Founder's Corner - Getting started

So how did this all begin?

At a personal level, my interest in emergency communications has been around for a long time since my earliest involvement in amateur radio, but it was Hurricane Katrina that brought it all back up to the surface.

I was working for a financial institution with branches in Louisiana when the hurricane occurred, and was part of a team setting up mobile banking centers and ATM machines using portable satellite earth stations and cellular modems. It was quite the experience. I was particularly troubled by the lack of ready-to-go systems available. This was particularly true for the Red Cross at the time.

My friend Kevin (the co-founder of this site) had been volunteering with the local Red Cross chapter for years and we had talked off and on about their needs and our mutual amateur radio and electronics hobby interests, but the connection lay dormant for a while.

Later on, when my Franklin University project group required an I.T. Capstone to complete our degree, all the pieces came together with the creation of a proposal called “A Transportable Voice-Data-Video Communications System for the American Red Cross of Greater Columbus”. From that original idea and cobbled together demonstration in August 2008, began a long-term relationship with the ARCGC and the continuing development of emergency communications systems for them. Most notable was the creation of their Mobile Communications Center (MCC), which we plan to highlight on this site. It seems that a little success generates more work, more success, and more work.

So why create DisasterCommOhio.org?

Designing and building systems on a shoestring budget with volunteer help, hardware store parts, and “eBay acquisitions” has been a challenge, but we have learned a lot along the way—things we would like to share—and more things we would like to learn from folks who may have done this before. Success for us so far has been matching organizational needs with available technology that can be adapted to that need, documenting the plan, and then effectively “selling” the value of the idea. One of the things that we learned early on was that many organizations do not have a means to openly communicate beyond their “official” channels—no website to post pictures, no forums to share information, no exchange of ideas. Unfortunately, this information isolation reduces the possibility to impact others that probably could use the help the most. We wanted to address this.

DisasterCommOhio.org is not a money-making venture, but rather it is intended to be a people-helping resource. As the name would imply, the geographic scope is limited to the state of Ohio for now--although Kevin and I would love it if we were invited to some future Hawaii chapter someday. For now it is our hope to have contributing members from variety of backgrounds who are involved in different organizations located throughout the state of Ohio.

We do not represent any vendors or speak officially for any host organizations. Our intent is to provide a place for those individuals involved in emergency communications to share what they’ve learned, highlight what they’ve accomplished, and get better at achieving the real goal of being ready to help others when disaster strikes.

If this seems like something you believe is worthwhile, we welcome you to join us.

---Michael Clark, AC8CG, Co-Founder of DisasterCommOhio.org