From the monthly archives: October 2011

Tutorial: Running a Simulation

by josh on October 25, 2011 · No Comments
When you download Guardly, you immediately have access to sending free location-based alerts to your contacts (emergency responders) — these are one-way messages that get delivered to your contacts by phone, SMS and email.

Guardly provides an added service, called Guardly Premium, which allows you to connect to these same contacts in real-time by conference call and instant messaging while tracking your location throughout the duration of an emergency event that may arise. We let you test out this functionality for free — by running a simulation!

You get two simulations out of the box, which we hope will demonstrate to you how powerful Guardly can be when you’re feeling nervous or feeling like you may have a real emergency on your hands.

Before Running a Simulation
You may have gotten to the point where you’ve invited a number of friends, family, neighbours or colleagues to be emergency contacts and associated them with one or more Groups. Although you’re excited to try some of the advanced Guardly features, you’ll first want to make sure that your contacts know about Guardly so that you don’t worry them with your emergency simulation. A simple email or phone call will be enough to settle their nerves and help them to better understand how Guardly works.

If your Group is pre-configured to dial 911, this is one feature that will not work in a simulation, since we try to help minimize false calls to the 911 authority. Rest assured, it will work when deployed with Guardly Premium.

Simulation as an Education
Running a simulation demonstrates how Guardly works quickly to connect you with your emergency responders, based on how you’ve configured your Group. Importantly, this will help to educate the emergency contacts you’ve selected to help you in case of emergency. The simulation will help them become more familiar with Guardly’s emails and calls as well as the web and mobile web interfaces that allow them to communicate with you from any device.

Simulation Essentials
When running a simulation, you’ll want to make sure to test out, know the position of and understand these features.

Status Bar
There will be a status bar at the top that provides some real-time feedback to you:

  • Whether 911 has been called by a contact on your behalf (blue=no, red=yes). If it has been called on your behalf, the status bar will let you know who called 911.
  • The number of people that have joined and are active in the emergency response. There will be an indicator on the right side that looks like “5/8”, which means 5 people out of 8 in your Group are currently either on the conference call or communicating by instant messaging.

Join Conference Call
You will only be able to join a conference call once someone else has picked up on the other side. Once someone has joined the conference call, you will get a notification in your event stream; if you click “Join”, you will get an incoming call and be looped into the conference call.

Instant Messaging
In the top-right corner, there is a compose message icon. If you tap that icon, Guardly will let you send a message to your contacts. They can view your message once they’ve signed into the web or mobile web version of Guardly for responders. If certain responders write back to the SMS alert message that is automatically sent out, we will start to deliver your instant messages to them by SMS (text messages).

Map-View
By clicking on the map/location icon in the bottom-right corner, you can access map-view. This will show your position on a map, allow you to refine your location by tapping on a pin and dragging it to a new location on the map (currently a feature on iOS and Android), and seeing how close other responders are to your location.

Send Photos
You can send a photo to your contacts by clicking the camera icon located in the bottom tray. This image will appear in the event stream for you and your responders.

Simulation as a Regular Practice
Once you upgrade to Guardly Premium, you can run simulations anytime. This is important to do every few months so that you reinforce the location of Guardly on your phone, the Groups you have available and the people who will be alerted to help respond when you need their assistance. It is also important to remind your contacts how Guardly works and why they should treat calls and emails from Guardly as High Priority.

 

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Tutorial: Building Guardly Groups

by josh on October 25, 2011 · No Comments
Guardly Groups simplifies the organization of your emergency responders.

This tutorial will walk through a number of ways that you can setup your Groups to get the most out of Guardly. We will also cover some advanced features available when configuring your Groups and settings.

Group Setup
Guardly users setup their Groups many different ways. Developing Groups based on a naming convention or theme can be very useful. Although some people stick with the default “Friends & Family” Group provided on setup, others create more detailed arrangements such as location-based groups, situation-based groups or priority-based groups.

Location-based Groups
You may opt to name your Groups based on location and choose people as responders that live or tend to be in those different places. For example, a student may want to notify 10+ people including friends, family and a few neighbours when they’re at their Residence; however, when walking home from a night class they may choose their On-Campus Group, and when back at home with their family they may have a third Group to call upon old friends and family in their Hometown.

Situation-based Groups
Depending on your job or daily routine, you may be inadvertently putting yourself at risk. Whether it’s part of the job or a shortcut you like to take to save time, you may choose to name your Groups accordingly. For example, real estate agent safety is a big concern and so if you’re a real estate agent — Group names such as Open House Showing, Aggressive Client or Office Stalker may give valuable tips to your responders as to the type of issues you’re facing.

Priority-based Groups
You may want to use Groups to indicate the severity of your situation and make sure that you can be put in touch with more responders when you’re on high alert. If you want an added precaution when headed somewhere, you could have a Low Priority / Tracker Group and share it someone who can watch over you; if you see someone that makes you really nervous, you can have a Medium: I’m Nervous Group and for imminent threats, you can have a High – Emergency Group, which should contain the highest number of contacts.

Group Call Options (premium feature)
Call Options is an additional setting that becomes available when subscribed to Guardly’s premium service. You can test these settings by running a simulation on your device, without subscribing.

Groups have the ability to customize how you’d like your phone to work once you’ve triggered an emergency. You can choose to have your phone automatically call 911, call another number, or receive an in-bound call to join a conference call that Guardly sets up instantly and automatically between all your emergency contacts — as soon as you trigger a simulation or an alert to be sent to your Group. You can also choose not to join the conference call or make a call, if you expect that you’ll want to communicate by instant messaging.

Note: Group Call Options can be accessed from the “Add Group” or “Edit Group” screens, but is not shown when configuring your first Group to keep things simple.

Best Practices

  • Ensure some contacts have Smartphones so they can access the map-view and see your real-time location using our mobile-web application.
  • Add 5 or more people to high priority Groups to encourage a faster response time. With more people notified, you increase the likelihood of a greater number of people taking notice of your outreach and being able to respond.
  • Invite some people as contacts who may be close to your location, so they can arrive quickly and provide any necessary assistance.
  • When possible, try to add some additional notes to your Group to provide some additional context to what may be happening.

Remember: When you trigger a Group, Guardly will ensure to reach out to your contacts by phone, SMS and email. However, when building a Group, it is important that you aim to add at least 5 contacts since some of your contacts may be away from their phones and/or computers. Leverage Guardly’s communication platform and make sure that enough people find out that you need help so that you maximize your chance of a fast response.

 

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DVAM Series: A Leap of Faith in the Right Direction

by josh on October 21, 2011 · No Comments

This is a guest post by Gabby Santos as part of Guardly’s Voices of Domestic Violence Awareness Month Series. Gabby is the Program Coordinator for Underserved Communities for the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence (OCADSV). She has worked with survivors of violence in roles ranging from Inverness Jail support group facilitator to legal advocate for the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her 17 years of advocacy and community education have helped promote violence-free living within various oppressed communities. Racial justice work, gender positive activism and criminal justice reform are at the heart of her passion. Santos provides leadership to the OCADSV Communities of Color Task Force, coordinates the Oregon DELTA Preparing and Raising Expectations for Prevention Project (DELTA PREP), participates in the Gender Positive Systems Advocacy Committee (GPSAC) and is a member of the Oregon Firearms and Domestic Violence Task Force and the Oregon Fatality Review Team

The cornerstone of every congregation can be generalized by the commitment to build community, grow in faith and to reach out to others with that same faith.  The St. Johns All Nations Church Of God In Christ has committed to do just that in reverence of promoting violence-free living.  A recent Domestic Violence Seminar for Well-meaning Men wrapped up a month of prevention efforts for this local North Portland church.  “Well-meaning Men! Let’s stand together against Domestic Violence. Our silence gives consent but our collective voice can curb this rising tide of Domestic Violence in our homes, communities, neighborhoods, and churches,” advocates Pastor Cliff Chappell.

Pastor Cliff Chappell and Dr. Andraé L. Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor in Counseling Psychology at Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education and Counseling, are well-meaning men who began collaborating around domestic violence prevention as a response to the string of murder-suicides that occurred in Oregon from November 2009 –January 2010.  The total within those three months exceeded the average annual count of 18 DV-related deaths reported by the Department of Human Services.  Pastor Chappell and Dr. Brown are also members of the OCADSV Communities of Color Task Force.  Their work around promoting violence-free living by engaging communities of faith is a culturally relevant prevention effort that addresses the intersections of oppression experienced by communities of color.

The work of Pastor Chappell and Dr. Brown engages men, boys, faith leaders, church members and their immediate communities.  OCADSV supports these efforts as part of our statewide prevention plan.  We trust that this model will develop within various faiths and ethnicities, one community at a time.  We are committed to preventing abuse in all its forms by promoting healthy relationships, safer communities and a more pro-active Oregon.  It is time to channel our energy toward setting the norms for a healthier social construct that promotes the safety of all.  Let’s make violence-free living a right that we are not willing to compromise.  Let’s take a leap of faith toward domestic and sexual violence prevention.

To share your prevention efforts or for technical assistance around prevention, please contact Gabby Santos, gabby@ocadsv.org.

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Guardly announces Location Confirm and iOS5 update for iPhone

by josh on October 17, 2011 · No Comments

We’ve been out speaking to customers and we’ve listened to feedback about how we can keep improving our Guardly mobile clients.

Location tracking technologies have come a long way in the last couple decades, but most mobile phones lack GPS sensors that are accurate all the time. Depending on your location, there may be buildings or other objects interfering with your phone’s direct line-of-sight to the GPS satellite network, and this can affect the accuracy reading of your exact location.

Today, Guardly announces Location Confirm for iOS devices. Location Confirm will detect the accuracy of your GPS readings and prompt you to refine your location on a map if necessary. Refining your location can be done with a simple drag-and-drop gesture. This will reinforce to your responder group that you are indeed where your mobile device says you are.

With this update to our location tracking and reporting technology, we hope to further decrease the amount of time it takes for first and secondary responders to reach our customers if and when they use Guardly to broadcast a request for help or assistance.

In our most recent update, Guardly also brings supports for iOS5 devices. Download it here.

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Voices of 2011 Domestic Violence Awareness Month

by josh on October 9, 2011 · No Comments

Guardly is hosting a special blogging series to pay tribute to the 2011 Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We are calling upon recognized leaders in the fight against domestic violence and relationship abuse. Please take a few moments to read what these leaders are doing in the Anti-Domestic Violence community:

Becky’s Fund launches 2011 National College Tour
Authored by: Becky Lee, Executive Director at Becky’s Fund.

A Leap of Faith in the Right Direction
Authored by: Gabby Santos, Program Coordinator for Underserved Communities for the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence (OCADSV)

Are you working hard on a number of anti-domestic violence initiatives?
We’d love to hear about it and help tell the world. Please reach out and share your story. You can reach out in the comments below or message us on Twitter.

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Becky’s Fund launches 2011 National College Tour

by josh on October 9, 2011 · No Comments

Guest post is authored by Becky Lee, Executive Director of Becky’s Fund, a national non-profit dedicated to the prevention and education of domestic violence. Ms. Lee has been working on issues concerning domestic violence survivors over the last 10 years as an advocate, a policy associate and an attorney. She is also passionate about creating awareness of the specific needs of battered immigrant women, such as language access and cultural competency.

As Domestic Violence Awareness Month, October is a very important time for Becky’s Fund, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit dedicated to domestic violence prevention. With one in four women experiencing domestic violence at some point in their lifetime, domestic and dating violence issues need to be openly discussed. Unfortunately, these are problems that are all too often swept under the rug and ignored. Our mission at Becky’s Fund is to foster awareness of domestic violence, encourage advocacy among peers, promote activism through outreach initiatives, and create support programs for survivors.

In response to studies indicating that women from the ages of 20-24 are at the greatest risk of abuse, Becky’s Fund has launched our 2011 national college tour. The tour incorporates educational workshops and trainings with a pledge campaign to publicly stand up against domestic violence. Participants learn how to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship – whether that abuse be physical, emotional, sexual, or all of the above – and what they can do to help end the cycle of violence. These students are then encouraged to educate civic organizations like community groups and churches within the surrounding area. Stops on the tour have included Georgetown University, American University, George Washington University and the University of Florida.

This is also an especially exciting time for Becky’s Fund and other anti-domestic violence organizations because the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is currently up for reauthorization. Since it was drafted by then-Senator Biden in 1994, VAWA has helped provide resources and support to victims of domestic violence and their children. VAWA provides funding for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, transitional housing, and legal assistance. It also awards grant money to help educate and better prepare law enforcement, advocates, and shelters.

This year Vice President Biden has collaborated with Secretary of Health and Human Services, Katherine Sebelius, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to issue a challenge to developers to create innovative applications that provide young adults with easier access to domestic and dating violence resources. To meet this challenge, Becky’s Fund will work with Guardly to support its revolutionary mobile phone application. This unprecedented free social and mobile platform combines technology and digital media to raise awareness and provide a direct communication network for those currently facing domestic violence. The goal is to help empower victims and community members with the means and knowledge to address and prevent further abusive situations.

Congress has reauthorized VAWA twice, each time acquiring more funding and becoming more successful. However, there is still much more that needs to be done. Becky’s Fund encourages everyone to speak out against domestic violence and to aid survivors of abuse wherever and whenever possible. Furthermore, if you find yourself in an abusive relationship, please do not be afraid to seek help from your local resources and support groups. Remember, only by working together can we end the cycle of violence.

 

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October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

by josh on October 7, 2011 · No Comments

October is domestic violence awareness month in the United States. It is a month that affects at least 25% of women who have faced or will face domestic violence and/or intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

At Guardly, we’ve worked closely with a number of organizations including Becky’s Fund and Witness Justice to ensure that we have and will continue to build the best mobile application for personal emergency response. I’d like to thank a number of others that we’re received advice from, including Cynthia Fraser from the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Jennifer Yeardon from DOVE and Rob Powell from the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Calling Other Voices to be Heard
To take a stand against domestic violence, this month Guardly will be hosting a special Domestic Violence Awareness Blog Series that calls upon leaders in the fight against domestic violence. We’d like to hear stories, case studies and awareness campaigns that you’ve launched in the past, are working on now or plan to launch in the near future. How many people have you helped?

If you are passionate about ending domestic violence and would like to have your voice heard on our blog, please leave us a comment, reach out (and retweet us) on twitter or contact us. We’d love to publish your story and give you a chance to reach a large audience with your message.

Resources
If you’ve been battling domestic violence and are seeking resources, Guardly recently posted a list of domestic violence and sexual assault resources across the United States. For the US National Domestic Violence Hotline, dial 1.800.779.SAFE (7233) or 1.800.787.3224 (TTY).

For other organizations or individuals looking to engage with DVAM, the Domestic Violence Awareness Project has released a 2011 “DVAM Campaign in a Box” that includes a collection of sample materials that can be used for educational webinars and other tools to enhance your prevention and awareness efforts.

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