Comments on: Simulating Disasters with ADRA http://www.humanitarian.info/2006/11/24/simulating-disasters-with-adra/ because information can save lives Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:58:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Gregg Swanson http://www.humanitarian.info/2006/11/24/simulating-disasters-with-adra/comment-page-1/#comment-3836 Gregg Swanson Sun, 03 Dec 2006 23:14:05 +0000 http://www.humanitarian.info/2006/11/24/simulating-disasters-with-adra/#comment-3836 Thank you for the kind words - glad you liked the articles and the \"12 reasons.\" I do my best writing in airplanes, and on the long flight back it\'s a good thing it didn\'t come out as \"42 reasons.\" You\'re very right about the value of small scale exercises. In the ADRA debriefing, we talked about the possibility of even smaller events, at the country office level, perhaps with 3 - 5 qualified augmentees joining local staff. One of the greatest needs is to involve local staff, since they will be in the center of the vortex when something happens in their country. When I meet NGO people in the field, three things are evident: (1) they don\'t have much formal IT training, (2) some of them are very good with the apps and software they need - they are self taught, actually using the Help resources, and (3) if someone can show them, they\'ll learn fast. The easy explanation is that they are isolated and on the move a lot, and have no office support system like the folks in headquarters or the corporate world. Thank you for the kind words – glad you liked the articles and the \”12 reasons.\” I do my best writing in airplanes, and on the long flight back it\’s a good thing it didn\’t come out as \”42 reasons.\”

You\’re very right about the value of small scale exercises. In the ADRA debriefing, we talked about the possibility of even smaller events, at the country office level, perhaps with 3 – 5 qualified augmentees joining local staff. One of the greatest needs is to involve local staff, since they will be in the center of the vortex when something happens in their country.

When I meet NGO people in the field, three things are evident: (1) they don\’t have much formal IT training, (2) some of them are very good with the apps and software they need – they are self taught, actually using the Help resources, and (3) if someone can show them, they\’ll learn fast. The easy explanation is that they are isolated and on the move a lot, and have no office support system like the folks in headquarters or the corporate world.

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