Social media has changed the way public safety agencies communicate with the residents in their community. Platforms add an additional communication medium to not only provide valuable life-saving information before and during an emergency crisis, but also as a way to learn how to serve the community better. It is important to remember that agency-run social media is not a one way, top to bottom method of communication. Effective public safety use ensures communication is agency to resident and resident to agency.

Recommended to #NPTechClubATX by the Texas Department of Emergency Management, Ashley E. Morris will share with us why emergency management and public safety agencies are utilizing social media, what platforms and techniques are being used, and how the public can better assist public safety agencies during local emergencies and disasters. The concept of volunteer-based virtual operation support teams (VOST) will also be discussed.

About Our Speaker

Ashley E. Morris is currently the emergency planner and assistant emergency management coordinator for the City of Leander. Her primary roles as an emergency manager cover tasks in preparing, responding, and recovering from local emergencies and disasters. Daily tasks include emergency disaster planning, community outreach, public information, and building partnerships to allow for better disaster response. During severe weather, she helps coordinate the local emergency operations center and assists with the decision-making process of disaster response within her city. She also produces weather forecasts for city operations.

Ashley received her master’s in natural hazards geography from Texas Tech University in December 2016. Her thesis work was titled, “An Investigation of Social Vulnerability and Storm Resource Availability for Tornado Hazards in Lubbock, Texas.” Her undergraduate work at Texas Tech dabbled in geophysics and atmospheric science. While at Texas Tech, she was the team lead for the West Texas Virtual Operations Support Team (VOST) sponsored by the National Weather Service. West Texas VOST supported severe weather operations by using social media techniques to find storm damage reports and assist during incide

Nonprofit Tech Club Austin #NPTechClubATX is part of a network of tech clubs across the nation and the world. NTEN: Nonprofit Technology Network and NetSquared (a division of TechSoup), are co-sponsors. Meetings are free and open to all. We are inclusive and celebrate multiple approaches, backgrounds and points of view. Our aim is to help nonprofits find cost-effective tech solutions and techniques to make their work easier, more secure and efficient.

We would like to thank Capital Factory for being our primary venue host during 2020. Our tech club programs will also appear on the Capital Factory event calendar. We are pleased Trianon Coffee will continue as a #NPTechClubATX sponsor during 2020. Hearty thanks to both!

Sincerely,

#NPTechClubATX Volunteer Team