Sharing Experiences from the Front Lines of Recent Disasters

A little over a year ago, I began an adventure to share our experiences from the 2023 BC wildfires that took me across the country four times, visiting Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta, and, of course, British Columbia. Encouraged by those who heard my stories or experienced a summer filled with threats, protests and sabotage, I've now led sessions attended by thousands of professionals at conferences, webinars and guest appearances. I've also been on podcasts with provincial and global audiences, as well as interviews with media, which could reach 60 million people.

Our experience last summer was new. I've been responding to emergencies and disasters since 2003, and last summer's experience saw a prolonged spike in tension between responders and residents, a Meta news ban, and further increases in mental well-being challenges for residents and responders. The tension was volatile and constant, and I knew it would not stay in the bubble of our emergencies, as evidenced by the recent hurricane responses in the USA where militias were allegedly hunting for responders.

Thank you to the Canadian Public Relations Society, Summers Direct, CEPCA Convention and DEMCON for the opportunity to speak at their events, along with WebMD, Stories and Strategies, The Safety Moment, This is Bad News, and Storied Voices for the opportunities to reach your audiences. The past year has taken me across the country so many times that I've reached flight status for the first time in my career. The long layovers caused by post-pandemic flight schedules provided time to chat with many friends in airports.

From Carleton Place to Leeds Street and Nazko to Tremblant, watch for some fun videos from my adventures over the coming months.

Upcoming Presentations

• Building Resilient Conference, Penticton, BC - November 19
• Canadian Business Continuity and Emergency Management Conference, virtual - January 29

• Canadian Association of Municipal Communicators, webinar - February 26

Need a Guest Speaker or Presenter?

Whether it's a lunch & learn, classroom, or all-day session, we can help. Email [email protected] Here are a few presentations I offer, and I can customize presentations to meet your needs.

• Pathways to Preparedness - a case study about why residents in disaster-affected areas don't get ready for emergencies, including a look at accessibility and mental health challenges
• Theft, Sabotage and Protest - how low trust became a disaster problem, and how to build trust during a disaster
• Mental Well-being in Emergencies - how to find and protect it, or know when it's sliding
• Allopatric - a fast-paced information officer workshop built from real experiences from some of Canada's worst disasters
• Become the Broadcaster - learn how to quickly create more audio and video content and the equipment you'll need to do it
• Interviews, Speaking, Messaging and Media - how to be confident in front of any group of people

- Tim Conrad, APR, President

A new learning tool for anyone

CanadianTraining.ca

We are working on developing the learning platform and are pleased to announce the first three courses, which will launch soon. Canadian Training will host various courses to help you improve skills for home, work or hobbies.

1. Job Interviews, Speaking, Messaging and Media - How to be confident speaking in front of any group of people. This four-module program will take you through the most common settings where you must face the crowd.
2. Felt Stories with Teacher Lala - Learn how to make interactive and unique, visual felt stories for children under five. Build felt stories based on homes, songs or stories/books. Each session builds a new story.
3. Theft, Sabotage and Protest - Low trust in governments and media became a disaster problem. Learn how we found paths to build trust with residents despite extremely tense conditions during a devastating wildfire season.

Sign up for updates here.

Professional Portfolio: Waste Management Communications for Local Governments

Tim has worked in municipal waste management for a third of his career. His first was a contract with Nova Scotia's Region 6, the then-global leader in waste diversion. The province goes as far as sorting through garbage to pull out any waste which can be diverted to compost or recycling streams and has continually struggled to balance the cost of diversion with the inevitable cost of landfilling waste.

While there, Tim regularly visited bottle & waste depots, which also collected other hazardous waste such as electronics, cardboard, and household waste, and participated in strategy sessions to improve waste diversion in the region. Fundamental discoveries during my contract were that signage was inconsistent at facilities (depots, landfills, public waste cans and in advertising), they (province-wide) had assumed the introduction of new waste streams would not require ongoing communications beyond the first few years, and there was little to no public outreach to help understand issues which could be overcome.

The biggest lesson was the most incredible opportunity to move the needle for getting support for a program comes in the year the program is launched. After that, it is very difficult to get positive momentum. Think of it as soaking a sponge with water when resources are high at the beginning, and over time, you squeeze and dry the sponge out. After many programs launch, they get smaller portions of resources going forward, meaning the sponge is both smaller and is never soaked to make a wider impact.

This doesn't work for waste management, as the sponge must continually be soaked to reach residents who are constantly changing due to aging and migration, and waste which is also constantly adding new types of packaging and products. Efforts must be constant over decades to see results - which is best demonstrated in San Francisco, a city with a war with waste due to a lack of nearby landfill space.

Evolving Communications

Signage and branding, or the look and feel of communications, had not shifted much from the program's start 10 years earlier. The signage for waste cans, flyers and calendars looked much the same - simple one-colour illustrated graphics of waste (cans, food, clothing, etc.) and a bulleted list of what went in each of the three streams (there were actually many more, but those had a different look and feel). Although they have updated education materials in recent years, you can still find the old ones displayed throughout the region today.

The graphics also looked dated because there had been significant advances in graphic design and costs had drastically lowered for colour printing. Residents found the graphics confusing and often put waste in the wrong stream, and part of the blame was the dated design. Further, public education around "why" people needed to divert waste from landfills was no longer shared in a way that provided the desired results. It was like a hot air balloon was slowly losing lift, although it still commanded attention as it drifted slowly down.

Tim's contract ended before any notable action could be finished, but he took these lessons forward to deliver strong results in programs he co-led in Alberta a few years later.

1. Modernizing communications is a must to keep people interested. What is old is only new again if you try to revive or restore it. Otherwise, it is a waste of effort.
2. Graphics must look nearly identical to the objects they represent if you expect someone to know how to sort them into different waste streams. A bullet list of items below something that resembles a pop can will deliver even worse results. The graphic must also be before them as they decide where it will go - surrounding the hole the waste will drop in.
3. A lack of strategy makes disconnected tactics look trashy. You must build tactics from strategy. You can't build strategy from tactics. Tim and the other contractors did their best to combine tactics to deliver results. They did not succeed as there was no overarching strategy, only goals and a smattering of tactics.
4. If you want effective and long-term results in waste diversion, you must have a strong community outreach program which promotes constant conversation with residents. It's amazing what you'll learn in one conversation with a resident and what they'll learn from you.

Watch in future issues of The Migration for profiles on Tim's past work in waste management communications, including:

• Launching a garbage/landfill cart program in a city which experienced seven months of winter
• Launching a curbside blue bag program with 78% participation and 0.5% rejection rate within the first year
• Launching a waste sorting app which could also be used for sending notifications about service disruptions
• Launching a Styrofoam diversion program in Northern Alberta
• Launching a landfill gas-to-energy project
• Improving user experiences at Eco Centres, landfills and drop-off depots

New episode!

Case Study: 2008 Nova Scotia Porters Lake and Lake Echo Wildfire - The first sign of social media and misinformation in an emergency. Click here to listen.

Listen to this episode, which looks back at a time when traditional media was dominant and social media was barely known to most.

ICYMI: Creepy Crisis Communications Clues

Crises can be spooky when you're not ready. Here are some tips from Tim on scaring the spooky away.

1. People aren't poltergeists. Plans and preparations are often completed without including those you will communicate with and for. If you build from the people up, they will not bury you later. When you listen first, you learn lots about the ghoulish things which could happen, and you will be ready for everything from hauntings to a zombie apocalypse. We use a mixture of IAP2 fundamentals and conversations with apparitions to ensure every stone is turned.
2. Plan & practice eliminate eerie feelings. Thoughts of crisis communications don't need to feel uncomfortable. By giving your bloody good plan a real test by handing it off to a colleague, you can see if it draws cackles or incantations. Solid plans make it easy for anyone to get the message out, but never trust a gremlin with that role, as they will just tear it up and destroy your office.
3. Information will not haunt your audience, but they will haunt you if you keep it secret. During a crisis, you may fall into the trap of withholding information, which is a sure way to bury yourself. Releasing information consistently will increase trust in your organization. Skeletons never stay in closets. Put your skin in the game. Share with transparency to avoid the supernatural.