I spent my lunchtime on Friday sitting at a roundtable with some really smart people, many of whom have become my friends over the past several months. We were talking about Community Management, a term more recently associated with social media and the function of hosting and fostering an online community (and sometimes its offline activities). One of our hosts for this lunch, Jim Storer suggested that we are all community managers and challenged the group to consider how we each play that role. I was the first to speak up (mostly because I was nodding enthusiastically and he called me on it).
I immediately thought of EMS and the unique community that it is. We are a passionate group of people who tend to have strong opinions and even stronger personalities. We work and live in communities across the globe, and many spend countless hours responding to emergency calls in those communities.
But I wonder if we’re really taking full advantage of what that community has to offer. Maybe some departments or systems are. Perhaps some groups or organizations are finding synergies and leveraging them for the broader good. But there are tens of thousands of EMS practitioners around the globe. Imagine the possibilities if we were all sharing more.
And that’s at least part of what I’m hoping Baseline Vitals will be…a community for EMS, a place where practitioners, leaders, clinicians, manufacturers, trainers, non-profits and others can come together, learn, share and engage with one another. You know that old adage, “It takes a village to raise a child”? I believe it takes a community to build tomorrow’s EMS. I’ll be there. Will you join me?
