The AWARE team was lucky to attend two conferences in early January, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV and the Social Media the Internet and Law Enforcement (SMILE) Conference in Santa Monica, CA.  CES focused more on emerging technology while SMILE focused primarily on strategy and policy.

During our time at CES, we attended sessions on social media, telecommunications policy, and technology trends, and we explored numerous vendor booths to find technologies with the potential to enhance the existing national alerts and warning framework.

As just a couple of the over 100,000 attendees at CES, we began to recognize a few major technology themes: the emphasis on 4G wireless technology, tablet computers, and Internet-enabled “smart” television sets. These three themes were on display at numerous vendor booths and a considerable amount of floor-space was devoted to each.

These technologies all emphasize ubiquitous access to the Internet, information, and computing.  As these new technologies mature and become accepted in the marketplace, they may evolve to include CAP message compliance.  The alert and warning architecture will need to account for these new dissemination pathways in order to maximize message reach.

During FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s keynote remarks, he emphasized a national imperative to deploy broadband to stimulate and support economic growth. He characterized spectrum as the “oxygen” that fuels mobile devices, and, unless we can tackle the “spectrum crunch”, our nation’s economic competitiveness will be at risk. Chairman Genachowski summarized the benefits of the digital television transition, and pointed to the “tidal wave” of investment and economic activity surrounding 4G wireless technology.

He also highlighted the FCC’s priorities for 2011: make 500 MHz of spectrum available to industry by 2020, employ innovative options and technology for spectrum sharing, empower consumers to access mobile broadband, and streamline policy to enhance the deployment of physical infrastructure.

As just a few of the approximately 100 law enforcement representatives at SMILE (what a change from CES!), we attended hoping to learn from the experts about how they effectively use social media in the law enforcement arena.  Speakers included a mix of national and international thought leaders in this area, who addressed social media usage as community media, in emergency management, investigative techniques and cases studies, social media policy and strategy, legal issues, recruitment, and retention.

We found the discussion of social media policy and strategy very interesting, especially regarding its value to the alerts and warnings arena.  Most agencies using social media do not have robust policies in place or have adopted only very high level policies.  SMILE presenters recommended that when agencies create social media policies, they should refrain from making them too specific in order to ensure the policies can adapt and evolve with new technologies. The experts also recommended that public safety agencies should select social media leaders who are passionate about the agency’s mission, rather than just being tech savvy.

A comment we found interesting was now that first responders have the ability to alert the public via mobile devices and social media, the public expects first responders to use these tools – this seems to be consistent with Red Cross survey data we highlighted in a post last year.

There was a lot of talk about the obstacles agencies face when they trying to implement social media programs. Many SMILE attendees sited a lack of buy-in from city or agency administration and a reluctance from higher-ups to disseminate information to the public through social media. Participants also expressed concern about the lack of resources and staffing needed to engage the community and keep up with technology trends. Barring these obstacles, almost all of the attendees said they would have robust social media programs, including using social media to alert the public.  Attendees’ wish lists included having trained and trusted supervisors to disseminate information and engage in a two-way dialogue with the public using a range of different technologies, including Twitter, Foursquare, and Nixle via iPads and other mobile devices.

All in all attending both of these conferences was very valuable.  We had a chance to explore some of the emerging trends in both technology and policy. We heard from folks on the front lines of public safety and learned what they need to create and execute a successful alerts and warnings program.  We also learned more about the public’s growing desire and expectation to receive emergency alerts on more devices and mediums at a faster pace.