Anaheim CERT Plays a Social Game

Post by: Kim Stephens

Mary Jo Flynn, the Assistant Director of the Emergency Management Division in Anaheim California, consistently surprises me with her creative use of social media and new technologies to engage CERT members. For instance, just a couple of months ago she Tweeted about how she integrated the use of QR codes into a CERT exercise.

Conduct a CERT exercise using QR codes posted around a facility. Dubbed a "choose your own adventur http://t.co/9C0ztRCd

— Anaheim CERT (@AnaheimCERT) May 9, 2012

Ms Flynn promoted the idea on her “CERT Exercise Idea” Pinterest page and indicated that the QR code exercise was played by adding images, descriptions and/or video to the links in a type of scavenger hunt where each decision got volunteers to the next QR Code Station. What a great way to add a layer of interest!

Social Media Exercise

This month she is taking the concept of adding game-type elements into training to a new level. Intuitively we all know that the best way to learn something is by actually doing it. For this exercise, the learning objectives Ms Flynn would like to accomplish are for CERT members to not only understand social media but also to increase their competency in the use of the tools. In order for team members to learn how to use social networking in a real-world, face-paced environment she has created a game of sorts for them to participate in during the California State CERT conference. The game/exercise requires participants to use social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instragram, and points will be awarded based on activity level, measured by their use of live-Tweeting, Facebook posting, Retweeting, and getting ReTweed, for example. Additionally, a team element has been incorporated–which is important, people tend to participate more if they feel they are a part of a group. She  created this video (embedded below) in order to prepare CERT members to participate as soon as they arrive at the conference.

I asked Ms Flynn for more information about the “how and why” of the exercise and she provided me the written answers below. I wanted to post her responses in full so that others could emulate this great example.

Nature of the exercise:

This is a dynamic exercise in which conference participants will utilize social media to generate live social web data.  Their entries simulate making contact with family members or posting pictures as neighborhood situation status updates.  A second part of the exercise includes the identification and analysis of the web data simulating a virtual EOC environment. While the exercise may seem like nothing more than a scavenger hunt or silly networking game, it is an intricately layered opportunity to build team work, practice technical skills, collect and share information and be that much closer and ready to deploy for an actual event.

Why I pursued this exercise:

I’ve been looking to plan small exercises locally for my team that utilized live data but without the fear of sparking controversy or panic when using simulated data in a public forum and I believe as emergency managers we must first do no harm in social media.  I’ve not been satisfied in adding “Exercise” or “Drill” to a live tweet for fear it would be eliminated on re-tweet and lose effectiveness and potentially lose trust from my audience.

Why Now, how this came about:

I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.  My colleagues using the #smemchat have been talking about exercising using events like the Inauguration or Superbowl to practice safely with live data.  I wanted something smaller scale.  When approached by California Volunteers to speak at the conference, I inquired as to whether or not they would promote live tweeting.  Once we agreed on using live tweeting and a scavenger hunt as a mechanism to encourage networking, the rest of the exercise fell into place.  Since then I’ve just been having fun refining some of the “injects” like the video.

Why this exercise is important to me:

Lately I’ve become concerned that the Social Media Emergency Management community has only encouraged adoption of social media without providing enough detail in training, exercising and strategic planning.  I believe we will continue to face challenges from opponents [people who don’t believe social media is important] if we don’t also demonstrate the ability to train and exercise in such a manner as to build community trust.

I’m happy that we can accommodate so many pieces of the puzzle and pull together such a strong national VOST [Virtual Operations Support Team] along with local volunteers and conference attendees to hopefully see success through this exercise.

What to expect after the conference:

I’m a very big believer in capturing lessons learned and I’ll be incorporating feedback into an After Action Report and sharing with Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS).

Thank you Mary Jo! If you have any questions for her, she is on Twitter @AnaheimCERT or @MaryJoFly.

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