Thursday, December 15, 2011

At #11 ... from the land where "apple juice" flows: Los Ranchos

I've met few people who really inspire me to do more. Jeff Phillips, AKA Los Ranchos EM is one of those individuals. Whether tweeting from his own account or as official representative of the Los Ranchos, NM, Emergency Management, Jeff is one of the most trusted voices in SMEM.


The accomplishments speak for themselves. He was a key player behind the SMEM camp at NEMA in Washington this year. A meeting that led to a recent report which sets the stage for greater things for the integration of social media into emergency management programs.
Here's Jeff in action with Heather Blanchard (@poplifegirl) from CrisisCommons and another SMEM luminary:




Perhaps his greatest contribution is his untiring work in laying out and promoting the concept of Virtual Operations Support Group/Team. The VOST/VOSG is being recognized as a key development in the whole SMEM movement:
The Virtual Operations Support Team (VOST)  is an idea that is currently in the development stage and is designed around this concept of outsourcing. The brainchild of Jeff Philips, a SMEM thought-leader, the VOST is designed to help with the tasks of monitoring, archiving and cataloging  social media content during a crisis. One great thing about monitoring social media is that you do not have to be physically co-located with emergency response personnel; monitoring can take place from anywhere, including from a home personal computer. The team Jeff has assembled, via social media of course,  have been testing this concept during conferences with large amounts of twitter traffic (such as the 140 conference)
-- Kim Stephens, IDisaster2.0 Blog post, June 2011

For all his contributions (and he's nowhere near done !) on his own Twitter account or as LosRanchosEM, Jeff Phillips cracks the elite dozen among the top Social Media in Emergency Management destinations.


The list so far:
#11: Jeff Phillips, Los Ranchos EM#12: Sgt Tim Burrows, Constable Scott Mills and the Toronto Police Service 
#13: the weekly #smemchat
#14: 999 Social Media 
#15: Brian Humphrey ... a true pionneer 
#16: ushahidi ... witnessing change and progress in SMEM







1 comment:

  1. One of my top two or three in EM (not just SMEM). A thought-leader in every sense of the word and, probably most importantly, one hell of a nice guy. Happy to call Jeff my friend.

    Jim

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