Good evening and welcome to the October Volunteer Forum. We're coming to you live from the CFA City Office here in Exhibition Street. And I want to start tonight's forum by acknowledging the Aboriginal lands to which we were all meeting on tonight and pay our respects to Aboriginal elders past and present and recognise the strength and resilience of Aboriginal people in this land. Lots to talk about tonight. Have a full panel of distinguished guests. Our group general manager for support services, Kylie Bates. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. Our chief information officer, Brennan O'Kane. Thank you for joining us this evening. Great to be here. Lots of fun IT stuff to talk about tonight. Nicole Ferrell, our general manager for health and safety. Making sure we're all safe and well on the on the panel. So thank you. And I know you've got some very important things to talk about tonight. And of course, yet again, Deputy Chief Officer Gary Cook, Deputy Chief Officer for Response and Coordination. Welcome, Gary. I know a lot of people like asking questions about operational stuff and thanks for coming on the panel tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, I do need to do a little bit of housekeeping to begin with. I am currently the state response controller on duty for Victoria at the moment and I'll be performing that role up until Thursday morning. I am on duty and subsequently there is a lot happening across the state at the moment, not only across the flood affected areas but also some significant storm and flooding and rescue events occurring in outer metropolitan Melbourne, particularly in the Lillydale region at the moment. So whilst I am on the panel at the moment, if I do disappear for any reason or have to get off the panel, Gary was happily volunteer or volunteer one or the other to jump in and take over and seeing the panel here this evening. So I just wanted to be quite up front with everyone about that. So thank you. As usual, tell us where you're watching from. We love to know where our members are tuning in from and I love to see when people are tuning in from overseas or all across Australia. We've got plenty of people from Leonard's and the Ballerina. I see Barangarook West, Kylie, that rings a bell. Yes, I believe you got your new truck in the last couple of weeks. So I know that's been a long time coming. So I hope you look after it, our infrastructure team. And I know Danny Jones is on tonight. We'll be pleased to know that that's now in good hands. Absolutely. A well-deserved brigade. And they did have that unfortunate incident with their former tanker. And thankfully they were okay as a result, but it's fantastic to see the Barangarook West guys get their new tanker. You do use the guys term collectively. I'm no online. We have a heap of CFA executive and senior management online waiting to answer any questions that you might have. So if you do have a question, feel free just to pop it in the chat and get picked up. And if we don't answer the question here on the panel this evening, one of the friendly team behind the scenes will pick up the question and try to do their best to answer that for you tonight. So let's, beyond a lot of things to talk about tonight. We're going to be talking about the floods, a lot happening across the state in respect to flooding at the moment. And many CFA members are out there as we speak, side by side with other emergency services in this state in terms of looking after the communities at the moment. So we're going to talk a bit about the flood operation. And the other side of that is we're going to talk about some of the mental health aspects of that and what it might mean for our people. As I said, Brendan, we're going to talk about IT and some elements of IT. And more importantly, I guess what's coming, what's new. And with that as well, we're going to touch on the radio replacement program tonight. We'll talk a little bit more about that. I know we've had questions asked at previous volunteer forums and we were through a probity process at that time. So we couldn't talk about it too much, but we can talk about it a little bit more tonight and we're glad to have you along to be able to talk about that. And then we're going to obviously talk about many and varied other things that wherever our panel wants to take us or you at home where you want to take us as a result of asking the questions. As I said, lots of flooding across the state at the moment. And I know Gary, you were state response controller not that long ago when the prediction started to come in and we've had weeks and weeks, in fact months of rain, catchments absolutely saturated. In fact, the SES has been telling us that for quite some time. Talk us through what it meant to be in the SRC chair and what was happening in the lead up to this emergency event. Yeah, thanks Chief. So it all started Tuesday, fortnight ago actually and in state response controller with a pretty dynamic forecast but what was clear there was a lot of rain coming. So we knew that but Mother Nature has a way of sorting those things out eventually but where it was going to land was sort of pretty dynamic. So we ended up with incident control centers set up in effectively every region in the states. We had Ballarat, Horsham down around Bansdale in the east a number up along the north including Bendigo and Shepperton which ended up being perhaps the pivot points as we determined where the rain actually landed and then the subsequent consequence. So Tuesday was a huge planning day and then really Wednesday was a bit of a hiatus in the middle there because we just had to sit and wait then for that system to come through and deliver what it was going to deliver. So really quite an interesting big day Tuesday planning, a big day waiting almost Wednesday and then of course the rain hit and we had the impacts at Seymour and then further down the Goldman system but of course Benalla, Wangarat up in the northeast Wadonga was stood up, fortunately the rain didn't land in the upper northeast but as you said everything is just really super wet out there at the moment and it doesn't take much rain at all now to trigger the rises in the streams. Absolutely and I see we have online here and a big shout out to Simon O'Callaghan and the crew from Ochuca because some of them are having a bit of a well-earned rest at the moment, have chosen to dial in tonight to watch this. So look, a big shout out to the Ochuca Brigade. I know you're not the only brigade out there doing stuff at the moment and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the impacts on CFA brigades but I did want to have a bit of a shout out. Speaking of Ochuca, our roving reporters got out and about earlier in the week to actually go and see for themselves some of the operations that were occurring and some of the flood impacts on our communities and stop and take a second to speak to some of our members and get from them their insights on what's been occurring during this flood emergency. So let's hear what they had to say. Alex Green, firstly tenant at Ochuca Brigade. We've had a little bit of moisture come from various places around town so we have had the floods that came through Rochester up the Camp Aspie and then came in last weekend so they came through the center of town so we're madly sad but sandbagged beforehand. We had an expected river height of 95.65 and we ended up at 96.25 so 600mm over the prediction so we had a little bit of a fight there. We were in there fighting, monitoring the levels pumping out water as we went and the water came behind and beat us for a little while. There were a few tears shed but we managed to get back in there with a strike team of heavy pumpers pump out all the water and we managed to save houses. We've had multiple strike teams come up in heavy tankers, medium tankers we've even got an FCV strike team up here at the moment. This could be an issue for anywhere up to five weeks so it's going to be a constant battle called for pumps from all over the state we're putting them in strategic places around town and we're also putting strategic cases of sandbags so if we do have a blowout or anything else we can try and fix it, pump it out and move on to the next one. Just the community have been absolutely astounding they've come out in spades and delivered every time I put up a Facebook post asking for help to sandbag something they're there, we've got half the town and two out of the other half are helping us so it's just been amazing. So Luke Waterston is my name my rank is Acting Commander for Fire Rescue Victoria in the building environment my role at this incident is Sector Commander for the Atukah sector so the resources that we have here at the moment this is a multi-agency event we've got SES we've got CFA we've got Fire Rescue Victoria Fire Saving we've got Mines Rescue from Fosterville I'm going to miss someone here Keith but we've got nearly everybody with a badge on their shoulders I just noticed some New South Wales Fisheries or Victorian Fisheries come walking through the fire station if you were in a badge for the State of Victoria they've probably been in Atukah at some stage ADF have been a massive presence here Victoria Police has been a massive presence as well Originally when we first knew of this water event coming on the Merrill River coinciding with the Campaspe River water event and also the forecasted rain we were given a timeline of Wednesday afternoon for the High Water Mark which meant that we had to act and act fast and when I say act fast we've been able to build a two and a half kilometre long mineral earth levee with excavators and bulldozers and dump trucks in 48 hours at the same time we've been able to build probably the same distance if not greater sandbag, levee along the Campaspe throughout residential Atukah and out in the east of Atukah around the flood plains to the east so I'm being massively supported by the Instant Control Centre in Bendigo led by the Instant Control Team Mark Attale and Les Veering Greg Murphy are some of the Instant Controllers that have been in that Instant Control Team and have supported me greatly with the advice from our flood planners and all our stakeholders they've given us the support to mitigate the risks to learn from the lessons of other towns that weren't as lucky as us When we put in the request and when the information from our stakeholders was known the challenges and the risks that are associated with this high water level and the impending rain coming through strike teams have been able to assemble from nearly all over Victoria which has been really really impressive given the fact that some of these strike teams have come from places that have had their own weather events and have had to pick up and move on straight away again so it's been really good My name's Shane Addison I'm from Scoresby Fire Brigade and in the background here we've got Scoresby Hose Lab we were called up to Echuca yesterday to help with the emergency flood relief and to work with local CFA and SES crews in trying to mitigate that flood risk Our whole purpose here is to provide the hose and we've got 2.3km of 100ml hose on board and work with FRV pumper strike teams to ensure we have rainfall inside the safe area we can pump it back out into the river so that is essentially our task and we've been doing some pumping today and we've moved already about 1ml or 1ml of water just to make sure we can move it and the hose lab will be here until Tuesday next week or longer if required All I can say is if you're at a job and you're thinking about how we're going to move that water and do we need bigger hose make that call in the fire column and request the resource we normally travel right throughout Victoria but it's the only hose layer that CFA has and we'd like to see it utilise a lot more because we know the value that it can add Here's some Peter Leitch a volunteer from the Wengarata Fire Brigade and currently one of the team members and team leaders of the Wengarata mobile command van We've been for the last three days we've been working out of Shepparton with the floods, with the strike team then we've been redeployed today up to Rochester to assist with strike teams working in this area We're doing radio communications and logging work that they've been doing and so they've been doing everything from welfare checks to delivering sandbags delivering medicines delivering food so we've just been coordinating that with all the strike teams and it would be remiss of me not to touch on the amount of donations and support we've had from not just local businesses but businesses indeed throughout the state and Australia we've had offers of pumps we've had offers of food we've had offers of diesel we've had offers of everything you can think of to help mitigate this risk and to keep our crews going and it's amazing, it's amazing we've had 16 three inch quick fill pumps being donated which the DMOs are working on right at the moment to make them fit and ready for pumping should we need it and definitely when we move into the recovery phase Could not agree more what a fantastic effort by the local communities whether they be the local community members living in the streets affected in the towns affected all the surrounds the emergency service personnel in those areas everyone is just dug deep to do the best that they can to protect the communities Gary, watching the video what comes to thought? Just exactly that like everybody's got their shoulder to the wheel and we know that there are resources in other parts of the state that are probably willing to help now we haven't actually used all the resources around the state but undoubtedly this is a bit of a marathon it's not a sprint and there's a fair bit of time before the water in the northern rivers pass through the state border so I'd suspect the people have been working really hard now for a couple of weeks and we will be calling on other resources around the state to at some stage perhaps give a chop out I think that's what I guess sometimes you forget sometimes that this flood event is water not only has fallen in Victoria but also we've got that massive water in New South Wales yet to make its way through the systems into the Murray and we're talking about areas like Swan Hill even through to Mildura experiencing this flood event right up to December so we've got weeks of flood operations ahead of us the northern rivers coming down the Darling, the Murrumbidge they're all in major flood and all that water has to dump its way through the Murray system to get down and through the Kurong so we've got all the northern rivers in Victoria pushing into the Murray what was already bulging at the seams coming out of Lake Hume and the top end in the upper Murray so there's a massive amount of water got to clear the state and it will take weeks in fact the Bureau is saying clearly for a lot of this water it will be into December before it's actually pushing out and could even be longer because there's so much water damming up basically a damming effect as you say it's all hands on the wheel how great to see the Scoresby hose layer that thing gets around everywhere across the states it's a beautiful piece of equipment a big shout out to the Knox Group I know they're very proud of the Scoresby hose layer and all their specialist equipment there but what a great use of that piece of machinery absolutely and that's the beauty of having state-wide resources that can be called on and used to not necessarily what the Scoresby were going to when they were putting that together and part of that Knox Group strategy of specialist appliances wouldn't necessarily have been considering it being used in this environment but what a great thing that it is absolutely we saw not only that the MCV out of Wangerata but it's not only just CFA so to be fair there's a lot of agencies that have contributed and I know FRVs and a strike team of heavy pumpers up to the flood affected regions as well because there was a need for large pumps to move a lot of a lot of large volume of water so our appreciation goes to Fire Rescue Victoria and I see Simon in the chat from Ochuca there and he calls it out so there's been a great help to the guys and girls up at Ochuca so if anyone from FRVs watching thank you very much and as you said it's going to go for quite a long time and I do see a lot of resource requests but it's not just trucks it's not just ground crews we've been actually supplying a lot of stuff to the flood operations and Kylie out of your group a lot of your people have been very busy in the flood operation as well they have certainly State Logistics Centre have been front and centre of getting things out to the districts that need them and the brigades so I like a bit of colour and movement and some numbers so what the State Logistics Centre have told me is we've already supplied about 40,000 bottles of fresh water to those communities which there's plenty of water but they might not necessarily have safe drinking water and we've stocked up to make sure we've got plenty of supply that we can continue to do that as needed things like insect repellent gumboots ration packs hand sanitiser PPE it's all being coordinated by the State Logistics Centre I think our drivers have already between them managing their fatigue but already done about 2,000 kilometres worth of ferrying our goods backwards and forwards and making sure that the people on the ground and the volunteers have what they need Absolutely and speaking of fatigue how important in a long duration event like this is having an appreciation of fatigue and the effects of fatigue on operations Absolutely so we've been talking about this being a marathon not a sprint and so all of those and I think this particular event has come at a time where a lot of people have been under the pump in other ways and so it's that sort of cumulative effect in terms of how we may be feeling we can only survive on the adrenaline for so long so just being really mindful of those signs of fatigue So talk us through the signs So if you feel like you are nodding off heavy blinking you know and it just sounds obvious but you're not sleeping so your mind just keeps churning and churning and churning but you can't turn off that switching off some people actually become really quite heightened when they're not normally heightened or can have the opposite effect So what are some of the things that I guess our people can do and I don't know there are many of our members and community members in these areas right now that are affected and their livelihoods are at stake their families are at stake so there's a drive to want to protect themselves their family their property so not diminishing that in any way shape or form because that's absolutely important what are some of the things that some of the practical things that we can be doing to manage our fatigue So I think one of the first things is again this is going to sound strange but actually talk to someone so don't sort of feel like you need to kind of hold in what you're feeling or experiencing at a time it doesn't need to be tapping into the wellbeing support line although I do recommend that and I'll talk a bit about that later there's a plug but we all have someone one or two people that we trust and you can lean on so absolutely have those conversations where you can do what you can to actually prioritise sleep I know that can be quite difficult in this sort of circumstance where sleep is probably the last thing on your mind particularly when you're thinking about your own property and those of loved ones or your neighbours making sure that you are staying hydrated eating well as much as you possibly can not like me I had some fries before probably wasn't the greatest thing to have for dinner tonight but all those I guess getting back to basics getting back to your core needs resting when you can having a good meal is there anything with that meal carbohydrates those sort of things or is there anything in particular that you would recommend staying away from anything that's going to give you a very high sugar high staying away from too much coffee because those are the sorts of things that you then experience an extreme kind of dip in your energy levels although we all love our coffee but I'm just being mindful of those sorts of things that can interrupt your sleep as well and your risk patterns absolutely, absolutely and we'll talk a little bit more about I guess health and wellbeing in a second but just to finish off with your area Kylie is we spoke about the SLC doing a fantastic job resupplied doing great work to make sure that our districts and brigades get what they need I've sung their praises before the DMOs what you're going to say Jason a shout out earlier for Danny's team and certainly our DMOs are front and centre many of them themselves are in those affected communities so they're first to get in and look at what we need to do to get our appliances back to working order so they are assisting in decontamination recovery of vehicles I think the other thing that's been impressive that we've seen is where brigades have lost vehicles either temporarily or permanently at the moment other brigades have really stepped up to work with our fleet team to supply and do some temporary swaps around and I think that really speaks to the integral role our fleet team and the DMOs play in that absolutely, absolutely there's a lot happening across the state a lot of people on the ground doing what they need to do in support of the operation and involved in the operation themselves but there is a human element to this and for many of our members that may not know a lot of our members and I mean a lot of our members are actually being personally affected by this flood emergency whilst they were out helping others and as a bit of an example it's been reported to me that the members of the Rochester Brigade 43 out of the 48 members of their houses inundated water over the floors whilst they were out helping other members of that community and that just goes to show the dedication of our members and it wasn't just Rochester, there are other brigades across the state that are dealing with the exact same thing we've seen photos of Marupna we've seen photos of, I'm going to say it wrong I've been saying it wrong all week but we're right, we're right we're right, thank you where we saw the replacement of the people given to them by another brigade so many people have been affected and that's why it is so important that we do talk about this next subject but before I do again, we had our roving reporters in the field to speak to our peer team to understand what they've been doing during this flood emergency Gloria Turner Vella Leonard we're peers with the CFA based here now at the moment in Atuka it's always difficult when you move into an area where there's a fire or flood to embed yourself into the operations so that was our first aim and we're working now with our crews and right across the agencies our role up here at the moment is that basically we're just going around and checking on the crews that are out there so even just pulling on our trucks and just making sure that they've got food and water we've had to ferry the girls into the toilets there's nothing out there for them to go to and also behind every person there's a story so when you're under pressure often those stories or those activities in your private life come to the surface and cause trauma in the communities in delivering and being up here under this emotional stress that they are and even the other agencies the guys are coming up to us and just chatting and talking about what they're seeing out there which is really good and we've even had some of the community talking with us so we've spotted a few that are probably near tears so we've gone up and spoken to them and let them know that we're here and asked with water crews that were going in and finding people in homes in difficult situations of course it affects them emotionally you know it's sad there's a lot of sadness as there always is but we're happy to be here and to be able to allow them to speak and see what we can do we might be here but behind us is a really strong barrier so if we're getting phone calls about different issues we can ask that team to follow up so that we're not doing we can't do it all but CFA has a 1800 helpline and we suggest to all CFA members to call and use that service they're available they can access us they can access all the different services they need and so take care of yourself Gloria 1800 959232 is the line that you call and a big shout out to our peers that are doing an amazing job out across the flood affected areas we all want to be superman or superwoman or mortals we saw the video that health and wellbeing psychological health and wellbeing in the peer group sit within your portfolio what are some of your thoughts so I guess just picking up something that Gary said earlier around this being a really sort of dynamic situation and that there are many unknowns but what we do know is that in the immediate aftermath of disaster many people will experience intense reactions but for most people these reactions will decline over time and these intense reactions are a normal response to an abnormal event so I think that's a really important thing to remember so you will have heard our peers Gloria and Bella just then talk about some of those responses reactions that are normal feelings so they referred to sadness there also can be loss and grief and a feeling of helplessness and probably at the moment depending on where you are in the state it can be just sheer survival mode so our peers really are I guess skilled at understanding what sort of support the person may need at the particular time because that can change and the really important thing to I guess to understand and Keem for your thoughts Gary and Kylie is it's about supplying the support now today because our people are seeing some pretty challenging things into the field but it's not just today it's next week, it's next month it's six months down the track when the flood waters have gone but some of those feelings continue to exist and Gary I know that was the case for many of our members following the 1925 season and in fact 09, Black Saturday yeah absolutely and that's why it's important to manage this as a continuum really, don't wait until it's too late it's never too early to have these conversations and our peers out there do just the best work and I think back to that 1920 season in particular we put peers on aeroplanes and took them with strike teams into New South Wales and then we brought that down and ran them right throughout the summer they did a phenomenal amount of work and so many of our members out on the ground were just absolutely stoked at the support they got from our peers but it has to then continue on so it's about the first steps but then it's about actually and different people need different support as Nicole's indicated before not everybody's going to react the same way around this but it's important that we actually support our people and it's not too early to seek support it's never too early absolutely and Kylie there are peers in the field we have a great peer program but there is so much more available to our members and their family absolutely so the member well being the member assistance program you know you can gain access and you know urgent support through that but there are programs through the member assistance where your family can get assistance there's financial advice that members can access so they're often really important supports for members further down the track and I think it's really important just picking up on what Gary said you never know where people are at so right now people can be coping can be working through but when they're back in their brigade a few months down the track or back in the workplace at headquarters there can be other things playing out for people so I think it's important as all as leaders and BMTs our leaders as well out there as part of our leadership cohort to be asking those questions regularly absolutely it's just so important that we make sure that those services are available to our members as an executive members that's at the forefront of our minds ensuring that we do the right thing we service the community and we help our community but it's about that safety first physical safety but also the psychological safety of our members as they're out there doing what they do best which is protecting our communities so Brendan I know you've sort of been sitting there rather quiet thinking ah I've got away with dealing with any of this flood sort of stuff but you were dragged into it as well the other day tell us what happened yeah well we had an outage up in Mildura with Telstra had a network outage so kicked in our business continuity we planned with both the people in the comms team but also people up in District 18 and it worked as as planned so that was where we got everybody connected they knew what was going on communicated to so it was good to be able to test it with everything going right yeah absolutely and I guess a lot of people don't realise it the CFA you know whilst we're talking about operations and that sort of stuff but the CFA all of CFA is all about operations whether it be the ICT technicians back at Bourboud or out in the field doing that whether it be the peers on the front line whether it be the people in payroll making sure that or the people paying the accounts to make sure that we have the gumboots available for the SLC to distribute but also and I did touch on there earlier and I know Kylie again to your area CFA infrastructure has been affected quite a lot of CFA infrastructure so our land and buildings team are going to be out there having to do what they are they'll be pretty busy I think we've got about 13 fire stations that have been impacted some way or another three which have had pretty significant and major damage that will take quite a while to remediate and potentially have some challenges for operations so getting that intel from the ground our APOs out in the field working closely with land and buildings so really critical role so that we minimise the impact operations over the longer term absolutely it doesn't matter if you wear a uniform or not in CFA you're all part of the team that makes it happen and a big thanks goes out to everyone for your contributions and what you've done so question time and Gary one for you and your thoughts and one from Michael looking at recovery there's rumours that parks Victoria will not be able to reopen their parks along the flood affected rivers for up to one year due to hazardous trees we know that some people will disobey the closures and will still go camping and have campfires escape what will we see a CFA's policy about entering areas that park speakers closed due to hazardous trees I think the first thing is not sure whether they'll be closed or not and the hazardous trees issue is something that we know happens whether we're dealing with fires or whether we're dealing with floods so I guess we've got our members trained but the first thing is if there are people that are actually going into those parks and they're closed then there obviously there's other mechanisms there in terms of parks Victoria and their ability to prosecute but safety is paramount so anything that our firefighters are doing if there are hazardous trees in that area then we would expect that people actually either assess that appropriately and not enter or find an alternative way to come in the other bit is that we will still have aviation resources so we'll have our heli tax and things like that available this summer and if that's what's required to put a campfire out that shouldn't be there then people, the incident controller can request that so if it hasn't come under PDD activation then you can still request it so I guess from our perspective we would look to put as we always do safety first and then deal with that accordingly but I haven't actually heard that at this stage it's probably a little bit early or premature to be actually determining whether that is actually going to occur but one thing for sure there will be some level of destabilisation of trees given the amount of inundation that's occurred and all the more reason why we do that tree has it's awareness really isn't it? Look it is, I mean we unfortunately know from our experiences that trees take more lives in firefighting and certainly in the last 10 years that's been the case than anything else so we just need to heed those warnings and whether the tree is being impacted because of fire or whether they've been impacted because of flood or wind or all of those other elements we just need to be really aware of the dangers of trees. Absolutely, absolutely so let's go talking about the elephant in the room and lots of comments in the chat Nicole we saw some changes to the pandemic arrangements in Victoria can you talk us through what happened recently with the pandemic orders? Yes, so the pandemic orders ended on the 12th of October 1159pm on the 12th of October which essentially means that there are no pandemic orders in place other than some requirements still in the health sector and also in the aged care sector as well so really looking at what that means for us in terms of that. And each of the secretaries of the departments have been given the job of coming up with the departmental secretary policy that applies to each of it so for CFA as part of the department of justice community safety we're part of that and contributing to that so we did give out our commitment post the ending of the pandemic order to consult with our volunteers and understand and as you correctly alluded to one of our biggest challenges at the moment is just to quite understand what those secretary orders mean for the health industry so just so we can appreciate a brigade responding to a hospital for an AFA or a brigade conducting FEM business in a health care sitting what some of those requirements might be so we've asked those questions, we're hoping to get that response back from them very soon and we'll be able to put together a position to be able to go to our membership and ask them for their views. In the meantime standing order 17 on COVID vaccinations in the pandemic order is still the case now there are just for clarity I guess there are some exemptions that we did put in to standing order 17 following the last change to the pandemic order do you want to step us through some of those exemptions? Sure so the exceptional circumstances relate to um turning out for an emergency that is qualified by being authorised by your captain to do so the second exceptional circumstance relates to attendance at critical training whereby you are still required to have two doses again with authorisation of your captain and there are certain categories that are deemed critical training. Absolutely so if you are in doubt about what the current rules are please speak to your district office but standing order 17 will remain in place until we consult with our volunteers and that includes the VFBV to come to a new position so we are hoping to be able to come out and talk about that very very soon as I said once we get some of those other advices in respect to our staff that will be communicated through a separate process I know the staff have already been involved in the consultation process for our policy so that is where we are at the moment I know for some it is probably not what you want to hear for others you are probably laxed with it but it is important that we address it I know there is a lot of comments in the chat so I wanted to make sure we didn't finish tonight without addressing that situation so thank you to those people in the chat that raised it. Brendan before we talk about all things that go pop, whiz and bang in the IT space when are we going to get some tablets mounted in our trucks? yep that is on the way early in the new year the mobility project is underway and it is progressing well so the plan is that we will do a proof of concept for about 30 vehicles in the first quarter of next year and fine tune things as we go through that and then start rolling out to the rest of the fleet as we move through 2023-2024 there will be a number of applications on it one of the key themes in ICT and you talked about making everything about supporting the operations one of the key themes is really making it easy for the brigades and the volunteers we will put a number of applications on the tablets FERS online and soon to be FERS mobile SAS Hazmat, Road Crash Rescue MCOP will have weather we will have mapping and pre-plans all delivered through the tablet one of the key things you want to put there with the CAD so we are working with Esther on that they have got a few things they have got to sort out on their side and we are working closely with them to make that happen so the mobility project is one of the big ones we have got a lot of other things just trying to make it easier for the brigades and the volunteers getting rid of the paperwork automating some of the processes we have done that with the volunteer recruitment hub FERS I mentioned looking at apps and the pocket book apps so that people have got everything on the fire ground with them that they need to absolutely and many of our members might remember that first responder guide Gary that CFA and NFB put together their study I would love to see that digitised and again having it in the palm of your hand no matter where you are it doesn't really matter whether you are in phone reception or not being able to call up that critical information and be able to help our people on the fire ground so Brendan is the COO one question for you so what keeps you up at night? yeah cyber security is probably the key thing and it the criminals are progressing very quickly the technology is changing all the time so we have to be on top of it so we are doing a number of things in the cyber security space we have already made some good improvements we have appointed a cyber security manager to help drive that we are also investing in tools and getting some good partners to help us with that and that will roll through to the volunteer population as well because you are only as strong as your weakest link so we are giving all our members access to a lot of the systems but with that access we need to make sure we have security there as well and people will be well aware of some of the big breaches hitting the press at the moment but there is a lot happening that isn't hitting the media and we do a lot of testing to find out what our vulnerabilities are and fix them as quickly as we can we have a lot of equipment that we need to update to close off some of those issues and we are addressing that as we go forward so Rodney asks talking all things IT we have had a number of hacks with major businesses recently as you said before how confident can we be that our personal information is fully secure reasonably confident and we are doing things to increase that confidence we don't hold a lot of personal information we hold a lot of the member information their names, addresses and contact details drivers licences for some of them we don't hold a lot of other banking details or that sort of stuff so hopefully that diminishes us from being a target but anything with a dot gov on the email addresses pretty much a target really for those hackers and I know you report regularly to the executive and the board around where we are in terms of our cyber security and I think for myself I'm glad to see that compared to where we sit with other companies with broader industry we actually rate quite well can always do more we should always be doing more because this is evolving all the time but we are actually sitting quite well in terms of our security score if that's what you call it for what we have currently don't we we do and we need to be careful and I think everybody I put out some communications recently because quite often it's just people opening up an email, clicking on a link in an email or answering a phone call we've had attempts to get into our systems by people ringing members or ringing staff and saying I'm from Microsoft, you've got a security issue I need to fix it and that was a scammer so we just need to be really careful so education is a key thing tools is a key thing but while we are recently confident that everything is safe we've also got to prepare if things go wrong so we're working on our responses and making sure we can react quickly and we've got assistance in reacting quickly and getting things closed down and sorted out so the alerting, the monitoring we're improving all that as well I guess there is a lot to be mindful of in this space and a lot of terms that I guess used in the ICT space and one that comes to my mind is phishing and I'm not talking about throwing a line off the back of a boat with an eski for a tinny so what is phishing? Phishing is when people send emails or there might be text messages and there will be a link and they'll just say press this link to fix up a security problem or press this link to check your account your PayPal account has been hit with a $200 charge if you disagree hit this link better get that quickly and we will do some testing on phishing but they call friendly phishing so we need to make sure again it gets back to the education so that people are aware of what could be a scam and to take extra precautions so when you go friendly phishing and you catch a tiddler do you throw it back? and what about wailing? well hopefully we don't catch any wails that is actually a term isn't it in the ICT space and phishing? if members do want to know more about cyber security and what you can do to protect yourself your brigade there's a lot of information available on members online but also there's a cyber security training package on LMS that people can do can't they? and we will be increasing the training on LMS in the cyber security space as well that's one of the things I guess the most powerful thing or piece of advice that we can give someone if it looks dodgy or even looks a bit whatever just don't click and just delete is probably the thing to do with it isn't it? yeah absolutely so other things happening in the ICT space and one I know that our members are quite interested in we have talked about it more recently is our radio replacement program and we've had questions before to the panel about when are we getting our new radios and what does it all mean we took some time out to speak to Jason Lawrence who's our manager of operational communications to talk about the radio replacement program and what it will mean for our members thanks chief good to finally be able to talk about the radio replacement program occurring in CFA at the moment my name is Jason Lawrence assistant chief fire officer CFA operational communications and with me I've got Will and Shane from the radio replacement program what we're going to talk a little bit about the program occurring across CFA at the moment so we're finally in a position to progress replacement of CFA's entire fleet of operational radios we've had the current TATE radios for in excess of 12 years now and a number of years ago we put a case to government to fund the replacement of CFA's radio fleet we're progressing that at the moment and we're finally in a position where we can do a bit of a demonstration for some of the products that we've selected and provide a bit of direction that we're the projects at and part of that we'll be starting to engage with our personnel in the field about what that radio replacement program looks like so thank you all for your patience we have had a variety of people being involved in the program I'd like to call out the URG members thank you so much our user reference group as far as our volunteers being able to be part of the team to help us through the evaluations that's now completed so we've done our lab evaluations our field evaluations we've done some hostile environment evaluations as well so this is why you're able to see the products in front of you we are now progressing to our pilots with these preferred products the pilot is going to be starting hopefully in January and we will then push towards that being done over a variety of brigades but today just wanted to show you some of the products that we've actually got we've got both mobiles and portables available for show today what we've got here is a range of three portables that we're going to take through to the pilot each of these portable radios is what we call dual band UHF and VHF so that we can actually work with all of our partner agencies and interstate agencies as well on any of the networks that we're currently using in Victoria all radios do have a level of intrinsic safety which is important to us as a fire service one radio has a higher top level of intrinsic safety which will be applicable to some locations the only other difference between these three radios here is the one in the middle has the capability for what we call LTE connection which uses the cellular mobile phone network in the event that we lose our normal radio coverage on what we know is the RMR network it can connect through using a cellular connection if that's available to help fill out some of our black spots particularly in building situations so obviously to get to this point we've had to take a fair bit of analysis a market scan to see what products are out there and even though that we've got the products in front of us today it doesn't mean that we haven't tried and tested a whole range of products to get to this point and put some pretty strict criteria in place will I suppose would you like to just sort of talk us through some of the challenges and the testing that we've undertaken to get to this point the key thing was for us to narrow down our scope we really had that around core requirements so it was about about desktop evaluation then from there our lab evaluations multitude of hours spent in the lab testing all of these products and then pushing it out to field evaluation that field evaluation included going through in the vehicle everything that was around operational environments so wearing it on PPC ensuring that the products cat does actually is capable along with also making sure that all of the communications itself were solid being received from both user to user, user out to base and then back out as well under environments behind a pumper as an example so they've definitely been put through the rigour and we've also got the pilot still ahead of us as well so looking forward to seeing outcomes from that as well so obviously some of the testing including hostile environments and clearly engaging with all our operational members to make sure they were wearing the appropriate PPC, the radio fitted into that existing and future PPC requirements could be housed appropriately and as you say Will there's probably some appropriate time to talk about some of the technology uplifts. One of the key benefits some of the volunteers will see is the ability of having these dual band radios and multi band radios that we can talk to other agencies in the past we've had to either swap radios with other agencies in order to maintain interoperability and communications on the fire ground or in some cases we rely verbally because we can't communicate these radios will be able to have the channels of our partner agencies in them to have seamless interoperability and communications. We also portable radios will all have GPS capability as well so we can track the radios themselves for the safety of our members we have also taken into account the button size, location our remote speaker mic this is some work we did with Motorola based on the feedback from our field evaluations to ensure that we had good size buttons that can be usable when members are wearing our gloves. So all in all I think we'll see an improvement in our capability on the fire ground thanks Jason. Another great function of these radios is the ability to do voice activation for a number of functions. Channel 542 Volume 7 Volume 7 One of the features of the mobile radio is also strong indication of when you are out of service of the RMR. The radio will give a strong indication if it cannot find a site to indicate you are out of range. We will see the front display change colour as it is now done to indicate you are out of range. This is our handheld control head unit we have a slightly larger display than our existing Tate radio but all functionality of the radio is available on the control head including channel changes, volumes dur s and we can see our location. Similar to the other control heads when this radio cannot find a signal is that a range we will get audio tones a large red banner indicating we are out of range from the RMR network. Very good thanks Shane so just to wrap that up a little bit whilst we do have an offering of a number of different variants of the radio fleet part of the process that we are going forward with from here on in will be to help determine where these might be located and what situations would be most appropriate for them to be used in so that is part of the work that we will do in the future and you know part of what is still going on with this project but otherwise it is on track and hopefully it gives you everyone a bit of a snapshot of where we are at with this project and there will be more information forthcoming down the future so back to you Chief. Thanks Chief. Well thank you to Shane, Jason and Will for that update there on the radio replacement of program Roger Wilco. Brendan what is your thoughts? There is nothing it will be a great introduction of some new technology into the field I think the dual band capability will be fantastic for us. We are still dealing with global supply chain issues so that will temper the role out as we go forward but we are doing as much as we can to streamline that and work with Motorola. And the beauty of the dual band radio is it won't matter whether our members come into Metropolitan Melbourne or operating in regional Victoria one radio, two radio networks are constantly connected as opposed to I know many of our out of Melbourne brigades particularly with operating and assisting FRV in the MMR footprint have to carry two radios Gary. Yeah we have been doing that so in southern district 2 out in district 8 the team have been right through there in a lot of the interface putting in MMR portable radios in the last few months so that as FRV moving on to the MMR network through the old district 8 integrated or co-located brigade locations western district 2 out around Melton Sunbury also did that last year and we have got different radios for different purposes this will actually take us to one radio multiple purpose and it's a it's a massive step forward for us and that's in the interface areas and then of course it gives us a whole heap of flexibility out in the rest of regional Victoria so great technology. Absolutely and how important is it that we actually do the trial this is a multi-million dollar project so we have to get it right the first time so how is it how important is it that we actually do this trial and understand these radios? It's a key and we're trialling in a lot of different scenarios and it's great to see Makata on the on the list of brigades that will be trialling it and trialling it in areas so that adjacent brigades are working together and trialling it together so that will be fantastic and hopefully we'll get some good feedback in different areas and be able to roll it out smoothly. I think the beauty of going to this new technology both with integrating with the RMR and MMR networks and the brand of radios that we get to trialling the mo-rollers at the moment but it opens the door to so many possibilities and I know where I come from there was integration of status panels and MDTs with radio data over the year capability, status messaging AVL telecommunication connectivity that sort of stuff and that really goes to ensure that we truly are connected brigades doesn't it? It does and also the GPS capability gives us good safety capability in the radios and also good information so that we don't have the operators having to sort of send messages, we're getting the data flowing through and the operators can focus on the by-ground. Absolutely and there's Stuart French asked have the radios been tested in known dead spots like hospitals where currently the FRV radios don't work that's exactly why we're doing this trial isn't it and there's certain technologies and I know the team spoke about some of it that works with not only over the radio waves but also looks to using telemetry towers as well exactly so we're trialling it in hospitals in large buildings, car parks heavy concrete areas that might interfere with the transmission. Intrinsically safe all those sort of things as well because I know many of our members will use this radio in hostile environments including explosive environments so quite important Yeah so we know there's a number of major hazard facilities for example so and some of those locations where we need intrinsically safe communication devices so that'll all be part of the package what we've got to do is get the right package and then have the flexibility within that to meet the needs so there will be different, well I'll say there will be there will be potentially different radios for different environments that are purposely designed to suit that particular hazard that people are dealing with so but I want to over complicate it but we also want to make sure that we've got the best tools in the hands of our firefighters going forward Absolutely, so Nick asks is there still a program to replace the existing EES pages what's the take that one Yeah so there's a EES pager replacement process underway and the actually the EES contract more broadly is currently being reviewed so the commitment to paging going forward as the primary alert device continues we've got the supplementary alert system of course sitting behind that but clearly the EES paging and updated and or future devices will continue to be there so in terms of complete refresh of the EES paging network not at the moment but certainly there is a new wave of pages on the horizon Just a quick one on that this morning's incident with the network outage up in Mildura the whole mobile and landline networks went down well so the pages stayed up absolutely continuity absolutely look it's great to see this discussion has triggered a lot of good questions around radios we've piqued people's interest so the beauty of I guess having these radios is they are programmable and we will need to put together a channel a channel spec or radio profile and that will also include you know cross agency cross jurisdiction radio profiles yep there you have it yeah so just on that so obviously South Australian border New South Wales brought a lot of interoperability in those locations and the ability to make sure that we've got those devices appropriately programmed as well so yeah and again we from a technology refresh it's you know 12 14 years since the existing radios are out there the tight ones so this would be a big step forward from where we're at today absolutely and some of the key features and I know some of the question asked here yeah will the new radios have bluetooth capability and some of the add-on you know use of the add-on functionalities that it brings and I understand that you know a lot of these modern radios do come with simple things like bluetooth technology now yeah and they'll come with the technology and we'll need to look at how we use it and particularly as we link with the mobile devices and the tablets in the vehicles as well we'll be looking to maximize that and not let them get in the way of each other yep so another question here by Tim and we might have to take this one notice but you never know we'll see if they use a new configuration or will we roll out the existing MMR RMR mapping used on the APX radios I think it means fleet mapping yeah it's actually a good question I'll have to take that one on notice but I yeah we'll take that one off and I'll get some greater clarity on it rather than actually go on the fly on that one my view will be it will be there but let's just I guess fleet mapping as much as some of us hate it and I am one of those people that don't like it because I love listening to what's going on and I'm driving around the like but it is essential because it does stop the system being overloaded with people doing exactly what I've been guilty of doing which is having that sticky beak as you're driving around the state listening to incidents and the like so we'll take that one on notice but I'm sure there will be some sort of fleet mapping that will ensure that we keep the system up and running and operating at peak performance quite a lot of questions about training and my thanks goes to Deputy Chief Officer Jean Dysel who's online answering those questions about training likewise shout out to Nikki Habidas who's taking on some questions and providing feedback in respect to some of the commentary around the volunteer recruitment hub we know that there are some challenges with that and I think that's part of why we have these consultation sessions isn't it so we roll something out we talk to our members about it and they give us the feedback about that yeah and I was up in District Galeen last week and got some feedback on that and it's interesting different districts, different brigades take to this technology differently so some find it a great benefit others like to sort of stay in control of parts of the process we're trying to find a common ground and one of the key things for efficiency is that we don't have a whole swag of different processes for the same objective so that's one of the things and sometimes we've got to make compromises on that absolutely one of the things I would let everyone know and I know we've been talking about it for a little while we are going to dedicate an entire volunteer forum to training, I know Gene is absolutely chomping at the bit to make that happen for our members quite a lot's been happening for Gene in the training area over the last couple of weeks we've done our VRQA recertification they've also been working very hard to transition our training packages to PUA 19 so that's why we've sort of had to put it off a little bit but in the I'm looking at the team at the back of the camera but in the next few, sooner rather than later we will have a volunteer forum totally dedicated to training and you can ask and it would be great to have Gene and the crew on to ask and talk about training again some really good conversation chats here in the chat here so thank you very much for everyone for asking your questions and as I can see they're being answered by the team so I will leave that there for a minute and go to we do have questions that are emailed through in preparation to the volunteer forum via internal comms at CFA so I might touch on some of those Gary has there been any discussion about visual identifiers on helmets replettes based on qualifications rather than the current system where we vote in our offices at times is not qualified perhaps some sort of fire ground ranking system yeah so I guess there's probably two parts of that because we currently have a ranking system on the fire ground which is helmet identification and things like that but the point I think that's raised there is what that's linked to so at the moment we elect our office bearers through the biennial election process but just for example where there's a trial going on in District 15 at the moment with BA for internal or external use so that's been underway now for a few months and we'll get the feedback Acfo Brett Boatmans coordinating that with District 15 and we'll hear about that so yes I think the short answer is there's some things underway is there room for us to do more in that space chief I think there is absolutely and I do think there is and many of the fire services across Australia have a ranking system and CFA has that helmet colouring system but I think it's a great question I think it's something that's really worth consideration and discussion I'm really keen to hear the thoughts and feelings of our members on perhaps a fire ground ranking system and a pre-qualification system as well that allows us to visually identify those people that have the skills capabilities to perform on the fire ground and perhaps Kylie and I know linking things in for the culture review perhaps one day looking at pre-qualification to hold officership so whilst we're not necessarily getting rid of the election process it's about ensuring people meet a minimum benchmark to hold a position absolutely and certainly we know the Brigade Management teams they're important leadership roles and leadership requires training and skill development so we are certainly looking at through the practical things that we can do around volunteer leadership for development and rolling out that program but certainly consideration that some of the feedback that came through in the culture review is about how what are those minimum qualifications to be able to stand for election so that will be important to consult some really great discussion to be had with our members on that and as always really keen to hear your thoughts and feelings we are about making sure we do the right thing for our members and that's about making sure that we're getting the collective view another question here what is the latest on the fire ground commissioners review of FRB boundaries there are rumours of new FRB stations about to be built in current CFA response areas and CFA stations areas having limited maintenance on them or being low on the replacement list leaving members in sub-standard conditions so without knowing the specific area to which you're referring to there what I can and what I do know about is part of the reform process there are a number of CFA stations or integrated stations that are about to be built and I think Gary Clyde North for example was one of them that will see FRB build a fire station for their career firefighters and an area transition across that was agreed pre reform so I envision those will continue and I think Armstrong's creek comes to mind as well so outside of those two that we were very much aware of as part of the reform process I'm not aware of anything and as many would people would know the fire boundary review panel form part of the government as a result of fire services reform and the charge of actually looking at the fire risks and making recommendations to myself as chief officer about whether a change in jurisdiction should occur and allowing CFA to provide a response to that for the consideration of the minister so the fire boundary review panel has just recently released their methodology and you can go on to the fire services implementation page through the Vicgov website and the fire boundary review panel page you'll be able to download and read the methodology that has been landed on by the fire boundary review panel and I'm sure we'll be talking much more about this in the sessions to come and keep those questions rolling in thank you Gene for continuing to answer most of those questions considering their training based the next one is probably one for you Gary because it sits in that specialist response portfolio. The CFA considered rolling out oxygen resus equipment to urban brigades especially where those brigades have already purchased defibs ahead of the recent CFA rollout yeah probably not specifically to urban brigades but if I go to I think it was the July forum we talked about fire medical response and our partnership with Ambulance Victoria there will roll out to 50 brigades around the state and there will be a number of those brigades I'd suggest will be urban brigades or brigades in that larger sort of town or community setting so that's the target at the moment it's not necessarily specifically O2 to those all of the urban brigades for example that have got defibs it'll be targeted to the 50 that will be as part of that fire medical response program so that's where we're at at the moment that's what we've got the funding to do for the future state beyond that let's get FMR on the ground and get that functioning and see how successful that is I think for me what is a great take out is just the want and first of our members to want to do more in that space and help their communities and I'm really buoyed by I guess seeing that it's not for everyone and we're not forcing it on brigades that don't want to do including FMR it is an opt in opt out program but I just love how our members really want to get in and help our communities I wouldn't let an opportunity like this go past Kylie because you've been sitting on the end there and contributing to discussion but where are we at with and I think we touched on it before around culture so where are we at with the the Zoke review and the implementation of the cultural review excellent question Jason so we've been working with a project control group comprised of senior representatives from across CFA to be looking at what are some of the things that we are doing that we need to accelerate and actually be communicating to members and also what are the new things that we need to be to be doing and sequencing some of those so there's certainly I know an area of you know strong interest from members is always around issues how we resolve issues so there is some work going on in our complaints area and one of the critical things we want to be able to report on to members in the new year is around outcomes of complaints obviously anonymous and de-identified but we know that's been something that our members have said so I'm expecting that probably by the end of the month we'll be in a position to communicate where that plan is up to because there's been a power work done by our districts our regions, our HRBPs and our complaints team and the like to clear the backlog of legacy complaints they are really working hard and there's all but a handful left I understand and much more work being done to resolve issues locally and what we've really seen is a really strong take up of the behavioural standards session so I think we're at about 1800 members across the state have participated in that and we're actually finding brigades saying actually can you put us at the front of the queue, we really think this is important and we're hearing those values reflected and I think it's really important we promote it positive. 1800 members, only was released not that long ago, that's a fantastic uptake and as you say I'm even hearing it when I travel the state of volunteer members wanting to know more and how they can get access to behavioural standards training it's really practical isn't it? It's scenario based training It's very scenario based and to the extent that we've been able to the team have a load of scenarios that are really applicable so you know depending on the nature of the brigade and where it's located and some of the issues so I think it's something that members have been surprised at how readily they can engage in it Absolutely, now Child Safety also fits within your portfolio What's so interesting about It's Children's Week So Children's Week is about celebrating the achievements and rights of children and one the theme for this year is about health and wellbeing of children and their development so that's something that is really important to CFA we know that child safety is more than just a police check or a working with children check they're important but it's actually what we do to look at the physical environment children operating and the safe environment If I bring it back to floods you know children are members of the communities that are affected their parents are out there assisting with the floods and we need to be thinking about the physical safety of those children but also the long term psychological safety of the children and there are supports through Member Assist that can help Absolutely and young members are the future of the CFA they're in our junior brigades they are the future men and women of the CFA they are the future leaders they will be the future chief officers into the future so we do need to do everything we can to foster and encourage our youth in CFA and a big shout out to all the members on the young advisory committee I know you've been doing some really great work and congratulations to you Ladies and gentlemen I think we're getting very close to that time where the team behind the camera gesticulate wildly at their watch and show me that you've gone over time yet again so I should probably start to try and wrap it up but Kylie final thoughts look just thank you to all of the members out there and also to acknowledge all of our employees who are out there volunteering staffing ICC's or as we spoke about doing some critical things it really is a whole of CFA effort so just a big shout out to all the members Brendan again thank you to all the members for helping us with our key projects the radio replacement project the mobility project we've got a lot of people helping us and giving us feedback on LMS and a number of the other systems that we run so we need them for the testing to make sure that things are working as intended absolutely Gary your thoughts one thing I did mention before was a bit of a shout out to a small group of people who have made themselves available from CFA Road Crash Rescue Group and SES and the Shepparton search and rescue squad who have actually formed up an aerial insertion crew for Road Crash Rescue in Northern Victoria based out of Mangalore daylight hours only and they're moving up to Bendigo tomorrow so for anyone that's been involved or particularly those brigades that have been involved for Road Crash Rescue members to be part of that well done. I don't think they fight a shot but it's more about the fact that we've got a lot of roads cut a lot of people moving around on unstable surfaces so well done to everybody involved in that and perhaps more broadly we acknowledge everybody that's on the front line and doing that wonderful work but there's a lot of people behind the scenes organising all of that and a shout out to everybody that's involved in that as well so job well done absolutely and we saw that aerial insertion crew during the 1920 bushfires so quite a novel thing again spearheaded by the CFA and the SES are combined to make that happen as you said the Shepparton rescue crew as well long weekend coming up a lot of people moving across the state so to know that should you have an accident in those flood ravaged areas that crew will be there to be able to tend to your needs and get you out of the car if needed so thank you very much Nicole we spoke a lot about safety and it would be remiss to me not to give you the microphone once more as our health and safety queen to talk about safety as we continue in this flood operation I think my parting words Jason would be that putting the community at the centre of what we do is part of our DNA but also thinking about that we really need to do the best that we possibly can to take care of ourselves so that we can continue to look after others and support others for the sustainability of that so keep that in mind and if people are a bit nervous about knowing what to do if they've never been involved in a flood operation before there is something available to them in order to get a bit refreshed can you tell us about that yes if I look at my notes Jason I can there is a training session on LMS called Maintaining Safety at Flood and Storm Seams I think Kylie is part way through that so by all means jump on LMS have a look at that and learn some really important things along the way in terms of as you say if it's your first time in terms of this sort of event really really important to have a look at that when you can absolutely there are a lot of packages tonight particularly whether it be around health and safety the value of peers knowing that support is available to you if you need it and as always it is okay not to be okay so the peers are there the member wellbeing team is there the services are available and I might just add it's not just about psychological services as well it's legal assistance it's financial assistance which is available to our members and their family members not just them, their family members as well by contacting that 1-800-959-232 gets you access to all those support services so if you are feeling a bit blue or a bit down at the moment if please reach out the team we'll do everything they can to assist you I'd like to thank as always those behind the camera and a big shout out to Martin Anderson Beth Ramshaw Sally Pickering Keith Packenham who is home tonight he's pulled together all those videos and got that done but of course last but not least he's my executive producer for the volunteer forum Brad Thomas who's there answering and putting in the comments in there for me I know he gets very embarrassed when I say it but the crew do a fantastic job of pulling this together every month we didn't have a live audience tonight because of where we have done the forum here in the city but I know it takes a lot of work to pull that together and Brad and the team do a fantastic job so thank you very much for all the things that you do I would like to end tonight's forum but however to let everyone know FFA members, community members all our thoughts are with you it is a trying time at the moment our community is going through a lot right now and there are a lot of communities that are about to go through a lot as well knowing that this flood situation is going to last for quite some time so whilst they're focused on a chuka at the moment it will flow down downstream and it's not just those populated senses I'd like to also shout out to what are the bulk of probably a lot of our members and that's our farming communities there was supposed to be a bumper harvest this year but when you fly around in helicopters you can see that there are a lot of paddocks underwater and a lot of crops ruined so a lot of people are going to be doing it tough over the next couple of months so again if you need that help it is available to you and please just know that our thoughts and feelings are with you every step of the way so with that thank you everyone for joining us tonight and good night


Hi everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante. We're here at HP Discover Day Two, we're at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas. This is the cube where we extract the signal from the noise. We bring you the best guests at these events and share with you their knowledge. I'm at Dave Vellante if you want to tweet me questions, please do so. Two folks from all digital are here. They do broadcasting to mobile devices. We're going to get into that and talk about that quite a bit. Steve Smith is the vice president of network services and to my immediate left is Tim Napoleon who's the chief strategist at all digital gentlemen. Thanks for coming on the cube and welcome. Thanks for inviting us. Yeah, so we were just talking about this is your first HP Discover but you've been HP customer for quite some time. But let's start with all digital, guys based in Southern California where all the action is in media. Tell us a little bit about the company. Who wants to take that? So the problem we tried to solve in the marketplace is we see there's a huge opportunity to help bring broadcast solutions to virtually anyone. So that could be a brand, that could be an enterprise company, could be an individual personality. So what they want to be able to do is take live and on demand content ingest that into the cloud and get that out on their favorite devices whether that's a mobile device, a tablet, a desktop or even connected televisions. There's use cases across all those different verticals to really get their content services across this ever-expanding universe of devices. Why they want to do that is because the audience where people's attentions are turning to are on these devices. You see the viewership, the video and other types of services on devices going way up. Well, it's interesting. We were, John Furrier and I, my partner, we were talking the other day about the whole Nielsen ratings, you know. Organizations have been canceling, you know, the broadcasters have been canceling certain shows and then they're realizing, well, we're kind of using an outdated metric here. We're not counting, I don't know what the Nielsen measures, maybe a couple hundred thousand, maybe not even, maybe it's a couple thousand households and here we are with mobile and iPads and everybody watching content online. So it must be a huge boost to your business all this action. Absolutely. You think about the term broadcast you use at Nielsen and that used to just measure a few key broadcasters.  But with our software and cloud, what we're trying to enable is almost virtually anyone to be a broadcaster. So we have people that are literally on their iPhones creating their own broadcasts going into the cloud and now to be different devices and audiences. Or we have much more sophisticated traditional broadcasters that are getting things like live local news out to a new audience on all these different devices. So how's the service work? Talk about the sort of how I engage with all digital. So it's very simple in the sense that we have a product called all digital cloud. It's a cloud based solution. You simply sign up with that and then we give you a set of instructions on how to originate content into the system. And then we can go through a discovery process where we help you say what devices you want to be on, maybe what you want to have apps that work on those devices, how you want those to look. And our professional services team and integration services team can figure those experiences for you. And then people can find your app in the Apple App Store and the Android Play Store on your favorite smart television platform. So the app, the content that's embedded within an app can be embedded in an app or it can be available in an HTML5 type mobile web or desktop browser. And the value that you guys bring is turnkeying that experience. And there's additional promotion involved or not necessarily, it's up to me to promote, correct? Yeah, we're not the marketing arm for your company. We're more of the technical execution of it. But really what's great from a marketer's point of view is you're now able to get to lots of different devices. So maybe you don't have to disturb an audience on one specific platform. You can take your broadcast message and go as wide as possible. Okay, so you're like a better YouTube? Is that fair? I would say that YouTube is a phenomenal company and they give you a lot of ability to show videos online. What we find is a lot of our companies want a lot of control. They want to control about what content, maybe what business models. They want control about how their brand is presented and what venues. And so we would be more appropriate for people that want to have control of their broadcast experience and keep it to the audiences that they find appropriate. Okay, and they might want to control the revenue flow too. They might want to have all the revenue go directly to them, that's a great point. All right, so Steve, talk about the network requirements. That's obviously your area of expertise. How are they evolving? What's changing as a result of all this video explosion and mobile explosion? How does that put increased pressure on what you have to do? Certainly, we needed a way to solve, to take large file sets, both the object size themselves, might be a large broadcast quality mezzanine asset, it might be a small mobile asset, it might be text files, it might be images and give that, present that in the cloud. So an example workflow that we see is we have a customer that has a mobile broadcast application so anybody can download this app out of the iTunes Store, put it on their phone and become a broadcaster. They do a short three minute clip. We will broadcast that live at the conclusion of that broadcast. We take that asset and we store it on the store all and then we transcode it into a couple of different derivative formats and then present that for delivery out on the internet on demand. So they do live events with that, they also do just individual one to one but that's an example workflow. So the file system, we needed something that could scale both in terms of size to be able to support a very large and complex namespace but also so that we could support the scalability, in other words the performance of both ingesting those objects and delivering those objects without having to make copies of them and move them into different areas for delivery. So we should talk. So here we are, we're on theCUBE. You getting this Mark? We're doing live broadcasts, right? You just said, so how would we engage? Let's say we're doing theCUBE, we're doing this live videos. You see this little mobile studio that we have here, you know, we're pumping out content like crazy. I guess you can kind of watch it on your mobile. It's not necessarily the greatest experience, I mean it kind of depends but, so what would we get from working with you guys? Yeah, so we have a product, it's called the AllDigitalCloud. You can log into that product and you can set up a set of workflows and business rules and then that'll create a player object that you can then develop into your app framework or we can do that for you. And essentially the end user experience might be that you'd have a, and let's say an iPad app, that iPad app could feature a live button when you're broadcasting live, you know, your favorite on-demand clips. Maybe you want to have some of the clips with your key partners be subscription. Maybe some of the clips you want to have advertising models. So you set up those business rules and business tools, we can figure that all for you. And the finished product is a very nice and engaging app that you control. Additionally, maybe you want to have some RSS feeds. Maybe you want to have your Twitter and social integrated. Maybe you want to want the audience to be able to share clips from that app out to their friends that are on Facebook and other social media sites. So the experience from your point of view is it's a very turnkey service. And then once it's done, you now have the ability from a show like this to upload live or on-demand clips right into the system. And within a few minutes or live, if it's a live stream, it publishes out to all of your audience on these various apps. Okay, so I would be of course responsible for the equipment that allows me to live stream on the web to your platform. So you connect into that, you would ingest that content. And then depending on how we set things up, what the policies are, the content would be rendered in the solution that we choose. Absolutely, and then the nice thing is your business rules, your content workflows, you're not having to replicate that for every device that you want to go to. By using all digital, we provide a unified platform so you can publish to all these different connected experiences. Meaning, different platforms, different operating systems. Yeah, so maybe you want a Roku channel or maybe you want to, you know, the new Xbox 720, maybe they need a channel. Maybe you want to have mobile, maybe you want to have iPad. So the goal of the platform is to be able to support all these new connected devices that come out and have your broadcast experience work on each one of them. That's cool. We definitely want to, that's the guy right there you got to talk to you Mark Hopkins, and it's interesting, doesn't it? I love it. Real-time biz dev on the queue. My job is done here. All right, so Steve, you were talking a little bit about some of the requirements that you have and you guys are a Store All customer. Yes. So talk about how you use that platform. So Store All is effectively the center of our cloud universe. We have adopted basically a grid computing concept where we have clusters of machines that do various things in the workflow. For example, we have a group of machines that will do DRM encryption. We have other machines that will do DBR-like functions. We have other machines that will do server-side recording of live streams. We have other machines that will do transcoding. So the beauty of Store All is that we can scale it out in terms of performance. We can present that same namespace to a number of different machines, either it'll look like block storage, it might look like NFS storage, but we can present that same file, so I don't need to move it around to other areas to do things to it. For example, like Tim said, if you have a live event such as this, we can do a server-side recording on that, and then based on the workflow that you've designed, we can transcode that into, say, six derivative output formats, supporting Android, tablet, Android device, iOS, iPad, whatever your formats that you are, we can transcode those the moment that the broadcast is done. Now we have your recording. I don't need to replicate it within my cloud to do those sort of things because we have one center of storage. So, okay, so you've got some IP that does that, obviously.  Well, that's very important when you're dealing particularly with large objects like broadcast quality mezzanine. Those can be two, 15, 20 gigabits in size. It's very large. Oh yeah, we face that all the time. We're constantly running out of storage here. All right, so Store All is the center of that platform. Now we're talking off camera a little bit about object. Do you see sort of object storage as a potential future direction that you guys would go? From the, I'll let Steve handle the technical term. From the business side, what we see the opportunity that's really exciting to us is if you think about all these different combinations, right? So you have just, even a small broadcaster like ourselves, thousands of assets coming into the platform. And then you're going to potentially, millions of different device combinations. It creates potentially billions of different asset types. And so being able to search, find, query, do all of those different things very quickly really gives the broadcaster a competitive advantage because if you start to see in the broadcast world, especially in news and breaking news, the first person to get that article or that story out on the web, it's going to get the lion's share of the audience and the viewership. So all of this technology, one of the key benefits that drives back for the business user is it allows them to quickly create a channel, quickly search, find and add content to those channels and then distribute it very fast. So you want a workflow that doesn't take weeks or days or hours. You want a workflow that's as near to real time as possible. Even as your asset databases grow to billions and billions of objects. So I used the YouTube example before. I know it well, because that's what we use. But the real value that you bring is control over that experience. But unless I'm missing something, is there some inherent speed factor? It's because of your workflow system, I guess, right? Absolutely. Because I don't fully understand what that's all about relative to them. We designed our own workflow, I guess is the answer there. We have a homegrown workflow, so. Yeah, so the second that your video is published, how quickly is that available on an on-demand asset and all these different devices out there in your universe? And we think that making that a very fast, efficient process is important. Yeah, so for us, it's minutes, which is pretty good. Yes. Right? But that wasn't always minutes. It used to be days or hours. It took some effort to do that. But okay, but you got that right out of the box. That comes with the platform. So for somebody that didn't sweat for two years trying to figure that out, you kind of get that immediately. Okay, that makes sense. We're making it easy for you. Yeah, right. All right, good. All right, talk about your, more about your relationship with HP.  Was the store all, it was kind of a new deal or? Yeah, we were involved with a group called Ibrics. Yeah, okay. When that product launched. In fact, we really helped them kind of bake that product in at our previous company. And the company was acquired by HP, still maintain a relationship with a lot of the Ibrics team that then became part of the store all team and continue that today. We helped HP test their new store all software versions in addition to running store all in our production environment. What about analytics? So you got all this metadata floating around out there around particularly in video when it was done, maybe some other attributes of metadata. Do you see analytics playing a role in either today or in the future in terms of adding value to your customers? Absolutely. In the broadcast world, if you don't measure it, it didn't happen. It's kind of the tree that fell in the woods, right? Right. You didn't record that. You can't sell it to advertisers. You can't record it for royalties. So having a very robust platform that not only can broadcast messages out, but also receive all that audience data back. And so store all is a great platform from that perspective that you have the disk speed and the disk IO to not only both be a broadcaster on the outbound, but take all of that data that comes back from those different apps back into the platform. So whether that data is people uploading videos or that's add beacons or that's different types of analytic markers that you want to track, all of that comes back from the audience back into the system. And then it can be leveraged with your favorite reporting tools, whether that's like an Omniture or Google Analytics or any of the HP products that do big data analysis. Okay. So you'll feed, for instance, maybe Google Analytics or Omniture is another one, but so you'll feed those systems and then I get my dashboards. Okay. So that's cool. Now, what you're saying before, so you don't have a live platform, right?  So you push a live stream into us from your favorite encoding product. Okay. And then we take it from there. So, talk about that a little bit. That's another part that I'm very interested in. So what differentiates you from other guys out there? JustinTV, live stream, YouTube's now got its own live platform if you meet criteria. Again, it's a unified workflow that you have total control over. So just like you would dictate with your on-demand clips, who gets to see it? What's your business model? What's your economics around it? What's your brand around it? With live, it's the same thing. You can quickly create a live on your channel and send that out. We've added some additional features that are very popular. So one is insertion. So let's say that you're a bank branch and your bank branch is a primary area that maybe Spanish is the primary language.  And so you can set up business rules and policy there to do overlays of injected content, even in a live stream. So there's a lot of really kind of broadcast-centric features that you get as part of the platform. And I can obviously make it as open or closed as I want. Absolutely, as you total control. All right, Steve, so I want to give you the last word here on stuff you want to see from the technology community, things they could do to make your life better and then drive more business ultimately. Sure. Right now we're seeing more demand for cloud services in other geographic regions. We sort of view ourselves as a Switzerland, if you will, as an origin. Our customers can bring their own CDN or whatever distribution model they want to deliver their content to their Edge and end users. But we are seeing demand for more origin setups in say Europe, Asia, South America. I think we'd like to see better distribution technology within the store all products so that our clients simply need to send us their content once. And then we have a secure methodology that basically we don't need to build ourselves, but that we could just leverage store all to send that object or that file or whatever it is that's been ingested to a remote point quickly in real time. I think that's something that we're looking forward to and talking more with HB team. Excellent. All right. Steve and Tim, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate the story. And hopefully we can have a little discussion afterwards. Keep right there, buddy. This is theCUBE. I'm Dave Vellante. We're right back with our next guest live from HP Discover.