Decisions For Heroes - Product Blog http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/ Updates, tips, and news from Decisions For Heroes. Rescue team management and analytics. en-ie info@decisionsforheroes.com Copyright 2009 D4H Goes Arctic with North Star 2010 http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20091109-d4h-goes-arctic-with-north-star-2010 http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20091109-d4h-goes-arctic-with-north-star-2010



CAMBRIDGE, UK - In 142 days time, two British explorers Fran Middleton and Mustard Robley will cross 1800km of Greenland Icecap in an estimated 40 day unsupported expedition North Star 2010. They intend to man-haul sleds or ‘pulks’ with backcountry skis on to the top of the ice-cap and then switch to snow-kites and downhill skis to complete the crossing using as much wind power as possible. Tent, cooking equipment, gun, and food will all be contained in their pulks and towed behind as they ski.

Decisions For Heroes is the website sponsor of the expedition, and as we've tested on the ice-cap previously, we will be linking up the explorers Satellite Phone to D4H technology and tools. Not only does this make for a really interesting test of our capability - but we get to entertain all of you with exclusive live updates from the ice-cap over a 40 day emotional experience. Expect to hear lots about the expedition once they set off next Spring.

Our expedition t-shirt arrived today, and it's really great to see our logo up there with international brands like Rab and Osprey who have provided arctic equipment and clothing.



Would you like a personal postcard from Greenland? The lads will send a personal written Postcard to everyone who donates £10 or more to the expedition.

All donations to the expedition will be split for 50/50 between the expeditions and the Ali Rainback fund



Check out their website northstar2010.com for the latest news, expedition maps, and details.

Please share to your Facebook profile, thanks. ]]> Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:44:14 +0000 How do teams fund D4H? - Part 1 http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20091022-how-do-teams-fund-d4h http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20091022-how-do-teams-fund-d4h
We've talked to some of our closest teams, and came up with a plan. Today we are launching the first beta trials of a D4H 'widget'. If switched on by a team account owner, the widget will publicly display the teams latest 5 incidents with map, annual stats and year-on-year variance.



So how can you create value for your team? We've included space at the bottom for you to enter whatever text and link you'd like. You might link it to your team web site, or even better how about you link it to a sponsor?

Does your team have a local supermarket, bar, supplier, or shop you give lots of regular business to? You may be suprised to find they are very willing to sponsor "something a little different". A single valued item like your "Rescue Analytics" to "help save more lives" might be it! We can supply a brochure for you to show them - and you can put a message and link about them on your public widget.

We don't set the price you charge them - it's up to you. They might fund you the exact amount you need, or they might fund you double - ask for what you need.



So where will the widget be shown? Anywhere! We give you a small piece of 'code' which can be copied and pasted into any website, blog, or forum. You can give the code out to all your team members, friends and family. You might even get it featured on a local news site or government portal. Eitherway, your sponsor will be happy for the great local exposure associated to a good cause.

The option to switch-on a team widget will appear in team accounts over the next few weeks once our beta period has ended. Join our fan page for the announcement. ]]> Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:29:11 +0000 D4H wins 'Most Innovative Website' http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20091012-most-innovative-website http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20091012-most-innovative-website



On Saturday night Decisions For Hereos was awarded 'Most Innovative Website' sponsored by iQ Content at the 2009 Realex Payments Irish Web Awards in the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Dublin. We are delighted to receive this and add it to Decisions For Heroes growing list of awards.


  • Winner, 2009 Most Innovative Website, Irish Web Awards.

  • Winner, 2009 iQ Prize €10,000 Winner.

  • Finalist, 2008 Top 20 European Seed Companies, Seedcamp.

  • Finalist, 2008 Best Web App, Irish Web Awards.



Is your rescue team making Decisions For Heroes yet? Get Started!

(Thanks to Damien Mulley and team for the awards ceremony and Eamon Leonard from EchoLibre who accepted the award on our behalf on the night. EchoLibre supply high-end PHP development and security services.) ]]> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:25:21 +0000 New Feature: Real-Time Collaboration http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090924-realtime-collaboration http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090924-realtime-collaboration

When responding to incidents is a 24 hour job, it's only natural for teams to be separated by shift hours or geographic boundaries. It's hard to get everyone in the same room at the same time. Today, Decisions For Heroes launches 'Real-Time Collaboration' which is a group (everyone can read and contribute), asyncronous (at any time), instant messenger (it's instant). Unlike email, we keep threaded conversations that allow your rescue workers to dive in and out as required.

Find out more and Watch a 3 Minute Screencast Video *recommended!* ]]> Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:21:21 +0000 Beautiful Charts To Improve Your Rescue http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090918-new-rescue-charting http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090918-new-rescue-charting

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Today we launch a most excellent addition to our analytics offering. The charts have been enhanced to be bigger, bolder, and more beautiful. We've started building out some new breakdowns too. In the next few days and weeks new options will appear to help you optimize your 'time to mobile' as a team. To view our new charts, once inside your D4H go to [Analytics] and pick a chart view on the right sidebar, e.g. Incidents->Duration.

Tip: Add a 'Tag Bundle' called [Problems] which you can tick if you encounter an issue which you'd like to track how it affects your response. e.g. Boat Refuel Required, Crew Delayed, Traffic in Area, etc. We can then help show you how it delays your response in a nice graphical format. ]]> Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:08:47 +0000 New Rescue Mission Timestamps http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090821-new-rescue-mission-timestamps http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090821-new-rescue-mission-timestamps

DUBLIN, IRELAND - It's with great excitement this morning we launch the new incident timestamps. We've had many a debate with teams on what these should be, and hope to have found the right level between the timestamps used by fire and ambulance service, and search & rescue teams. From today, all incidents you create will automatically use the new timestamps.

Why is this important?
We now record Alerted, Mobile, In Attendance, Casualty Located, Stand Down, and Returned To Base. It's important, because time is everything. Using this data, we can help you optimize your rescue team to have a faster mobilization and give your tools to discuss why you didn't meet a required time.



Flexibility
Our new timestamps are built around flexibility. Flexibility to recieve a stand down command at any stage of the operation. Flexibility to not locate anything and return to base. Flexibilty to not even get out the door.

Coming Soon
We'll be launching timebands and limits that you can set to alert you if you didn't make a time requirment. We'll be updating the analytics to reflect the new anatomy of an incident, and we'll be adding some super sweet new charts based on your stand-down information. Stay tuned and keep compiling your data!

Your previous incidents will still use the old timestamp system. In the next weeks we will launch a tool to help you convert your old incidents to the new system if you so choose, but it is not a requirement. ]]> Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:48:57 +0000 Rescue Resources During Swine Flu A(H1N1) http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090727-swine-flu-resource-planner http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090727-swine-flu-resource-planner Decisions For Heroes tackles the situation. The pandemic is currently gaining a foothold internationally and it will be a number of weeks before it is widespread. Now is the time for teams who have others dependent on their response, to plan for this challenge in order to protect the provision of their service.

Visit www.decisionsforheroes.com/swineflu

Please share this with your other EMS colleges via this link or 'Share on Facebook' - the official press release may read here. ]]> Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:19:14 +0000 SAR Subaqua Dive Team Logs http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090723-sar-subaqua-dive-team-logs http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090723-sar-subaqua-dive-team-logs

CLARKSDALE, MISSISSIPPI - Calling all D4H search & rescue dive teams! Brian Smith from Coahoma County, Mississippi in the United States has put together a proposal for adding Search & Rescue dive logs to Decisions For Heroes. With Brian's permission, we have published this form here for general discussion. We're going to build the ability for subaqua dive logs, and would like to get the template perfect for everyone. Please leave your comments here, in the 'Improve It' section inside, or in the more active Facebook discussion.

Brian has kindly hosted a copy of the form, click here to see all drop-down boxes, and form fields. ]]> Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:20:33 +0000 TV3 National Television Interview http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090717-tv3-interview http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090717-tv3-interview bra straps (actually she has a fantastic business!), Decisions For Heroes recieved almost 4 minutes of air time. Fantastic!

You can watch the interview below.



About Ireland AM (TV3):
Irish viewers have been waking up to Ireland AM since September 1999. Ireland AM offers a morning-mix of current affairs, celebrity interviews, fashion, health, beauty and all other aspects of Irish lifestyle. Ireland AM was voted ‘Ireland's Favourite TV show' at both the 2008 and 2009 TV Now Awards. The programme has enjoyed phenomenal growth and popularity as Ireland's first television breakfast show and is now firmly established as a favourite with families throughout the country. ]]> Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:35:24 +0000 Feature: Steps To Get Started! http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090716-steps-to-get-started http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090716-steps-to-get-started

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Today we released "Steps to Get Started", a new help box that will appear on everybody's dashboard. We've found from talking to folks, that people had a problem understanding what steps to take when they opened a new account. This new box will step them through it, step by step. We suggest you take them in the given order.

Note that not everybody will see the same, we customise your steps needed based on the configuration options you give us when you create your account, and the permissions you have been given by your account owner. Once you reach 100%, you can 'Hide Forever' to never be bugged again!

If you'd like to follow our daily movements, please join our Facebook Page or follow us on Twitter. Things are really happening fast at present, with some really big organisations talking about coming onboard. We couldn't be happier! ]]> Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:38:59 +0000 Winners: €10,000 iQ Prize Fund http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090709-winners-iqprize-fund http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090709-winners-iqprize-fund €10,000 iQ Prize judged by Facebook’s EMEA Head of Online Operations, Google UK and Ireland's Online Sales & Operations manager, the CEO of Ireland’s largest online media group, a Golden Spider Internet Hero and the 2007 Businessweek Young European Entrepreneur of the Year, Microsofts Internet Evangelist, and an Irish start-up community lead.

Please leave comments below, or use the 'share on Facebook' button to add it to your wall.

Thanks all,

-Robin.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Out of a total of 249 entrants, 8 ambitious companies were shortlisted and took part in Dragon’s Den style presentations to the panel of 5 judges. After their gruelling presentations, the 8 shortlisted candidates had to do it all again and present their elevator pitches to 200 people in the audience at the iQ Prize award night in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin.

Founded by young Irish entrepreneur Robin Blandford, iQ Prize winner, Decisions For Heroes helps rescue teams 'save more lives'. Identifying a common set of problems found in emergency services, the software was created to capture the information surrounding their rescue operations and training exercises. The system automatically performs analytical charting, draws heatmaps, and benchmarks reports to outline areas of strength, weakness, and expertise.

"The iQ Prize is a fantastic community driven opportunity for an Irish Start-up" said Blandford, speaking at the awards ceremony. Asked how he was going to spend the prize money, "I intend to use the prize fund to travel to the United States to launch trials with their emergency services". Once back home in Dublin, Blandford will "grow the company by taking on an operations expert to focus on data security and scalability".


Robin Blandford, Decisions for Heroes, Winner of the €10,000 iQ Prize, with the competitions judging panel.





Robin Blandford (Right), Decisions for Heroes, Winner of the €10,000 iQ Prize, with Morgan McKeagney, Managing Director of iQ Content, promoter of the competition.



iQ Content Managing Director Morgan McKeagney, who created the iQ Prize, was full of praise for the winner and shortlist, "I'm delighted for Robin, he's a worthy winner and a great model for young Irish entrepreneurs. His story, and the phenomenonal response to the iQ Prize, shows that Ireland is a hotbed of entreprenuerial talent. Given the right support, we believe that many of these young entrepreneurs can go on to create world-class technology companies."

McKeagney reaffirmed the quality of the entries and urged others to repeat the initiative of the iQ Prize, "If organisations like Enterprise Ireland matched the €10,000 we gave to each of our shortlist, it would be the best investment they could make." ]]> Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:08:30 +0000 Video: Founder Interview iQ Prize http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090707-founder-interview-iqprize http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090707-founder-interview-iqprize iQ Prize winner. Decisions For Heroes is a finalist in the competition, and company founder Robin Blandford will pitch the idea to the judging panel. On Friday Robin was in iQ Content to be interviewed by their Managing Director, Morgan McKeagney. You can watch it here:



For live results from the awards ceremony, follow @robinb on Twitter. ]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:39:19 +0000 New Feature: Rescue Team Roster Management http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090701-rescue-team-roster-management http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090701-rescue-team-roster-management

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Today is the launch of our new 'On-Call Planner', a tool to help rescue teams schedule their members availability. This tool will allow you to work out shift rosters, ensuring that at no point during the day you break any requirements. For example, you may wish to keep 15 members on-call at any time, in in those 15 have 3 first-aiders, a doctor, and 5 heights rescue. Now you can calculate this up to 30 days in advance.

Other features in this release include...

  • For teams that work in roster shifts - the ability to set your members off-call by default. This allows them to mark themselves on-call rather than marking off-call.

  • Recurring off/on-call periods. Maybe you're not available 9-5 or nights. Now you can set daily or weekly recurring periods. These periods can be edited individually or as a series.

  • Alerts for operational on-call levels. You can now set a required number of members for your team to have on-call at any time. We'll alert you if too many people are off-call up to 30 days in advance.

All accounts will be automatically upgraded for free with the new features within the next 24 hours. Keep checking yours.

Here is a video walk-through guide outlining the new features:



Press [Play] to watch. ]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:53:58 +0000 D4H in Europa Finals - Best Social Innovation In Europe! http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090624-D4H-in-Europa-Finals http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090624-D4H-in-Europa-Finals

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Decisions For Heroes has been announced as one of the 6 finalists in The Europa Awards as Best Social Innovation from the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. The Europas - The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 recognise and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the year.

The Awards Ceremony will take place in London at the Delfina with an audience of 300 on July 9th.

Winners are determined based on popularity vote and a judging panel, so I would really appreciate your click! Click Here To Vote, it just takes a few seconds!

-Robin. ]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:38:17 +0000 D4H Shortlisted For €10,000 iQ Prize http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090611-iqprize-shortlist http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090611-iqprize-shortlist

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Last night, Decisions For Heroes was announced as a finalist for the €10,000 iQ Prize. The prize fund had 249 entries, so it is brilliant news to have made it to the final 8!



Bring on July 8th, when we have to make an elevator pitch Dragons Den style, to the judging panel! The judges include representatives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, a number of start-ups, and London investor Nic Brisbourne.

More here. ]]> Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:12:53 +0000 Confirming Your Attendance http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090504-confirming-your-attendance http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090504-confirming-your-attendance

DUBLIN, IRELAND - A whole bunch of new releases for you this week. The biggest shift is the Incident, Exercise, and Event pages. Their layouts have changed to reflect a structure that can hold more data for you down the road. The maps are bigger, more prominent, and the attendance list is much tidier.

We've worked down the attendance status levels to 3 traffic lights - red, amber, green. When you create an event, just 'request' the people you need and they may sign-in themselves and confirm or deny their attendance at the activity. Also, now as an editor, you can confirm people's attendance yourself if they can't do it themselves. These small changes will make a huge difference to editors.



Communication is a hugely important factor in team management, and a long requested feature was the ability to message the attendees of an event. Using the new comms icons on the activity page, you can now do just that - send a message to those 'Potential Attendees', 'Confirmed Attendees', 'Unconfirmed Attendees', 'Absent Attendees'. Go try it!



If you are in the UK or Ireland, you'll start to see more SMS icons appearing. These icons let you send an SMS message to either a group or individual. For example, you could send the text message to everyone coming to your training session tomorrow "Bring your technical gear, we're going climbing.". We'll update you live as each message is delivered, so you can see if someone didn't get it. More on our SMS capabilities soon - and hopefully news of this service launching in the United States.



All your accounts have been upgraded automatically! Enjoy.

-Robin. ]]> Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:00:11 +0000 International Measurement Units http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090206-measurement-units http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090206-measurement-units
To solve this, we have now put dates in international format e.g. '23 Apr 2009', easy!



Next up, measurements. Imperial and metric options are now available in your Team Account settings. If you are a team 'Account Owner', visit [Team Account] -> [About Your Team] -> [Measurement Units]. Here you can pick to have all your units converted between miles or kilometers.





All your accounts have been upgraded automatically. Enjoy!

-Robin.

(P.S. We still use International English rather than American English, so we apologise if you see 's' instead of 'z'. e.g. 'Organisation') ]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:06:52 +0000 Launch Press Coverage http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090526-launch-press http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090526-launch-press Listen To Recording Here!

If you've been following us on Facebook or Twitter, you'll also have seen we've been written about in two national papers.



The Irish Times - New software will help emergency services to save lives, says developer

A volunteer in one of the Irish Coastguard’s cliff rescue teams has developed a software solution to help emergency rescue services make better decisions that might save lives. Robin Blandford estimates that there are 50,000 global rescue organisations that could benefit from his software, Decisions For Heroes, which launched this week.





Sunday Business Post - Software coming to the rescue in Dublin
Most students are happy to take it easy during their college years, but not Robin Blandford. From the time he started his studies in digital media engineering at Dublin City University, Blandford’s main priority was to start a company. After university, Blandford was placed on an accelerated management programme at Thomson Reuters.

During this time, he would stay up late at night, developing and releasing software updates for a programme aimed at voluntary search and rescue services. Last week, the 25-year old Dubliner realised his ambition with the commercial launch of his own firm, Byte surgery.


Fantastic!

-Robin. ]]> Tue, 26 May 2009 08:57:03 +0000 Launch Day In The Blogs http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090525-launch-day-blogs http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090525-launch-day-blogs

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Wow, what a day! Last Tuesday we launched D4H and received a huge amount of press and blog posts pushing our service. Thank you to everyone, here's a quick recap.

Reva Health
What is fantastic about the goals of the product is its genuine life saving potential. I love the fact that web 2.0 technology has allowed a small Irish company to make such a big difference to a vital worldwide service. [...] The product itself is fairly simple and it only took me about 10 minutes for me to get to grips with it. I think that the Byte Surgery team have done an excellent job in providing an intuitive user experience and it looks like they have stripped out any unnecessary features so it is very focused.What is left is clear, concise and blindingly fast.


David Kelly
I particularly like that the application is targeted at a market outside the technology area - there aren’t many web applications that are so far removed from the office environment;


Paul M Watson
O’Reilly talks about doing “stuff that matters” and Decisions For Heroes would seem to be doing just that. [...] The fact is I haven’t been able to use Decisions for Heroes as it is a pay service with no trial-plan (well done to the team for having the guts to charge for their service).


Joe Scanlon
This is an impressive professional looking site.The little video Quickstart Guide spells out what the site can do very well. I love seeing technology being used to improve services like this.


Antons Hat
I’m absolutley delighted to hear today about the Launch of Decisions for Heroes. Robin Blandford is a very smart guy and through his blog he’s been entertaining and inspiring people for the last few years and I’m glad to know someone launching such a worthy service.


Dave Concannon
The software-as-a-service model promises to deliver a recurring revenue stream which should have little churn providing there are no serious competitors in the market. This is as far away from “me-too! (dot-zero)” as you can get.


John Keyes
It’s not very often that a web application has such an impact in the real world. Your todo list, micro-blog, word processor, invoice, and photo sharing sites are useful, but it would be very rare that they might save someone’s life!


@ryancarson
A web app that helps save lives. Awesome: http://decisionsforheroes.com


Seedcamp Blog
How we love to see teams grow! Seedcamp 2008 finalists 'Decisions For Heroes' launches to today.


Co-Clarity
I’ve met Robin a few times and he’s a great example to any budding entrepreneur in Ireland. First off, he’s done this the hard way. He’s the sole founder of Decisions for Heroes.


Will Knott
...he’s built something amazing - technology that will help rescue teams save more lives. Its essentially a project management tool combined with an incident reporting mechanism that’s able to monitor team histories and readiness and raise alarm for expiration or under manning conditions.


TechCrunch.com / Mike Butcher
Decisions For Heroes, the ‘BaseCamp for Mountain Rescue’ launches. There are not many startups that set out to save peoples lives.


Irish|Dev
A young Irish entrepreneur and cliff rescue climber, Robin Blandford will start delivering his new rescue team management software service "Decisions For Heroes" over the internet to rescue teams around the world on Tuesday 19th May 2009.


Derry O'Donnell
It’s fantastic to see such a great initiative which will aid in so many search and rescue training exercises and missions and ultimately save lives. I think it deserves all the exposure it can get.


Laughing Lion Design
It’s not often that you come across an online application that can literally save a person’s life, but that’s the case with today’s Tuesday Push.


Tipp Tatler
A young Irish entrepreneur is making waves with his new rescue team management software.


Helen Tracey
Built by Robin Blandford, Decisions For Heroes was trialled for 8 months with 1,800 rescuers in 5 countries before being launched on the 19th of May.




Jeromakay
I’ve got to say this is a very well applied idea on how people can use the internet and apply it’s benefits to real life (saving) situations.


Thanks All! What a day!

-Robin. ]]> Mon, 25 May 2009 12:40:16 +0000 Secure Encrypted Connections http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090522-secure-encrypted-connections http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/blog/post/20090522-secure-encrypted-connections

DUBLIN, IRELAND - On launch-day, we not only updated our branding and launched to the public, but we also did a new software release. All of your D4H team sites are now running on Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 256-bit encrypted connections.

What does this mean?
Two things! First it means that all data that travels between your members browsers and our data centre is encrypted to a high level. This includes everything you either upload to D4H or download to your own computer. With SSL, no third parties with access to your internet traffic can interpret the data. Second, it means we are who we say we are. A 'Trusted Root Certificate Authority' has signed our SSL certificate to say Decisions For Heroes owns the content at this domain, preventing an imitation using the same certificate masquerading as D4H in an attempt to steal users passwords.

How do I know I'm using SSL?
We now automatically connect to you with SSL by default. You can easily check, just look for the 'https' in the web address (rather than 'http'). Sometimes you'll also see a padlock icon 'locked' rather than 'open' in your browser status or tool bar.

I hope it has been a quiet week on the rescue front for you all.

-Robin.

]]> Fri, 22 May 2009 02:15:17 +0000