Bringing Sexy Back...To Readiness. Our rundown of The National Disaster Emergency Expo at The Javits Center

The National Disaster Emergency Management Expo (NDEM) was an interesting beast. It was the first official trade show for The Readiness Collective and any Tactivate project. Witt Reece and his entire team did a phenomenal job bringing some incredibly interesting folks together from the Security and Emergency Management realm. We had one heck of an adventure even getting to the expo with our WWII Land Rover and setting up our podcast studio on site. Thank you to our partners at Fairfield Land Rover for outfitting us with our mobile podcast studio.??

Our entire ethos behind The Readiness Collective is that "Readiness is a team sport" and that there is no competition in the realm of working to create community capacity because the need and opportunity is so staggering. We believe it will take a “collective” effort to work to reimagine societies relationship with proactive readiness - so we were thrilled to get to reconnect with old friends and to meet and make new ones who are all working to challenge the status quo.

One of the greatest opportunities and challenges in the realm of “preparedness” and emergency management is getting society to think about readiness differently. The current paradigm is very much reactionary and recovery in nature in that the entire emergency response ecosystem and resource infrastructure is predicated on reactive measures. This reality is fragile, taxed and not “resilient in nature.” If we want to build true resilience in society we must cultivate proactive readiness at the local level and that starts with the individual and small local businesses. It may be a hard reality for some to fathom but to facilitate systemic readiness we must take self responsibility and cultivate the capacity and capability to be of service to ourselves, our families and our communities in uncommon times if we want to decrease our fragility. To accomplish this readiness needs a major rebrand and reimagining around how folks interact with it. The common approaches are typically more tactical or fear based in nature. That must change if we are going to make readiness a community practice. We have to broaden the aperture and make readiness skills, the mindset and tools more approachable and accessible.??

Our first responders, emergency managers and the entire professional response community including the organizations that support them and help to fill in the gaps are world class and critical. However, given the nature of the day and the increasing frequency and severity of events our current approach is inadequate and must be augmented. Contrary to public opinion we feel the onus is on the everyday individual, community member and local business vs solely the government.??????

Here are some of the highlights of the? folks and organizations we ran into at NDEM that are working to rethink how society interacts with and perceives readiness. While the whole show was great we thought these individuals and efforts? were amazing and we look forward to collaborating with them in the near term.??

Rooftop Liferaft Systems:

Those who buck the trend are often misunderstood. Admittedly at first blush I thought what these guys were up to seemed a little silly. After speaking with them in a quick podcast we hosted and hanging out with them at the show, what they were up to became clear and sort of blew our minds from the scope of the challenge they were taking on. Automatically deployable rooftop life-rafts may seem silly - unless anyone has been watching the news lately and has seen what has been happening in Vancouver and in Washington State. From who they have partnered with to develop their solution (Zodiac) which are best in class life raft builders to their philosophical approach - we loved these guys because they are the underdogs. While the vast majority of the preparedness industry, insurance products etc. are focussed on diverting water, installing pumps, creating high tech sandbag systems etc. these guys are venturing into uncharted territory in simply focusing on saving the lives of those impacted by flooding. Surprisingly there are not a lot of businesses or individuals innovating at the last mile around the end user. We love these guys because their product saves lives and they are challenging the status quo.???

Heather Beal:

Founder of Train 4 Safety Press and Blocks USA.org Heather has multiple masters, is a linguist and is a former Naval Officer….Heather for President. She pens children's cartoon books to better prepare our youth in emergency management and to impart critical leadership skills. Bar none one of the most impressive humans we have met in a long time she blew us away with what she has accomplished and her unique approach re-thinking how we train and prepare our next generation of up and coming leaders. Start’em young.???

Instinct Ready:

These guys are AWESOME. We got to spend some time with Jason Perez and Wesley Long of the Instinct Ready team. Like us they are far more focussed on education versus selling gear, but they do have some great kits they have put together. Instead of arbitrarily throwing in a protein bar into a “go bag” they have drilled down into the science and have built their kits around needs as experienced in their profession as emergency responders and as dictated by cold hard facts. What is exciting about this crew is their demeanor, approachable manner and diehard dedication to education over gear sales. We are going to gun to get these guys into the club for some training in the near term. Arguably Instinct Ready is in a very similar line of business than we are but instead of competition we view them as force multipliers. What's better, Wesley is local to where The Readiness Collective training club is. Stay tuned.???

Merits Credentialing:

AMAZING on all fronts. The energy and passion of this crew on the expo floor was refreshing to say the least. Founded by professional skydivers and scuba divers these guys have created an electronic credential tracking platform that is second to none. For any of us with numerous certifications or that operate in less than conventional environments, having the capability to verify individuals and their credentials when traditional means maynot be an option is incredibly important. We are really excited to explore utilizing this platform to track our certifications in the club as our community members progress through our Readiness curriculum.???

United Claim Specialists:

We don't typically get excited about anything insurance related but when we met and had a chance to hang with Sim Fern - that changed. This guy and their outfit goes to work for the end user so when the large insurers try everything they can to reduce what they payout in flood and other damage claims the insured now has more of a fighting chance. They prefer to work with folks proactively to educate them on flood policies (which are NOT nearly as simple as they appear) rather than retroactively to help serve as a claim steward to shift the odds to the insured's side. Why we loved them: They are going against the grain and working to really educate folks about smart coverage and how to package themselves most effectively to secure the coverage and claim payments they deserve. Business continuity is a big deal in helping to restore equilibrium and in the aftermath of a large-scale disaster not getting the coverage you thought you had and trying to take on the big insurance providers is a hassle equivalent to WWIII. For this reason we were stoked to meet these guys and think what they do is simply rad.??????

FRSix & Jedburgh Podcast:

Francis Racioppi recently popped onto our radar thanks to our Podcast Partners Factory Underground. Francis is living proof behind why we launched Tactivate in 2013, an effort to more effectively mesh the SOF veteran, entrepreneurial and disaster response communities. From his time in Special Forces to his tenure as a proven entrepreneur he and his team are doing incredible work shedding light on leadership tactics at the intersection of the military and entrepreneurial communities. The combination of their start-up security and disaster management skills and perspective are unique and we look forward to developing collaborative efforts with them.????

J.B Cuertas:

JB is an enigma. He is a rare and invaluable asset to the emergency management community. He is a conventional subject matter expert that works on the inside within exciting systems but is unique in that he understands, values and goes out of his way to leverage informal capacity and unconventional resources in critical times. That aspect may seem trivial but he represents a unique key and pathway for how formal and informal resource ecosystems can effectively collaborate in emergencies. In addition to his previous work heading FEMA Region II, he is a professor of Emergency Management related topics at Georgetown and currently serves as the Director of reliability and Security at The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. This dude is just a gem and should have a Harvard Case Study done on him and how he works.???

Clash of the Titans:

Tod De Voe of Emergency Management Weekly hosted a great fireside chat with two Prior FEMA Administrators, Peter Gaynor and Criag Fugate. Hearing the vastly different perspectives of the previous Administrators was both entertaining and illuminating.?

The Readiness Lab:

John Scardena of The Doberman Emergency Management Group has done a killer job of creating a podcast network of some of the best in the realm of Emergency Management. It was great to put a face with this entrepreneur stirring things up in the space. These guys are doing great work and could someday be partners in crime for a Readiness Collective West Coast.??

Overland Experts:

We all spend a lot of time behind the wheel, but few of us ever truly learn how to drive. Overland Experts are some of the best in the industry and focus their training on government, DoD and humanitarian clients. They simply help those heading into harm's way to be helpful to get there and get out safely. We think driving is an incredibly important skill and has many positive impacts from increasing situational awareness to making individuals holistically more capable.

We are excited to work with these guys as our driving training partners. It was great to spend the day with Erik Eisensmith at the expo.?

We look forward to concocting creative partnerships with all of these folks as we continue to build out The Readiness Collective. Its going to take unconventional collaborations, transparency and re-thought out business models to work to implement readiness as a daily discipline and practice. The folks on this list are doing the good work.