Taylor Frizzell:
Hello, welcome to the first official episode of the Just In Case podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Frizzell, and joining me as always is Mr. Justin K ates, our incoming IAEM USA president. This month, we're going to be talking about all things presidency. How are you, Justin? Hello.
Justin Kates:
Good. What's new?
Taylor Frizzell:
You know, surviving. That's all we can do, I think sometimes.
Justin Kates:
Do we still have a chance to cancel this whole idea?
Taylor Frizzell:
Uh, no. I think that we released a YouTube video, which means that it is official. It's on the internet. So I think that once it's on the internet, it is, for all intents and purposes, fact.
Justin Kates:
I think we could still cancel it. So if it, midway through this thing, if this turns into a mess, uh, we can just shut it down and say that we tried.
Taylor Frizzell:
Okay, we'll keep it in the comments. If people start, like, hating on us, we'll be like, alright, I'm out, never mind. That works. I only want good feedback. Anyways, Justin will be sworn in officially on Wednesday, November 8th at the annual IAEM President's Banquet. So we are recording this before the conference, which is mildly chaotic, but also very fun. How are you feeling, Justin? Are you getting excited? Are you feeling stressed? What's going through your head?
Justin Kates:
Uh, no, I mean, I'm fine. Like, uh, it's so weird because it's not really exciting. Uh, the exciting point is when you get elected to second vice president and that's sort of the initial, okay, Hey, now you're going to be a part of the presidential team for the association. Now you've already been part of the team for two years. So it's like, oh, this is just another year, basically, at this point. So yeah, not too big of a deal. I would say that we talked about that banquet there. One of the things I said I was going to do last year was to not require people to have to dress up for it, because I hate dressing up. I really, really, really hate dressing up.
Taylor Frizzell:
Oh, I know. I know.
Justin Kates:
And so I felt like, as president, I should have the authority to cancel that. But I guess not. So I'll have to dress up.
Taylor Frizzell:
If you show up in cargo shorts to this banquet, Justin, I swear to goodness, no.
Justin Kates:
I rescind my vote. Unlike most emergency managers, I actually don't have any cargo pants anymore. So I don't even have any to bring.
Taylor Frizzell:
We'll have to rectify that situation, right . It's a rite of passage. So we're going to spend some time kind of talking through some of the things I've got on my mind for your presidency and kind of the next upcoming year or so. But I do want to take a minute to backtrack, if you will, because we love a good hot wash in the world of EM. And I just kind of want to talk about a reflection of the past year. Kind of overall, how did you see the previous year? Good, bad, places we can improve, some things that we definitely want to kind of move ahead for. We'll dive a little bit deeper, I think, later on. But overall, what are your thoughts on this past year?
Justin Kates:
Well, in my role as first vice president, your focus is really on working with the regional presidents and trying to support them and assist them with their mission, which is to try and support activities in their regions, try and support professional development of emergency managers in their regions. And so that's really the focus of the last year. The president, as they go through the second VP, first VP process, you know, they'll hold these quarterly meetings with their constituents, you could say. So we held four meetings with the regional presidents this year, really focused around topics on how we can share information across the regions. I know IAEM members probably in each of the regions, they've got specific activities and best practices that their regions have put in place. And it's our responsibility as first vice president to actually make the connections. I think being a former regional president, I really spent a lot of time trying to figure out great activities to keep people involved and really support the profession of emergency management. And we would try as much as possible to informally share that information, with our peers in the other regions across the country, but it was never really formalized, honestly. I think it wasn't until probably this past year, we did some stuff with Region 1 on sharing a lot of the procedures and stuff like that with some of the other regions. How did you think that went?
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I mean, I'm a little biased, obviously, as the outgoing region one president, I think that we do a really good job of documenting everything that we're working on. So to your point, we can kind of help spread that to whoever needs it. But there isn't any sort of like formalized process. And I think we're slowly getting to that, where we have a straightforward avenue of information sharing between regional leadership, which I think is crucial. You know, I want to talk a little bit later on about how we kind of look at value of membership across all of the regions, because I think it can look a little bit different depending on where you're at. So, you know, maybe I'll put a pin on that and we can come back to it. But I certainly think that we've done a lot of work this past year just to try and spread the information of what we're doing regionally a little bit better.
Justin Kates:
And I think there's more to come there. I know that there was an initiative that started up this past year to come up with sort of a leadership program so that way that incoming regional presidents would have all the tools that they need in order to be successful in leading their their region. Now, what's also sort of unique about the regional president role is they have two separate responsibilities. One is promoting the activities within their region and sort of leading that structure, which comes along with normally a vice president, secretary, treasurer, and a number of other representative roles, but they're also a board member. So they're involved in the USA board activities and they're focused around their fiduciary responsibilities as a board member to keep the overall association running. So that's another area that I think we did start this year that, you know, we didn't get finished, but I think we'll work to try and support for next year. Now, overall, with the association, I think that there were a number of really good initiatives that started this past year. One that we'll probably talk a little more about later is around emergency management advocacy, starting the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus that was done right at the first board meeting of the year in Savannah last year. So that was something that was very successful and built up this year. And then the other thing that I think was a pretty sizable initiative for IAEM was bring on a consultant to look at our diversity, equity, inclusion activities and assess where we can do better and come up with recommendations. And again, that's another project that is not complete yet. The goal is to have those recommendations out this coming year. And so then we'll look to figure out how we can implement them, what we'll need for resources to implement them, and that kind of stuff. So those are just some of the big activities that came in play this year.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I think the big thing that sticks out to me from what you said, and kind of my experience with all of the different pieces that you've mentioned, you know, the leadership development, program and all of the work with bringing on the DEI consultant, as well as the advocacy piece of it. I think the biggest kind of factor that overlies all of that is the transparency piece of it, right? One of the biggest things that when I was coming on as a regional president, that I'm sure I lamented to many a times, is you don't really know what you're signing yourself up for, right? You know, you know what you need to do regionally. But to your point, the USA board is a whole different ballgame, right? That's the piece of the job that you don't really know what you're signing up for until you're there. And so I think that part of that leadership development program will help increase the transparency, not only for folks running for leadership, but I think for our membership in general. And same with all the work that we're doing with that DEI consultant, I really hope that it helps to kind of peel back the layers of this otherwise mysterious seeming organization, if you will. So to me, that's the part that I think I'm most excited about going into this next year. I think that we're going to hope make a lot of progress in that sphere. So I'm looking forward to that piece of it. I think that'll be neat. Is there anything else from the past year that you're really proud of or that you want to highlight before we kind of switch gears a little bit and start talking about moving forward for the next year?
Justin Kates:
Well, I think the other piece that is probably worth mentioning is the IAEM Connect discussion board that is now up and running. That also really took play this year, getting that out to the members, getting folks on there. And I think it's pretty, pretty well used today. My emails are set up for digest. So I get one email per day because I don't want to be disrupted all throughout the day with crazy, crazy ideas that people have and questions and stuff like that. But you know, every morning it does seem like there's quite a bit of people on there. So I think there could be more. And I think there's some ideas about how to better use that. Things particularly around like adding a calendar to it so that you can see events and that kind of stuff. And then I think also we want to try and make it easier for people to engage in conversations within the different caucuses without being a member of those caucuses. Because you as an emergency manager, you might have a question about health care or higher ed or technology or something like that. And you want to have a location where you can go to to ask the experts in that space. And so right now that doesn't really exist. So there's there's definitely some work that we can do in that area as well.
Taylor Frizzell:
But to your point, I think it's a great resource. And one of the things that's really cool for me is that you could pose those questions in a sphere like LinkedIn, right, where you are, in theory, surrounded by a bunch of folks who know what they're doing. But to your point, IAEM Connect puts you in a direct field where they are experts in that specific niche that you might have a question about. And you don't even have to know the people you're talking to or you kind of do on some of those social media platforms. So I think that IAEM Connect is a really great resource. I'm looking forward to how you're going to plan to build it out over the next year, you know, as folks start to get to know about it a little bit more. I think that we could really utilize this podcast to just assign you more things that I know would be really interesting.
Justin Kates:
No, no, we do not. And this probably is a good time to pivot into what the future looks like. You know, one of the things that I think is really going to be important for us moving forward is to recognize that I cannot do everything. And so frequently, and this has happened all the way back to when I was a regional president, I would see emails from members, who I would almost call it like a drive-by shooting. They would send an email and say, let's do this. And then they would just leave and disappear with this idea that they had and expect us to do something with it. And I'm like, we can't just have all these endless ideas and no real support from the volunteers across the association to actually help bring them forward. And so as second VP, as first VP, I would get an email from somebody with a great idea, something that I definitely think would be worthwhile. And I would immediately respond back and be like, okay, great idea. Here's how you can take this to the next level. And I'll throw my support behind it. But I'm not doing it for you. I cannot do it for you. And I hope that t he people that come behind me as USA president adopt that same mentality so that they don't feel like they have to do everything and that they get overwhelmed and end up burning themselves out. So we'll see. Hopefully that doesn't happen this year where I get a thousand emails from folks of things that we just aren't going to be able to do in a year timeframe.
Taylor Frizzell:
So I should delete the 30 email addresses I just made to send you all kinds of good ideas. Yes. And that ruins the fun. Please do that. I do have a question, right? So I think that that's a good point. I think that folks have a lot of good ideas. There's a lot of brilliant people in IAEM and in the field of emergency management in general. If folks are looking to kind of push through a new idea, You know, is there something that we can be doing to help encourage those ideas? Is there a direct platform for folks to be able to reach out that's not specifically you, right? You know, if someone comes to me with a great idea, should I be directing them to the committees or the caucuses? Do we have some sort of process or help or resource that we could be giving to folks so that hopefully things aren't being channeled for you all of the time?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I think there are. I think there's two primary pathways that I would recommend. And I'm not talking about like customer service for that, certainly just go and reach out to the IAEM staff, go to the website, you know, reach out if you have something that's more customer service oriented. But if you have like a programmatic idea for IAEM, something that you want to take on, there's two sort of initial approaches I would recommend is one, Is there a committee or caucus that is focused around or aligned to the idea that you have? Start with them first and see if this is something that that caucus or committee can take to the next step. And as I mentioned, you need to be involved in this. Don't just drop the package off on their front step and say, here you go, here's an idea, and then run away. If this is your idea and if you're passionate about it, actually say, hey, and I'll help you get this going. So that's one approach. I think the other approach is if it's something that is not really assigned to like a community of practice or a specific topic area in emergency management, maybe it's more broad. Is it something that we can pilot in one of the regions first? And in that case, go to your regional president, say, Hey, I've got this idea. I want to do like a networking event, or I want to do a workshop on a specific emergency management topic. You know, is this something that we can do in the region? And that's, again, another good way to get your regional presidents engaged, but it's also something that's now a little bit more manageable. We can test it, see if it's something that can be scaled up to a larger audience. So those are two big ways. If it's legitimately something that is of a national scale impacts the whole organization, the whole association, the official way that you can bring an issue forth for the board to consider is they call them issue papers. There's a template on the IAEM website, and basically you document what the issue is, how it's aligned to our strategic plan, and then what your proposed recommendation is. I guess the benefit of it is the formal process and it ends up before the board. The downside to me is it's sort of bureaucratic, and I always want ways that I can get quicker action rather than having to go before a dozen people. have to try and convince them of something. So that's, to me, not the preferred method. And I think there's ways to improve that. But that is the method as we stand right now.
Taylor Frizzell:
No, and I think that's a good point. But I think you've offered a few different points of resource for folks. You know, there's not necessarily one size fits all for some of the ideas that folks may have. So I think that that's at least a good place for people to start. I want to back up a little bit because I got excited about the conversation and derailed a little bit.
Justin Kates:
We're not even following your script that you came up with.
Taylor Frizzell:
Hey, hey, I'm not. I gave you guidance, all right? I gave you an outline. I don't know what you want from me, OK? I want to kind of start by thinking through what are, if you could sum up what this next year looks like for you, what are those like top three goals for you for the coming year?
Justin Kates:
Well, people will hear more about this during the speech that I'll give at the presidential banquet. But each USA president will typically have a focus area. It's something that they're passionate about. And they will typically put a substantial amount of their effort and time into that area. For me, it is about emergency management advocacy. It is really the whole reason that I ran for second vice president. It's the whole reason that I got involved as a volunteer leader in region one, because to me, a professional association should be advocating for the type of work that it does. And I don't feel like compared to other professions, disciplines, fields, whatever you want to call them, that we have really done all that we can do in that space. So that is absolutely priority number one for me. And we'll be supporting the endeavors of the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus. We'll be trying to find ways to partner with other associations that are doing work in this space to really just tell the story of emergency managers, why we're important, why jurisdictions and organizations and institutions need emergency managers and how they can implement those types of programs. So that is definitely going to be a top priority. I think a second area that has been a passion for me and is definitely one of the important functions of IAEM is government affairs, this is how we're able to support some of the legislation and regulatory activities at the national level for emergency managers. And, you know, there's been a lot of great work in that space in previous years. But I think there's opportunities to improve the connection between our government affairs work and the members, you know, enabling some sort of an easy conduit for members to propose legislation, regulatory action, that government affairs committee can then triage and determine whether it's something that IAEM wants to get involved in, that whether we have the bandwidth or not to work in that space? And then if not, what are the other resources that are out there that can help that member figure out a solution to that government affairs issue? And then also along those lines is really ensuring that as president or even any of the other volunteer leaders, board members, that we really have a clear understanding of our policy positions. And so right now, it's not really easy to know where IAEM stands on different emergency management policy issues that are out there. People on the government affairs committee are very aware of it because they're involved in the meetings and know what's going on. But does the general membership know? Does all of our elected leaders and appointed leaders, do they know? Those are definitely things that I'd like to see in the government affairs space. And I'd say probably the third thing is really just efficiency of the association. I think that has been an area of interest for me since getting involved in the second V P. And that's been really around this whole idea of trying to eliminate all the organizational debt that we have in IAEM. If you've ever looked at our association policies and procedures, it's like 700 pages or something. And it's almost impossible for me or any of the other leaders to really know what are our procedures and policies that are in place for different types of things that take place within the association. And so trying to figure out ways to simplify that, to make sure that it's easy and intuitive for our members, those are always things that I'm trying to figure out solutions to. And there's some ideas that I have for this coming year in that space. I know that you know, one just simple and very, you know, I think it's definitely an initial activity that I'll plan to put forward is trying to improve our board meetings. Many people don't know, but every month we have a board meeting. And those board meetings are filled with content because of all the things that are going on across the association. And the problem with that is it makes it almost impossible to get through all that material in the hour that we set aside for that meeting. And it's not as simple as just saying, oh, we'll expand it to two hours or have a meeting every week. Well, no, the board are all volunteer leaders. So it's another big thing that I want to try and do is figure out how to distribute some of the responsibilities that are currently things that need to be board decisions and try and get those out to maybe committees or allowing and empowering our regional presidents to do things while still having principles that they can use to make decisions that are in alignment with our strategy, our vision within the association. So those are probably three big things that I would say are going to be top of mind this coming year.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but the way I kind of view this, and I think that you're really passionate about kind of innovating and technology and whatnot within the sphere of emergency management. Do you think that there's a place for using some newer technology to help improve some of those processes or, you know, make it a little bit of a better functioning association in some capacity?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I think there are. The big challenge is you don't have the ability to roll out a multi-year IT project to do something around efficiency or making improvements to how we share information or collaborate, you know, because you're only the president for a year. So you rely heavily on working with the staff who provide that continuity over multiple years. You have to work closely with the other members of the presidential team coming in behind you, who will have to, you know, kind of continue some of those activities moving forward and push them. I think, you know, IAEM Connect is a good example of this. This was something that was an initial discussion years and years ago, and now finally it is rolled out. And, you know, it took time to get that pushed out to the members. I think one of the areas that I'd like to see improvements, just as one example, is joining one of the committees or caucuses. So right now, if you want to join one of the committees or caucuses, the process is you email the staff liaison to that committee or caucus. Then they have to reach out to the volunteer leadership of that committee or caucus, determine whether it's something that might be a requirement that the person has to be a part of some sort of a specific discipline within emergency management. For example, the Universities & Colleges Caucus voting members have to be campus emergency managers. So they have to vet you to make sure that you fit the criteria. And then after you meet the criteria, then they can reach out and add you to the roster. But then the roster is not something that's accessible by the volunteer leadership. And so the staff have to send the emails out. That's cumbersome. So then people end up with their own distribution lists. And it's just really not as intuitive or efficient as it could be. And so I know that there's other professional associations out there that simply have a portal where you can go on and select the things that you're interested in, and now you're automatically part of that group. You get the emails, you know when the meetings are, it's just that simple. So that's just one example of how we can use technology, I think, to really streamline the work of IAEM.
Taylor Frizzell:
See, but I think the downside of that is you don't meet as many fun people along the way. Now, how am I supposed to meet four people while trying to sign up for a committee or a caucus?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I guess that's a good point. I would argue that I want to meet as little people as possible. I know that's counterintuitive to be a part of a professional association, but I guess that's just like the introvert in me.
Taylor Frizzell:
Oh, God. So one of the things that I selfishly, this question is coming from a place of purely selfishness. One of the things that I am very passionate about being one of the newer generation EM folks, that weird kind of quasi in between. I think that there's almost a divide, if you will, between kind of the generations of emergency managers and specifically what they're looking for from IAEM as an association. And so I'm wondering if you've given any thought about how you're planning or hoping to provide value to all of those different generations in the emergency management sphere, right? And even maybe beyond the generations, just the diverse population of folks that we've got in IAEM. How do you foresee being able to provide value to these groups of populations that have very different interests and reasons for joining IAEM?
Justin Kates:
Well, that's a great question. I would hope that my perspective in emergency management, my background in emergency management will help me in that specific realm. I'm fairly young, even though every day I feel a heck of a lot older. I'll save my catchy comments. Yeah, exactly.
Taylor Frizzell:
It's the beard, man.
Justin Kates:
It is the beard. I mean, that's the only way I can not look 12, basically. So, you know, I would hope that coming from that perspective, that I can resonate with many of our younger members who are looking for how they can get involved in a professional association and make it valuable to them. And I am going back at least five, six years or so, and maybe even before then, they've known about this challenge of really trying to recruit younger folks into a professional association. This is not just in the emergency management space. This is a challenge for professional associations across the board. It's so easy now to network on social media. It's so easy now to just connect with folks using technology or information sharing tools that really weren't in place a decade or two ago. And so there's definitely been this overarching concern in professional associations as to how to stay relevant and how to demonstrate value to those younger members who may just decide there's other ways that they can stay connected with their colleagues. Some of the things that I think are really important for us to consider as we move into the next couple of years are figuring out, number one, what do those emerging professionals want to see from an emergency management professional association? What is the actual service that they want? Now, if you're involved in like a startup, one of the things that you'll do is you'll go out and talk to your prospective customers and ask them, hey, like, what is it that you actually want? You don't go back and sit there and say, what do I think they need? Because ultimately you'll end up creating a product or a service that really isn't valuable for them. So we can't sit there and use the model that has maybe worked for decades and decades. You actually have to go out there and talk to younger emergency managers and say, hey, what would be something that would be useful for you? What can we bring to the table to bring you a value proposition that actually is going to make sense? So, you know, I am really along that mindset that just by going out and talking to people who are not members is a really great way for us to sort of build the future of the association and figure out how we can provide better products and services to those folks.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I like that. And I think I appreciate it because it's providing, as much as you hate this, it's providing a people aspect to the association. It's making it a much more personal experience for folks, which I think is crucial to any association, but especially to IAEM, where it's focused on building relationships for emergency management. That's what we tout all of the time, to how you're successful in your program is by building those relationships. So I think that that's so crucial. And I hope that that's able to to expand this year I really do hope that you're able to get some feedback from folks outside of the association and even within the association to say what can we be doing better and really engage in that dialogue, because I think that's important. One of the other things that's kind of come up a lot over the past year, I think, is, you know, IAEM is the premier association for emergency managers, right? But I think that, and we've touched on this a little bit, but what are some of the other things that IAEM needs to be doing or should be doing to better assert themselves as the premier association? And I know you talked about advocacy and government affairs. What are some of those other things that maybe you don't, you directly don't have to be doing, but us as kind of general members of the association might be able to do to kind of better assert IAEM as that premier association?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I think, you know, so advocacy is definitely the top area where IAEM should be at the front of the room when it comes to supporting emergency management. And, um, There's a number of different activities and initiatives and coalitions and meetings that take place throughout the year where groups like IAEM are invited to participate and provide insight from the perspective of an emergency manager. And a lot of times it is not real clear to our membership that we're actually being represented. And so there's areas to improve there. Number one, how do we ensure that people know that we're attending these events, representing their interests? How do we get that information out to our membership so that they know that they're actually being represented? Number two is how do we get information back from those meetings and coalitions and task forces to the members? That way, the members know what are the emerging topics in emergency management? What are the things that they should be considering or concerned about? Those are all things that are essential to helping support that premier sort of belief that people have about our association, that we're top of the list. I think there's another area that when we look at the association and its role within the emergency management space, It's also looking at the certification program. And so right now, if you think of an emergency management certification, normally one of the top things that comes to mind is the CEM. And that's something that we need to ensure is reflecting the needs of emergency managers today, but also of those employers who are now all starting to add CEM into the job description saying that you need to have that certification. We don't want to be in a scenario where employers start saying, well, look, this isn't really reflective of what we need within our positions. So we want to make sure that we're staying on top of that. And that's something that includes looking at the types of responsibilities and knowledge, skills and abilities that emergency managers need today, and ensuring that the professional contributions and the exam content and all of that is reflective of those modern needs. So, you know, those are some of the things that we need to do in order to stay the premier association. It's got to be reflective of you know, modern emergency management and making sure that people know when we're sitting there at the table and representing their interests.
Taylor Frizzell:
So it sounds to me like any good after-action report that we need to work on our communication is the first piece of it, I think. So I think the last question I think that I really am curious to know you're going to have this very large platform. What impact to the field of emergency management as a whole do you hope that you might be able to use that platform for?
Justin Kates:
Well, I think one of the topics that has come up over the last few years has been the concern of emergency management being overtaxed and under-resourced. A lot of our peers in the emergency management space have been talking about this issue of emergency management organizations essentially being taxed to try and figure out solutions to every possible crisis situation that's occurring in that jurisdiction or in that organization or business or wherever they're working. And what it's done is it's created a scenario where emergency managers aren't able to get done the work that needs to be done as part of their normal day-to-day operations. So this is a little bit problematic because we also want to demonstrate our benefits to our leaders, whether it be the mayors or the county executives, the governors, the hospital CEOs, the university presidents, wherever we're working, we want to be able to step up to the table and say, all right, yeah, we'll help you with this crisis that's going on right now, even though it's not part of our normal portfolio of activities. But if you don't have the resources, whether it be the staffing or the time or the supplies, equipment, capacity, whatever it might be, you're setting yourself up to fail. And so this is something that I think IAEM should be at the table for. Number one, we want to make sure that we're promoting the value of emergency management and why it's important for jurisdictions and institutions and businesses and organizations to ensure that they're putting the right money into those programs, putting the right staffing into those programs. So that way they are set up in a way to be able to handle these new and emerging issues that seem to be very popular in the last couple of years. But the other thing that I think IAEM can do, and hopefully in my role as president, to try and resolve this issue is to partner with some of our colleagues that are out there, whether it be NEMA, the National Emergency Management Association, or with our government partners like FEMA. You know, the IAEM leadership will meet with the FEMA administrator as well as many of their senior staff on a quarterly basis, and that's an opportunity to bring up some of these issues about this challenge of emergency managers not having the right resources they need to deal with these new demands. So that's what a professional association should be doing. And that's what I think we need to be focusing our efforts on in the coming years, helping to get emergency managers the things they need to be better emergency managers.
Taylor Frizzell:
I do appreciate the irony in that as emergency managers are usually the ones helping come up with creative solutions for otherwise chaos. So I appreciate the mild irony in that being a goal for the association supporting emergency managers.
Justin Kates:
That's right. Basically, IAEM is the emergency management for emergency managers.
Taylor Frizzell:
That's what we should change our motto to. Do we have one? I know we've got a mission and a vision, but I think that we need to come up with an ad hoc motto as well.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I'll add that to the list.
Taylor Frizzell:
I told you, I'm just going to end up giving you a to-do list at the end of these episodes. I think really it'll be beneficial and mildly therapeutic for me. I think that we're just doing this for me at this point.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, well, at least somebody's getting something out of it.
Taylor Frizzell:
That's all that matters. You know, I do want to take a minute, Justin. I think that this is going to be a really cool opportunity to talk about how the year's going and really sit down on a monthly basis and have that one-on-one conversation. I think that hopefully members get something out of this. Folks who aren't a part of IAEM also get something out of this, just hearing from your perspective within the sphere of emergency management. I think it'll be an interesting endeavor. I'm very much looking forward to kind of seeing how the rest of this flushes out over the next year or so. And also looking forward to an opportunity to constantly harass you. So it's a win-win all the way around.
Justin Kates:
How long do you think it is before somebody mistypes the URL and says j ustink ates podcast?
Taylor Frizzell:
That would be hysterical. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm trying really hard to enunciate, but that was the part of the theater classes that I didn't actually do well in, was enunciation. I blame the fact that I'm a New England kid at art, you know? We're not good at words. It's not our strong suit.
Justin Kates:
It's not, but you've made good improvements over time.
Taylor Frizzell:
Thank you, I think. I think I'll take that as a compliment. So we will start to kind of wrap up this episode. Like I said, thank you, Justin, for hanging out for the past few minutes here. Did you want to kind of talk about the next episode that will be coming out in a few short weeks here?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, so the next episode, I think we're going to try and line this up so that it comes out on the 9th of every month. This works well for the workflow that we're going to do to get the transcript summarized and then put into the IAEM bulletin. So it works with the timeline that they need in order to get that article placed in. So the expectation would be is that the next episode would be out December 9th. And we're actually still working on the process to get this uploaded to all the different podcast networks out there. So what I will simply tell you is look for it on your favorite podcast network. I don't have a link or anything like that out there. I mean, we'll share it on on LinkedIn and Twitter and all the other platforms out there. And we do have a YouTube account, so we'll upload the audio to that as well. But definitely You'll be able to find it out there. I mean unless it's terrible then we're just you know You won't be able to find anything because we're not gonna post it. So My expectation is every ninth of the month. You should see a new episode of this podcast You have no faith in this podcast.
Taylor Frizzell:
I don't understand. I'm a little bit I feel I feel hurt on behalf of the podcast. I think it'll be fine. I think we're I know I'm the charming one of this group, Justin, as you said, by you being an introvert and hating people, but it's fine. I will hold it together for the two of us. How about that?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, well, we'll figure it out. We've got a long year ahead, so we'll see how far we make it.
Taylor Frizzell:
Well, thank you, Justin, for today's conversation. And as you said, join us next month. We're going to be providing an overview of leadership in all forms at IAEM USA. and we're hoping to bring in some regional and some group leadership to provide a little bit of context as to kind of what that looks like for all of you folks. So we are looking forward to that session and we will see you next month.
Justin Kates:
We'll see you next month.
Taylor Frizzell:
Bye guys.