by Linda Olmstead
Sometime we leave our assigned trenches and go out in the world. [grin] There are dispatchers who use up their leave credits as soon as they earn them (and as soon as their Center will allow them to take the time off) and there are those who carefully husband their leave credits-some of us even choose to earn compensatory time off instead of extra pay for working overtime.
I'm one of the latter. Each year I take off a full month: August, during which I attend the annual APCO International Convention & Exposition. I take the rest of the month to just do Nothing Much At All, like sprucing up the yard, taking short road trips to Here and There (generally stopping at allied agency comm centers to rub elbows with dispatch folks and see how they do things.). But then, I don't have a life. [shrugging]
A few of the dispatchers at my Comm Center like to go on cruises: short, four-day Mexican cruises with a few friends, and every couple of years, someplace pretty spectacular with several family members. At first it was just one, but her enthusiasm "infected" a couple others-and now, I think there are four who go on some sort of cruise each year.
You see, a lot of people don't want to think about-much less discuss-work-related issues when they are on their "own" time. They need the rest, relaxation and outside activities that can recharge them in their personal lives. I respect that and sort of wish I was configured the same way, but I'm not; I become recharged and excited about my own work performance when I attend APCO and NENA conferences.
The networking with other professionals in the same career field serves to remind me why we do this: answer endless phone calls from people demanding, requesting, suggesting, complaining and just plain wanting something from us. Add the also time-critical tasks of public safety radio communications to that mix, pepper it with the scrutiny of your supervisor(s) and you've got something that takes a whole lot of energy to do, day after day after day.
Own Time
A lot of folks wonder why anyone would attend a work-related seminar or conference if their agency or department didn't pay for the trip-or at least a good portion of it, like the conference fees, if not the lodging costs-and let them attend on agency time, instead of making them use their own leave credits for the time away from work. And why not, really?
Well, what if your agency never provided any continuing education after your initial training? What if the staffing situation at your comm center was such that minimum staffing would be compromised by sending employees to outside training, or there just weren't funds to pay for dispatch-specific training? (Dontcha hate being sent to a class that doesn't have a thing to do with the job you do?)
What if you want to promote someday? What if you just hunger for more information about current technology, recent advances in Communications 'theory' issues, or you wonder what else there is "Out There" in the world that's related to your chosen career path?
Those are all good reasons to save up your money and leave credits and plan to go to an annual APCO or NENA conference on your own time and dime. (Okay, a whole lot of dimes!) What if you were connected to the Internet and made quite a few peer contacts via e-mail or on-line chatting, and you suspected you might meet some of them at one of these major gathering points for Your Own Kind? [grin]
Internet Connection
If you do have a connection to the Internet, I highly recommend subscribing to 9-1-1 and/or dispatching e-mail discussion lists or public safety communications newsgroups so you can learn about current issues of importance to us all. Some of these discussion lists are highly professional and some are merely for the ability to get connected and stay connected with other people who do what you do and have the same reactions to the same sorts of incidents you handle.
I met several such people in Minneapolis (Minn.) at the 65th Annual APCO Conference during the second week of August. I also attended several presentations that chilled me, excited me, made me laugh or made me think, sometimes within the same hour.
In addition to several classes enhancing or enlarging upon important legal or logistic issues in our profession, some highly informative courses were conducted by Communications personnel. The audiences in those presentations were composed of a great many dispatchers from all over the world; we were fascinated, educated and awed by their presentation skills and topic matter.
One or two promising classes turned out to be duds; in those instances, the presenters were usually members of this or that vendors' marketing teams. Now and then, I amused myself by counting spelling and other errors in PowerPoint slides. (I wasn't the only one guilty of that tactic-it's a handy exercise for any anal-retentive!)
Compare Notes
A small coterie of us would meet between presentations and compare notes or discuss what course would be next on our respective schedules. I'd met a couple of them previously, in person, while a few people had only been names on e-mail messages prior to this Conference.
Remember April 20th, when we were shocked by the live media feed describing the situation in Littleton, Colorado? Well, the most powerful presentation of the entire Conference was conducted by a Communications Supervisor from Jefferson County, whom I was lucky enough to "meet" on the 'Net some time previous to that horrific incident.
Cindy Cline told us how the event started, how it continued, what it was like in that Comm Center before, during and subsequent to the initial report-and lots and lots about the other, hundreds of calls they fielded, what they learned from the event, and many, many other significant challenges and gifts gleaned from the Columbine High School Tragedy. I am now proud to say I've met-and hugged-someone who's a heroine in my eyes.
You could go to a conference just to meet your heroes and heroines-and maybe even get a chance to trade war stories of the commonplace kind with 'em! (They think the same thoughts we do when field units ask those annoying, additional questions after we've dispatched 'em to their calls! "Respond and ascertain!")
I've been a member of APCO since 1986 and a member of NENA since 1997 (although I attended NENA functions for years prior to plunking down my money for the membership fee). These are the two organizations dedicated to improving The Biz, and if this is your career, you really ought to consider joining one or the other of them, if not both. You don't have to be a member to attend the conferences, but there is a slight reduction in conference fees for members, so that's another bonus.
Vendor Freebies
John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted fame, was the keynote speaker for the conference opening session. Colonel Ann Beers of the Minnesota State Police also spoke at the first luncheon meeting; she impressed me so much I was distressed to learn her speech was not recorded. (You can purchase cassette tape recordings of the seminars, either to share with folks who weren't able to attend, or to keep for your own collection.)
And there are freebies to collect from the various vendor booths, too! Need a refrigerator magnet with the words "CALL 9-1-1" from 9-1-1 Magazine? Every registered attendee got a nice carrying bag in which to carry loot gathered during the vendor exhibition. (There was a deck of cards inside almost every one of them; danged if I had time to play any hands of solitaire, though!)
I picked up a couple of "9-1-1 Professional" license plate frames to use as little incentives at my Comm Center during National Public Safety Telecommunicator Week (which is the second full week of April, every year, in case your agency needs to pen that into their activities calendar). How about some foam squeezable figures for stress reduction and/or wrist & hand exercises?
And doesn't everybody need a blue, triangular slinky sort of toy with some company's name on it? If you tag along with others who know "these things" you could go to a vendor party in the evenings for some free food, drinks and get a snazzy clock-calendar desk widget.
But you know what was best? The camaraderie of hangin' with my friends from Comm Centers in other states-and even other countries! (Australian dispatchers are my current favorite folks to listen to, but Minnesotans are a close second.) [grin]
I met (and will now hear their voices as I read their e-mail messages) dispatchers I already felt I knew: from Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York, just to name a specific few, and got to renew acquaintances with other folks I knew from my own state, but whom I seldom get a chance to see. I felt as if I wasn't alone, as I sometimes do, down in my "trench" at work.
More than one of the attendees mentioned his or her renewed sense of Why We Do This Thankless Job-it's for the public, and we're proud of our profession, our skills and what we've accomplished. Maybe it's not who we are, when we're inside or outside our trenches, but these experiences help us define what role we play down there, behind the scenes.
Happy to be here, proud to serve.
Linda
September 1999
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