. I thought perhaps it would be a nice reference for all of us in the NIOA. Thanks, Joe, for sharing.

Attached is an Adobe Acrobat file (2008-12-08 NIMS Training Grid.pdf) containing a 2009 NIMS Training Grid listing all of the NIMS required and recommended training courses for various Emergency Response and Incident Management (EOC/MACS) personnel at federal, state, local, private sector, and non-government organizations. Please forward to appropriate personnel within your organization.

FEMA’s Emergency Mangement Institute has created new “a” or “b” versions of its IS-100, 200, 700, and 800 training courses that are now available free online. If you have already completed the older versions of these courses, you do NOT need to re-take the new versions; NIMS certification is good for five (5) years. However, new students should take the latest available version of each course.

NIMS Training Grid

At the 2008 NIOA conference in Reno we introduced a “Best Practices” session.  This was a well received addition to the conference.  We would like to carry it on to Nashville in August 2009.

In these best practice sessions we will highlight four case studies from our members that feature unique and successful ways NIOA members dealt with a particular issue that is relevant for first-responder PIOs.  Each case study is 45 minutes in length, with a short Q&A.

If you would like to be considered as a presenter, please send a one-page (maximum) synopsis of your case scenario to me at rpalmer@washingtontwp.org by March 6.  The Board will choose a cross-section of cases and four people will be asked to present at Nashville.

Please use the following headings in your synopsis:

Organization name & presenter:

Incident type & date:

Type of organization:

Synopsis/overview of case/event/incident:

Challenges/Issues:

Solution/How you dealt with it:

Outcomes & Results:

Lessons Learned:

It is always a great opportunity to learn from one’s colleagues. On behalf of the entire board, I look forward to your submissions!

I’m glad to present to you the updated NIOA web site.

With this new site, the board members can provide more up-to-date association specific information.  We can also provide you with information pertaining to activities by members, PIO news that may be of interest, or examples of PIOs doing great work!

Look for continued enhancements to this site.  We hope to add even more over the course of the year.  New options for sharing information are made available every day!  We’ll look at those that might be beneficial to the organization and we might explore some that are just evolving.

For those of you that are subscribers to news feeds from web sites, you should find the RSS options on this site a welcome addition.  You can subscribe using your favorite reader (such as Google Reader, FeedDemon, NetVibes, FeedReader and others).  You can even subscribe to feeds within your browser window (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Flock, etc.). There is a tutorial under the FAQ header for anyone that might like to explore this benefit.  Any news that is “quick” and time specific will be posted on the blog.  When you are a subscriber to the content you will receive it immediately in your reader of choice.

You can use these same readers to subscribe to content from many of the sites you may visit regularly.  Imagine how much more efficient you will be when you only have to visit one place!

Of course, the NIOA blog will offer the option for comments to the various posts. We plan to moderate these, of course, but it should offer us the opportunity to engage in conversation about current topics, news, interests, and activities.

Watch for more updates soon!  Thanks for a being a member of the NIOA.