I’ve been working in the emergency response industry in one fashion or another since 1986. During the years that I worked as a municipal firefighter, I was assigned to many different areas of responsibility and was fortunate enough to learn a significant amount about how our department and city administration was run. Since then, I’ve worked for some pretty significant players in the software industry, servicing over 600 fire and EMS departments across our nation and, sometimes, beyond it’s borders. In all of that time, I’ve never been more excited about working for a company than I have with First In Software. The ability to capitalize on the modern technology that is all around us these days in a simple, affordable and powerful way resonates with me completely. Joey Dockins (our CEO/Founder) created a tool that every responder or incident commander should have available to them. I would have loved having the Responder360 platform in my hands when I was pre-planning my district as an apparatus operator, responding to calls as a station officer or managing a scene as an incident commander. Moving away from distributed copies of inaccurate paper pre-plans or difficult to use computer drawing tools and toward an easy to use map markup system that anyone in your department can contribute to just makes sense. Being able to see all of your department’s vehicle locations 24/7 in real time on a shared map just makes sense. Sharing your pre-plans and vehicle locations with your mutual aid neighbors and vice-versa just makes sense. If your department doesn’t already have access to tools designed to provide you ALL with a common operating picture, its time to start looking. The days of blindly hurdling toward an emergency scene, relying only on radio traffic, memory and antiquated maps for situational awareness should be behind us. By utilizing the modern tools we have available, I believe we can significantly impact our operational efficiency and provide an additional measure of safety for all involved.5+ years @ Software Sales4+ years @ Software Development1+ year @ Medical Billing Sales4 years @ Software Implementation18+ years @ Fire/EMS Operations and Administration5 years @ US Navy