Make Sure You "Kick the Tires" on Dispatch Console Furniture in 2018

Annual Conferences

Association sponsored training conferences are an ideal opportunity for teams to check out dispatch console workstations, 911 center furniture, and other public safety support equipment.

Since many agencies will send multiple team members to these events for training. Be sure that a tour of the expo is on the must-do list.

Get the dispatchers, it teams and facility managers involved when choosing dispatch console furniture

The adage "two heads are better than one" is applicable when evaluating consoles. Our friends at Toggle recently shared an article about the value of team work where they spoke about blind spots (we all have them) and how our individual perception can compromise problem solving and judgment.

Assigning a variety of team members to review a product will help round-out the evaluation. Your operators will have different needs than IT. The facilities team will have different priorities still. Wondering what feature sets are important to each of your team members? Download this quick-start buyer's guide to learn more.

In this video, taken at an Association Expo, you can see that dispatchers, IT and comm leaders are interested in unique features:

So get the team involved. Assign them feature sets to evaluate. Perhaps even provide a checklist they can use to gather information and report back. Not only will you gain loads of useful data, you will be stretching your conference investment.

National conferences

These three primary Public Safety conferences offer a wealth of training for dispatchers, communications leadership, and support staff in areas of technology, best-practices, career advancement, personal development and health and wellness.

Visit the Navigator homepage for more information.

Visit the NENA association website to learn more.

Check out the APCO program schedule.

Regional Conferences

Some regional conferences also host vendors who will have products to demo. These conferences may also easier to get to, especially if you do not plan to send a team to a national event.

In our neck of the woods, we'll be attending Western Regional APCO the week of March 26, 2018 in Tacoma, WA.

Check with your state APCO and NENA organization for training and expos near you.