Breakouts:
Wednesday 9 am

Make Your Call a Priority - Priority Telecommunications Services

Room: Big Thompson A

Speaker: Cathy Orcutt

Description: Priority in communications is crucial to continuity of operations when facing adverse conditions such as weather events, mass gatherings, cyber-attacks or events arising from human error. 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) offers three priority telecommunications services that enable essential personnel to communicate when networks are degraded or congested. 

These Priority Telecommunications Services (PTS) include:

• Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) 

• Wireless Priority Service (WPS) 

• Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) 

Speaker Bio: Cathy Orcutt is the Priority Services Area Representative, or PAR for Colorado. Cathy strives to increase awareness about Priority Telecommunications Services by providing approachable overviews of the services with real user stories, including stories from her own career in public safety, to illustrate the importance of these critical free services.   

Cathy spent 30 years in public safety communications working as a dispatcher, supervisor, and manager at the 911 Center at the Sheriff’s Office where she lives in Oregon 

Bridging the Language Gap in 911 Call Processing

Room: Big Thompson B 

Speakers: Colleen Mulvihill and Jeff Bruns

Description: Across the US, public safety answering points are struggling daily to communicate with limited proficiency and non-English speaking callers who are seeking immediate assistance during an emergency. In this session you will learn about:

1. How technology is bridging this gap with automated language detection and translation in both text and voice calls

2. Identifying workflow strategies that can be used by PSAP personnel to reduce dispatcher fatigue

3. How PSAPs can leverage this technology even before they are fully NG911 compliant

Speaker Bios: Colleen started her public safety career as a 911 call-taker and fire dispatcher in 1989. After nearly 5 years in the 911 center, she joined the ranks of the career fire service in Howard County, Maryland, where she worked until her retirement in 2020. During her tenure as a Captain with HCDFRS, she was selected to lead the fire side of the 911 center where she managed CAD deployment, EMS call processing, mobile and portable radio template design, and provided liaison services to PSAP personnel. Colleen was a member of Maryland's 911 Board for 9 years, as well as the co-chair of Central Maryland's Radio Coordination User's Group. She holds an Associates Degree in Fire Service Management.

Connected Comms: How New Data and Devices are Advancing Situational Awareness

Room: Carter Lake A 

Speaker: Sam Silva

Description: With the growing proliferation of connected devices, sensors, and 5G, there’s no shortage of new data and information that can enhance how 9-1-1 telecommunicators respond to an emergency. With the adoption and exploration of emerging technologies such as cloud, data science, mapping, and video, emergency response teams are empowered with a greater sense of situational awareness that allows them to act faster and more effectively. 

Speaker Bio: Beginning my public safety career in 2012 at the City of Aurora 911 as a telecommunicator, I knew helping people was in my DNA. I transitioned to the private sector with Motorola Solutions in 2016 where I traveled the country as a champion of change representing a multitude of solutions for dispatchers and public safety. I found my forever home in 2021 at RapidSOS where I serve the 911 centers in the Rocky Mountain region as an ECC Engagement Manager. 

Implementing NENA GIS Data Model Templates for Your Organization

Room: Carter Lake B

Speaker: Tom Neer

Description: NENA is releasing version 2 NG9-1-1 GIS Data Model Templates (https://github.com/NENA911/NG911GISDataModel) to provide a standardized transport format of NG9-1-1 data layers between GIS Data Providers and an NGCS Spatial Interface (SI), compliant with NENA-STA-006.2-2022. This presentation covers utilizing the NENA GIS templates, deploying them in a GIS system, and making modifications to meet specific organizational needs. While the NENA NG9-1-1 GIS Data Templates intent is as a transport format, they are a good template organizations' may adapt to their unique organizational requirements to prepare their internal GIS data models support emergency communications processes in NG9-1-1 systems.

Speaker Bio: Tom Neer is a co-chair of NENA’s DS-GIS Template Working Group and a member of the DS-NG GIS Data Model v2 and DM-GIS Stewardship Working Groups. He has over 25 years of experience in geographic information systems (GIS), including public safety applications.

Digitally Transforming 911: Doing More With Less in Challenging Times

Room: Lake Loveland A

Speaker: Jenny Martin

Description: As a 911 center leader, you’re pulled in a lot of different directions. Your time is consumed managing daily operations, and handling performance reporting, hiring, staff supervision, and even navigating different systems to fulfill evidence requests. All of this manual work and the friction it creates in day-to-day processes can slow you down and distract you from important things that can keep your staff motivated and engaged – like Quality Assurance, coaching, training and mentoring. Attend this session to learn how to free up time and resources and focus on the human side of 911, by digitally transforming manual, time-wasting tasks. 

Speaker Bio: Jenny Martin is a Public Safety Manager for NICE Public Safety serving the Midwest and Western regions of the United States. With 20+ years of experience in the government/public safety sector, Jenny has dedicated her career to public safety and the technology that helps the people who serve the public do their jobs safely and more efficiently.

ECC Connections, Flipping the Script

Room: Lake Loveland B

Speaker: Kim Coleman

Description: As today’s PSAPs and emergency communications centers’ (ECC) networking capabilities evolve, so does their ability to engineer more diverse and resilient ESInet and land mobile radio (LMR) network connectivity.  FirstNet provides more than a smartphone to the 9-1-1 community; the network is used as a resilient transport option for agencies’ key communications paths – for the phone, including 9-1-1 calls, the radio, and other applications like NG9-1-1. 

• Learn how FirstNet provides resiliency to ESInets and LMR networks.

• Learn how ECCs are using FirstNet to integrate LMR-to-LTE communications.

• Learn about use cases from agencies implementing these capabilities today.

Speaker Bio: Kim Coleman Madsen is a Senior Public Safety Advisor with the FirstNet Authority, working in the Stakeholder Collaboration Division.  She has over 28 years' experience in public safety communications, including supervising an Emergency Communications Center, working as the policy manager with the State of Colorado Public Safety Communications Network, and most recently at the state level in public safety broadband planning efforts before moving to the FirstNet Authority in 2019.