[00:00:02] Toni Hauser: What I do love about IAEM, about the conference, and I would say this even if I wasn't on the conference committee, is that it's not just the conference.
[00:00:12]
[00:00:15] Toni Hauser: it really is meant to be three core days of [00:00:20] opportunity to learn and interact with colleagues and friends. And then there's other opportunities in the evening to do stuff. There's outings, there's tours, regional get togethers.
[00:00:34] Toni Hauser: There's all sorts of stuff, so it's more of an experience than just a [00:00:40] conference.
[00:00:40]
[00:00:42] Toni Hauser: my thought is especially looking at 2025, that the people who are influencing what happens are the people who are speaking up. It doesn't matter what level you're at or what your day job is, whether you're, full-time emergency [00:01:00] management director or not. The people who speak up and make their voices heard are the ones that people are going to be looking to.
[00:01:13] Kyle King: Hi everybody. Welcome to Christ LED podcast. I'm Kyle, I'll be your host. And in today's episode we will talk about an important and I think, increasingly [00:01:20] urgent question, which is, are emerging managers being positioned to shape the future or really just react to our environment? And so we all know there's proposals floating around Washington with the idea of decentralizing or even replacing fema.
[00:01:33] Kyle King: And it's a moment of real reckoning for the profession. And we're joined by. Tony Hauser co Vice-chair of I [00:01:40] am 2025 in the conference committee to unpack what leadership, influence and preparedness need to look like in this ever shifting landscape. And so today we're gonna talk a bit more about how emergency managers are moving into new spaces from infrastructure and city planning to policy and risk finance, and why professional development is no longer just a career checkbox, but a path.
[00:01:58] Kyle King: A real [00:02:00] strategic influence, and I would even in some aspects say even strategic power. And then along the way, we'll take a closer look at how the I Am 2025 Annual Conference is helping leaders build the capabilities to operate, shape long-term resilience decisions, and expand their influence far beyond just the normal sort of duties and ideas of working within [00:02:20] NEOC.
[00:02:20] Kyle King: So first of all, Tony, welcome to the Christ Lab Podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
[00:02:25] Toni Hauser: Thank you, Kyle. I'm really happy to be here and I appreciate the time to spend with you.
[00:02:31] Kyle King: Before we start, how about just a quick introduction of who you are and where you're coming from, and we'll get started from there.
[00:02:37] Toni Hauser: I am one of the co-vice [00:02:40] chairs of the IAEM conference committee. My day job is the emergency preparedness supervisor for the health department in the city of Minneapolis, and yeah, I'm great to be here with you.
[00:02:55] Kyle King: All right. Thanks for joining us and we're gonna talk about the IEM conference today a little bit.
[00:02:58] Kyle King: The annual conference, which is the [00:03:00] 73rd annual conference, it's gonna be hosted in. Louisville this year, from November 14th to the 20th. And as we always say on the podcast, opinions are our own not representative of any organization. We're just sharing information and ideas so that people can just have a broader understanding of some of the things that we're talking about.
[00:03:16] Kyle King: So one of the things, you know, there's, let's just sort of the, the [00:03:20] elephant in the room discussion. Let's sort of kick off with that a little bit. So there's all this discussion. We've seen it internationally where I work and then, you know, obviously it's domestically in the United States, it's in the news.
[00:03:30] Kyle King: Almost every day. But there's this growing conversation in Washington DC about sort of decentralizing FEMA and possibly even replacing it or re-envisioning what that might be [00:03:40] in terms of fema. And so whether or not that happens, what do you think really holds national influence in emergency management today?
[00:03:46] Kyle King: And is that power where it really sort of needs to be as we sort of look at previous models of being centralized? Now we're talking about decentralization and what are your thoughts on the impact there in terms of where we're going with all this? [00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Toni Hauser: Yeah, it has certainly not been boring this year, speaking for myself and not for IAEM.
[00:04:08] Toni Hauser: I think it's important to implement some changes in emergency management at the federal level. I don't think anyone really disagrees about that. However, we can't just. [00:04:20] Take everything that FEMA has done and pass that off to the locals or even to the states. That's not how emergency management is set up to work.
[00:04:32] Toni Hauser: It starts at the local level and then it goes up, and then we get to all the other stuff that we need When it comes [00:04:40] to influence, it. I think many people would say that the people who influence what's going on or emergency management would, you know, say like, oh, it's the state directors or it's female leadership.
[00:04:58] Toni Hauser: My, my thought [00:05:00] is especially looking at 2025, that the people who are influencing what happens are the people who are speaking up. It. It doesn't matter what level you're at or what your day job is, whether you're, full-time emergency management director or not. The people [00:05:20] who speak up and make their voices heard are the ones that people are going to be looking to.
[00:05:27] Kyle King: No, I think that's a great point. You can either. Complain about things or you can try to be an agent of change, right? If you have a voice enough to complain, then you should have a voice enough to contribute to what reform looks like and have a [00:05:40] voice in that overall process Besides, and especially with this sort of like downward pressure of like things need to change and so.
[00:05:46] Kyle King: Have a voice in the process of what does change look like? And and in terms of influence at the conference itself and I mean, there's so much at play in terms of national policy and politics and where things are going. We don't really know what that looks like as you [00:06:00] mentioned, but obviously there's this feeling of decentralization that happening in terms of the conference itself as you're working on the conference committee.
[00:06:08] Kyle King: How does this sort of environment shape the way you're organizing the conference this year? And then maybe we'll just kick off like maybe it's a quick explanation introduction in the conference this year. What are you looking at and, and maybe how's [00:06:20] this policy landscape shaping how you're organizing it?
[00:06:23] Toni Hauser: The conference planning has been a little bit different this year for the first time ever, we're holding the conference in Louisville, Kentucky, so this is our first year at this location. So anytime we're at a new location, there's a whole bunch of different stuff that we have to do [00:06:40] around logistics and planning.
[00:06:42] Toni Hauser: We're in a really good facility in Louisville at the convention center. Everything is close by, so the. Logistics are really good as we've been doing the speaker selection for breakout sessions, and that was [00:07:00] done back in April. We, one of the things that we did was recognize that there will probably be a number of changes before November, so when people submitted their session proposal, maybe they had one job and by November maybe they'll [00:07:20] have a different job or.
[00:07:21] Toni Hauser: Maybe they can't make it to the conference. We've usually have a lot of flexibility around that type of thing. And this year it's just more flexibility than normal, which I mean, if we can't be flexible, then we're in the wrong line of work.
[00:07:38] Kyle King: Yeah, that's interesting. I never really thought about [00:07:40] that. Like they could propose something for the conference and then have a whole sort of presentation outline, and then by the time you get to the conference itself, it's like the entire world has changed, right?
[00:07:49] Kyle King: Yes. So I think the presentation has changed and everything else. It makes it a little bit difficult to plan. I completely agree. Yeah. So the conference this year, you were telling me before, it's gonna be [00:08:00] in November and Louisville, November 14th of 20th. Let me know if I've got that right. And then are you still following the same sort of format before?
[00:08:08] Kyle King: So there's gonna be the conference, but also the breakout sessions, vision talks, and poster showcase and the pre and post-conference training as well.
[00:08:16] Toni Hauser: All the same. At least that's not changing. There's some [00:08:20] normalness there. What I do love about IAEM, about the conference, and I would say this even if I wasn't on the conference committee, is that it's not just the conference.
[00:08:31] Toni Hauser: You don't wake up in the morning, go to the sessions, and then you're done for the day. You can be, but [00:08:40] it really is meant to be three core days of opportunity to learn and interact with colleagues and friends. And then there's other opportunities in the evening to do stuff. There's outings, there's tours, regional get togethers.
[00:08:59] Toni Hauser: There's all sorts [00:09:00] of stuff, so it's more of an experience than just a conference.
[00:09:05] Kyle King: You said you've been on the conference committee for how long now?
[00:09:09] Toni Hauser: I think four or five years.
[00:09:12] Kyle King: Okay, so you've seen multiple conferences now. What is your favorite part of the conference itself, or the experiences you're saying?[00:09:20]
[00:09:20] Toni Hauser: There's a lot of things. I really enjoy getting feedback from people. Even, you know, it doesn't matter if it's positive, negative, or constructive. I love hearing about. Their experience and what they liked or didn't [00:09:40] like. That's useful information because if there's something people don't like, we might be able to change it.
[00:09:45] Toni Hauser: We don't have control over everything. Like in Savannah, two years ago, we didn't have any control over the construction and the noise with that construction. Some things are under our control and others aren't. [00:10:00] I love getting feedback. What is most meaningful to me is. Hearing from people who have attended the conference for the first time and had such a great experience that they felt the need to share that, you know, let us know that, [00:10:20] you know, they felt welcomed and that was worth their time and money.
[00:10:26] Toni Hauser: That's really what I aim for, creating that type of experience for people who attend.
[00:10:34] Kyle King: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot going on with the conference. It's a great place to. Come [00:10:40] together once a year, touch base, talk to people, see how things are changing, seeing what they're dealing with. And I don't know the right term right now with that sort of litmus test of where you are and where other states or organizations are and meeting others and getting that perspective or calibration as you talk to your peers.
[00:10:55] Kyle King: And then same field, when I think of a traditional conference, I think conferences and as you mentioned, like you could go to the [00:11:00] conference and go to the different presentations and be done for the day, but I think that you're organizing so much more than that these days. We talked about like the Envision talks, the poster showcase, the pre and post-conference training.
[00:11:10] Kyle King: The regional meetings. The caucus meetings, and there's also award ceremonies, benefits, and the emergency management expo itself. And so can you tell us a little bit more about the expo? [00:11:20]
[00:11:20] Toni Hauser: Yes. I love the emax. The space that we have this year in Louisville is a little bit bigger than the space we had last year, so we can have more.
[00:11:29] Toni Hauser: Vendors and other booths there, which is great. I think that a many people are afraid of the trade shows because. I mean, everyone's [00:11:40] standing behind tables and you walk past and they're like, here, come talk to me. I want to sell you something. That might be a little bit of it, but a lot of the people who come to the E EM X are our colleagues are, they're people who do work in emergency management and also [00:12:00] happen to work at the company that is there sharing information, resources.
[00:12:06] Toni Hauser: Tools, products. So it can be really intimidating, especially if you really want that swag that they have, but you don't wanna talk to them because you don't have any buying power. The thing that I [00:12:20] did to get over that was. I wanted the swag felt bad about just going up and taking it and running away, like ding-dong ditch.
[00:12:28] Toni Hauser: So I started talking, you know, I just introduced myself and I'm like I can't buy any of your stuff however I want this thing. I wanted to thank you for being here and say hello. Once you open up [00:12:40] that conversation, you can either just take the thing and go about your day or maybe learn other stuff. I'm from Minnesota.
[00:12:47] Toni Hauser: We tend to be connected to everybody else in the country, so it's possible. We have friends of friends in common. I like going to the. Because [00:13:00] it's a great way to learn about new things or discover new products, and also to see who is here their industry friends, as much as the National Weather Service or the state Emergency Management Office.
[00:13:16] Kyle King: Absolutely. No, I think it's a, even with the expo plus the conference and the [00:13:20] presentations and the training and everything else, it's a great place to sort of meet a bunch of people and see what they're doing. And everybody has to sort of go for the swag. I mean, that's why they bring it, to be honest.
[00:13:29] Toni Hauser: So, yeah,
[00:13:29] Kyle King: and it's a, even if you're just carrying it around, you're doing them a service.
[00:13:33] Kyle King: 'cause there's a lot of advertising goes along with it. So. Explain to me briefly, 'cause I, I've seen some different conferences and things like that, but you're [00:13:40] planning the one for IEM. So how many submissions did you get this year for the presentations? Did you find that good quality and quantity, I guess I would say.
[00:13:48] Kyle King: And then, because I mean, emergency management has been trending for good or for bad lately. Right. And sort of the news and things like that. And then I'm also curious, uh, did you pick up on any trends in terms of the presentations and what people are [00:14:00] talking about?
[00:14:02] Toni Hauser: I think we had somewhere around 350 or 360 submissions.
[00:14:11] Toni Hauser: I might need to double check that number, but that's for about 75 session slots that we fill. [00:14:20] They do tend to be really great submissions. We provide some speaker guidance. Two people who are submitting to give them ideas or tell them what to do, what not to do. That's really important for them to look at that because we can tell if someone is [00:14:40] just put something together at the last minute, or sometimes people will submit multiple proposals.
[00:14:50] Toni Hauser: That are maybe could have used some more thought when in fact it probably would've been better to just do one really good proposal. But yeah, we always have [00:15:00] a difficult time winnowing them down to fit in the number of slots that we have.
[00:15:08] Kyle King: It's a good place to be, right? I mean,
[00:15:09] Toni Hauser: it is. Yes.
[00:15:11] Toni Hauser: It's a good problem. Some of the trends for this year, and so this could change [00:15:20] before November, but it seems like e every conference now, there's stuff in there about artificial intelligence and technology that's. Not gonna change anytime soon, but also looking at incorporating data into planning and decision making.
[00:15:39] Toni Hauser: [00:15:40] And I know this kind of ties in with the focus of this podcast is supporting and prioritizing community preparedness and resilience. Mm-hmm.
[00:15:51] Kyle King: Very interesting. Now, I was quickly looking at the program when you were explaining that, and there's a lot going on, especially in the pre-event and pre-conference training and post-conference training.[00:16:00]
[00:16:00] Kyle King: And there's also a lot of presentations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's been an online program before. Is that gonna happen again this year? And then if you're like me or if somebody is like me and you sort of. You want to see everything? Is there a way to see everything, even though I can only be in one place at one time?
[00:16:18] Toni Hauser: That's a great question. [00:16:20] The first time we did the virtual conference was in 2021. After the 2020 in person annual conference was canceled because of COVID. We got really great feedback and have now. Done that virtual conference [00:16:40] every year in the spring, and I mean, we. Planning to continue doing that.
[00:16:46] Toni Hauser: The biggest benefit is not everybody can travel to the annual conference. It costs money. It costs time away from work. It costs supervisor, organization buy-in. With the virtual conference, [00:17:00] it's one day, all the sessions are recorded so you can watch everything, even though you can't be in. All the places at the same time.
[00:17:10] Toni Hauser: That's a benefit of that. It also is a benefit for our speakers who maybe can't travel, or for some of them who are international, [00:17:20] it's not just the travel, but maybe it makes more sense on their end to do something virtually.
[00:17:27] Kyle King: With the training on that aspect, it's sort of be there or you miss it, right?
[00:17:31] Kyle King: That's the point, I guess, right? Yeah. I mean, the training is in person. You gotta be out here. Yeah, you gotta pick what you wanna see and that's about it. That's your chance. [00:17:40]
[00:17:40] Toni Hauser: Yeah. You can only be in one place at one time. I'll let you know if that changes. And we figure out some way to time travel. So we can do all the things.
[00:17:52] Toni Hauser: And I think that's one of the benefits of having more stuff to do or more activities [00:18:00] because then you hear from other people about, you know, maybe they went to a session that they are so excited about and keep talking about to people and you can't go to that session 'cause it already happened, but. You see the presenter on the other side of the group you're a part of, and you can [00:18:20] go talk to them and be like, Hey, will you tell me about what you talked about and can you come present to my department or program or whatever?
[00:18:28] Kyle King: Oh yeah, absolutely. That's the nice benefit of being there in person is that you actually can track people down, even if you have questions after ranking, things like that. When you're looking at this now, you have a sort of a special insight into the conference 'cause you're [00:18:40] helping organize everything.
[00:18:41] Kyle King: Yeah. So you've got some good visibility. What are you particularly looking forward to this year? Have you been able to identify something that piqued your interest?
[00:18:50] Toni Hauser: That is a difficult question.
[00:18:52] Kyle King: It's just a lot, right? I, you know, the program and there's something like. 174 different sort of events happening [00:19:00] now that I just looked at the Excel project, as you mentioned, there's like 75 different speakers, so there's quite a lot of stuff going on.
[00:19:06] Toni Hauser: There's a lot of stuff. I think one. Grouping of things that I'm really excited for. One of the benefits of being on the conference committee is also being able to be a [00:19:20] speaker liaison for our breakout sessions. This is something that does not happen at every conference, and it is now something that I judge other conferences for not doing because it just makes so much.
[00:19:33] Toni Hauser: Sense. We get assigned to different speakers or sessions and we communicate [00:19:40] with them before the conference, help them review their presentations, make sure everything gets uploaded so it can get added to the conference app at the conference. The speaker liaisons are the ones who introduce the, the session and the speaker.
[00:19:58] Toni Hauser: They [00:20:00] moderate the q and a at the end, and I love doing that because it, it really adds to the overall experience to have some of that structure. In our breakout sessions, it makes it a better experience for the attendees and for [00:20:20] the speakers to have some of that organization and someone to contact if there's issues.
[00:20:26] Toni Hauser: I
[00:20:26] Kyle King: think that's super helpful, and especially if you are the same person they're coordinating with and you're. Introducing them and you're on the stage with them, that helps quite a lot as well in terms of being familiar with people and having that sort of comfort [00:20:40] level. What do you think, because I, I mean these, these topics are so wide ranging.
[00:20:44] Kyle King: You mentioned the data and AI and I'm seeing a lot in terms of all the different presentations. And then leads me to a question, and it's something I've been circling around in my head and I'd love to hear your thoughts about it. The breadth of topics that the emergency management community has to deal with.
[00:20:58] Kyle King: In personal productivity, they [00:21:00] have this issue called context switching, which is like, you know, we're sort of constantly distracted by cell phones or social media or whatever, or we're continually switching tasks. Our new email comes in and it takes you away from writing a paper or whatever the case is, that it's very difficult to keep track of everything.
[00:21:15] Kyle King: When I look at the program, I see all these different topics and I just, the first thought that was coming [00:21:20] to my mind is. Same thing in terms of context switching is like is, especially for the emergency management community, it's such a breadth of topics you have to deal with. And not saying that every person has to deal with all of them, of course, but just in the community and the profession itself.
[00:21:35] Kyle King: It would be an interesting case study to see the breadth of issues you have to deal with from [00:21:40] communications, impact assessments, leadership issues, optimizing healthcare. It just goes on and on. In terms of topics, what are your sort of thoughts when you. Think about the conference and like the variety of the presentations over there, which is a very positive thing.
[00:21:53] Kyle King: But also if you take a step back and you look at emergency management at large, that's a lot of things to be talking about. What are your impressions from that, or what [00:22:00] are your first thoughts when you look at something like this?
[00:22:03] Toni Hauser: I love this, first of all, because context switching is the bane of my existence, and I don't think people really understand just how much.
[00:22:18] Toni Hauser: Is included in [00:22:20] emergency management. There's a lot. It is really distracting to, be working on the thing and you get the other thing and you have to pay attention to that and you try and go back and you're like, where was I? One of the things that we do with the conference, if you look on the spreadsheet of all the conference [00:22:40] events, there are some columns over on the right hand side that have different topics.
[00:22:45] Toni Hauser: When people submit session proposals, they can choose topics that their proposal kind of fits under. And we do that [00:23:00] because when we're looking at sessions to select, we don't want to have 12 sessions on leadership. We wanna have a little bit of everything. So because emergency management is so broad, we want to make sure that it doesn't matter if you are an [00:23:20] emergency management director, work in public health, higher education, or public works.
[00:23:25] Toni Hauser: There is something relevant to your interests.
[00:23:29] Kyle King: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it has to also be representing the profession, right? Because everybody's covering so many different things. You might be working in a small organization or small municipality or state and local tribal [00:23:40] territories, but then you're working at a federal level or private sector or whatever the case is.
[00:23:43] Kyle King: So there's just a wide range of topics that could be discussed. And so it's got to be a real challenge to find a balance between them. But it sort of reinforces this idea. I, I was thinking about writing an article about context switching and emergency management. You know, because they, they've actually, I mean, they've done studies on this [00:24:00] where context switching makes you lose like 20 IQ points just because you're starting and stopping all the time.
[00:24:05] Kyle King: I just wonder sometimes what is the impact on our community, because that's all we do, going from grants to mitigation to response, and coming back, where was I with this grant program? Constantly going back and forth on different topics.
[00:24:18] Toni Hauser: If that's true, I'm surprised I have [00:24:20] any IQ points left.
[00:24:22] Kyle King: Or any of us for that matter.
[00:24:24] Kyle King: Maybe that's the problem. You
[00:24:26] Toni Hauser: Yeah.
[00:24:27] Kyle King: Yeah. Part the, well, we're gonna have to, they just walked ourselves into a lower iq.
[00:24:30] Toni Hauser: No, good deed goes unpunished.
[00:24:32] Kyle King: Exactly right. So this looks really interesting. I think everybody should absolutely make an attempt to attend the conference and there [00:24:40] in person is obviously going to be a lot better as opposed to doing anything virtually.
[00:24:45] Kyle King: We do a lot of work virtually and stuff like that, but you just really don't have the feel if you can actually. Speaking of context switching, if you can actually spend time somewhere and then talk to some people and focus on that for the week, definitely recommend that. If you're coming from the community, this is a good touch [00:25:00] point for the year to come in and check with people and see how things are going, and listen to others and share their experiences.
[00:25:05] Kyle King: Anything that you'd like to add to that? Tony, before we close up for today,
[00:25:10] Toni Hauser: I know that not everybody. Who wants to attend the conference has the budget or organizational support. There is an [00:25:20] option to volunteer some of your time at the conference in order to cover part or all of your registration cost.
[00:25:29] Toni Hauser: That's one way to get the overall cost down. I have done that before when I've paid for the conference myself, and it is. Actually [00:25:40] an interesting way, not like Minnesota. Interesting. Which is very passive aggressive to meet people. 'cause you know, you're out there directing people where to go and answering questions and just by doing that you are networking also working off your registration.
[00:25:56] Toni Hauser: So
[00:25:58] Kyle King: yeah, no that's great. I think that's a great [00:26:00] option for people that wanna to pursue that. That's obviously gonna help both the comforts and the individual who's attending as well. How can people find out more about the conference? I feel like most people will know already, but maybe there's somebody that is not familiar with the conference itself, so where can they find more information?
[00:26:15] Toni Hauser: Yeah, the at the IAEM website, i a [00:26:20] m.org/us comp. CO nf or ley, just Google IAM conference. But there's. All the information is there. If you are looking to convince your leadership why you should go, there's some documentation in there that you can use to show [00:26:40] why it's important to go and what you might get out of it.
[00:26:44] Toni Hauser: If you have questions or need additional support, you can reach out to the conference chairs and vice chairs and we'd be happy to help.
[00:26:55] Kyle King: All right, sounds fantastic. So that's the International Association Emergency Manager, 73rd Annual Conference coming [00:27:00] up November 14th to the 20th. Early Bird discount deadline is Friday, October 10th.
[00:27:05] Kyle King: So you probably wanna register before then and save some money. Deadline for registration is November 20th. This is a great event, a great opportunity to be there. If you need more information, go to the IEM website and thanks a lot, Tony. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing [00:27:20] your insights on the conference, and I think everybody should look forward to attending.
[00:27:24] Toni Hauser: Thank you for having me, Kyle. This has been really fantastic.
[00:27:29] Kyle King: Alright, thanks. Thanks everybody. And that's it for the Crisis Lab podcast. If you have any questions or need any more information, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] and [00:27:40] we'll see you next time. [00:28:00]
