B Shifter
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B Shifter
Blue Card Rundown for September, 2025
This episode features Josh Blum and John Vance.
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Welcome to the B Shifter podcast. John Vance here along with Josh Bloom, and today is the blue card rundown for September, going into October of 2025. How are you doing, josh? Good to see you, man.
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, doing great. Good to see you, as always.
Speaker 1:It's been a little bit. We've been on a silverback run here on the podcast, so we haven't had you on for about a month or so. So it's good to see you again and we're certainly looking forward to being in person next week in Sharonville, ohio at the blue card conference. You all ready for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're. I think we're all ready to go. We got, since some emails out this morning and followed up with some presenters and then anybody who's attending. Make sure you download the WOVA app so that you see what the entire agenda is for the week. You can make your plans of what you're going to do for the general sessions on Thursday and Friday, and then there's an agenda on there for those that are attending the pre-conference workshop. Starting on Monday, a week from today, We'll start to start lab, and then Tuesday and Wednesday we got the other four workshops that we're doing. I think we about 125 people for the workshops and 400 and something, I think, altogether for the general session. So, yeah, looking forward to catching up with everybody and rolling out some of the stuff we've been working on for this last year, talking about where we've been and where we're going.
Speaker 1:So here we are, the week of September 22nd when this podcast is coming out. Can people still register? Is there still plenty of room for folks if they want to get into the conference this week?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the general session. We could well those of you who've been to Sharonville Convention Center, we could take as many as we, as many as could sign up. Really we could do for the general session stuff. And then there's not many seats left for the workshops, but there's a few seats left here and there. We actually received some registrations at the end of last week for the conference. So yeah, looking forward to it. Plenty of opportunity to still register if your organization is looking to send somebody.
Speaker 1:Bshiftercom. You can click on all the information there. There's descriptions of everything that we're doing. I'm really looking forward to it. There's some great classes. I've been kind of peeking over the shoulder helping some of the other instructors out with some of their material and there is some great content this year, whether it's the expanded command class and also Tim Schaubel's also doing the leadership under fire class. He's got a lot of great stuff for that. I know Chris and Eric have really put in, you know, even more work into their strategic decision-making class that they're going to be presenting this year, and then some of the other instructors I think we have, you know are, we have, we have, we have a lot of new stuff. I mean, I can't, I can't remember it all, but on the WOVA app you can see all of that or you can can you can check out the descriptions at our website, bshiftercom yeah, a big thing is terry and pat will be given.
Speaker 2:You know, uh, where are they with the silverback leadership stuff? So a year ago they launched that actual online the first one at the conference and here before the conference or right at the conference and here before the conference or right at the conference. This year they'll have module four will be coming out. So I've been through every one of those and gives quite a different perspective on that delivery of service.
Speaker 2:When we focus on the work, when we face our chair and we face ourselves towards the work and don't worry so much about all the other residual bs, that really don't mean anything. I think it keeps all of us focused more on why we really exist, which is to provide service to the community, not service to ourself. I mean, right, they do a nice job talking about inside out you know, leadership and all of that, but when it all starts, when it starts, though, with that work, with us facing the community and what they want and what they need, there's that's a, there's a huge value in that, and you can tie that all the way back to blue card. Right, we do what we do with command and decision-making because it's about providing service to the community when they're in that state of need.
Speaker 1:If you're unfamiliar with what Silverback is, that's really our leadership level classes that come from proven fire chiefs, including the work of Alan Brunicini. So taking his stuff that he did customer service and a lot of his other writings anatomy and physiology of leadership melding it into one program. So if you want to lead like Alan Brunicini did, this is really a program to get involved in because it distills down all of his works into these easy to digest modules. So those guys will be there for that. And if you've seen any of our clips that we talked about on the podcast last week but I just put a clip out of Terry talking about uniforms and I've had to say you know we're not anti-uniform, nobody's anti-uniform but that's real low-lying fruit that a lot of people get fixated on and that was the point of his clip. But oh my gosh, did it create a firestorm? I mean it has over 380,000 views as of today and hundreds of comments and people arguing back and forth about you know, if you're not following a uniform policy, it's going to be the fall of civilization and others on there saying we shouldn't have to wear uniforms or adhere to any policy. And that's not really the point at all.
Speaker 1:The point is a lot of fire chiefs focus on that low-lying fruit and get involved in details, especially at larger departments, that they should let their division chiefs and other folks take care of while they're charting the strategy and keeping us focused on the big picture. And we talk a lot about that with the Silverback program. So that it's a great program, because I really tried to follow what Alan Brunicini did as far as being a fire chief. But you know it's all over the place because there's books and videos and stuff. Now we're trying to collect that all into one nice collection for everybody. So if, if you want to get the teachings of AVB, you'll be able to get that through silverback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if we, if we would only give as much attention to the uniforms, or not as much attention to the to, to our service delivery and what we do with service delivery, and as we attention to the to, to our service delivery and and what we do with service delivery and as we do to the uniforms, we would be, we would all be so much further ahead. But it's like, how in the world did that get so? People got so, they're getting so wrapped around the wheel. On on that. On the uniform thing Right, and it's like no, you need to look like a you.
Speaker 1:the uniform thing right, and it's like no, you need to look like a, you need to look in some form or fashion like a fireman like you're to to deliver service, but on their worst day they really, they really don't care. No, no, and that's that's really the point. So check that out. It's good stuff. So looking forward to seeing everybody at the 2025 blue card hazardard Zone Conference in Sharonville, ohio Easy to get there. Our guys this week are out in Connecticut right, they're at the RF Working Group Conference. It's an educational symposium. What are they doing out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Chris Stewart, sean Glazer and JT, they got a general session that they're doing there. Basically they're giving an overview of the eight functions of command for ARF response. So it's similar to what Blue Card is, for all hazards is what we always call the general Blue Card stuff, and there's been plenty of organizations that are, you know, aircraft response that have, you know, tweaked the or that that program to make it fit what they do on the airfield.
Speaker 2:But this is a a very focused program on aircraft and decision-making with aircraft and having a process and actually having a command system, whether you're got a single ARF apparatus or whether you're you know command system, whether you've got a single ARF apparatus or whether you're running eight or ten ARF apparatus on a single airport facility. They've got a general session on that. There's an ARF trainer December 16th maybe, but it's in Phoenix ARF train, the trainer class. I think there's still plenty of seats open in that. So if you were looking to find out or get more information on that, you can go to the website to find information or reach out to Chris Stewart, chris at B shiftercom.
Speaker 1:We took the pilot class a few months ago and there was a lot that I learned that I never knew. And I actually worked at a station before adjacent to a municipal airport and it was never in our mission to be the ARF for that municipal airport although it was one of the busier municipal airports in the state and about once a year we'd have a helicopter crash or a Cessna come down on the road and no one ever really told us what to do. You know, we knew you. You know foam operations and some of the stuff that we would do with the fuels on that aircraft. But uh, I this is a lot more comprehensive than than I ever knew of before. So I I frankly I kind of geeked out over the, the training that we did, because it was a lot of good stuff and things that I I never even considered before as far as command considerations that are, of incidents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they've built some. You know they got the tactical considerations modules for different aircraft and then the simulations that they have already are, you know, fantastic everything from a you know inbound flight emergency with, you know, potential breaks on fire or breaks on fire to, you know, an escalated incident where, you know, plane versus building on the ground. So, yeah, and they're going to keep expanding those modules too, as, as that group continues to come together and gives focus to the ARF module, just like, just like all of us that are working on the all hazards blue card program continue to refine it, they're going to do the same with that.
Speaker 1:So, Well, if you're out at the Mohegan resort for the blue card working I mean, I'm sorry the our working group conference focusing on education, look for the blue card guys Chris, jt and Sean out there and you'll see them up on the main stage at some point. So look them up and say hi if you happen to be going to that conference and definitely check out our ARF program if you're interested in that. The rest of 2025 looks to be filling up here. Josh, I know we just have a few seats left in any of our Train, the.
Speaker 2:Trainers. So how are those looking? Yeah, I think there's four or five seats left in the November Trainer in Phoenix. Other than that, all of our Phoenix classes are full or over full. But when I say over full we're going to accommodate the students that are in there. But you know, people registered the same time or whatever. And then we have a trainer coming up in Michigan that's got four or five seats in it. We have the Kernersville Mayday Management class which probably has six or eight seats left in it, and other than that it's pretty much so filled up through the rest of the year.
Speaker 2:And we posted the dates for 26 about I don't know just a few weeks ago and we've been seeing quite a few registrations come in for those train-the-trainer classes in Phoenix after the first of the year and then we got January. Through April we already have trainers and workshops scheduled. So if you're looking to do something locally next year, the sooner you get with us, the more flexibility we'll have, obviously, with dates. But we have three events in January I think, three in February and then three in April already on the books, so we can definitely deliver and do work. You know multiple classes in the same week but at some point we get to the point where we're taxed with what we can deliver.
Speaker 2:So we try to though we did it. We try to avoid what we're doing in September and October this year with, I think, five train-the-trainer classes and a workshop and two conferences, and then our own conference in September and then pretty much the same thing in October. So at some point, just like everything, you get the capacity, but we're in a much better place than the people building fire trucks, cause we're, we're, we're still delivering in six to nine month range, not three to four sometimes. Yeah, what?
Speaker 1:what a brutal testimony to, just as a sidebar boy, I'm glad I'm not those guys. Hey, so that looks good. Go to our our events page. When you go to bshiftercom you can look at all those dates and then if you're interested in a particular class, click on that and you can put your form in to get registered for that. Yeah, about what? Was it April that we? We kicked off our AAR module for after action reviews and enabling folks to really have a very objective way of doing after action reviews with their departments? How is that turning out right now? What, where, where are we at on the after action reviews?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we we actually turned it on at the conference last year. Oh okay, it's like the trial modules, if you will. And then, based off some feedback, we relaunched with some refinement. Command function seven went through. It heard feedback what can we do? How can we make it easier? And then, once we started getting data into the system, we were able to update some things to make sure that we were providing the right questions and then that the system was putting out the right feedback that the end user wanted. So, yeah, the ARs I mean organizations that are using it are having tons of success.
Speaker 2:We're going to be doing a podcast coming up here, probably in a month or less, with an organization here just outside of Cincinnati, ohio, that's had three working fires in six months in the same 1.4 million square foot Amazon distribution center. Every one of them, every one of them contained by the sprinkler system. Two of them were in the higher well. Every one of them, every one of them contained by the sprinkler system. Two of them were in the higher well. All three of them were in high rack storage, but two of them were on the top shelf of the high rack storage at 40 feet. Sprinkler system totally contained it and and this organization has since the beginning of us delivering the big box workshops and us having the big box best practice SOGs that we collaborate on and built out based on input from Shane Ray and others that have been to been successful at these sprinkler control big box buildings. This organization latched onto that and is using that whole mind frame of you know, slow down a little bit. The sprinkler system's going to let the sprinkler system do its job, though it's going to be interesting in the podcast the conditions from a top shelf fire at 40 feet versus the last fire that they had. That was on the very on ground level, the smoke condition that they encountered. The sprinkler system totally contained it. Their smoke condition was quite different. The sprinkler system totally contained it. Their smoke condition was quite different throughout.
Speaker 2:So that just really takes us back to something that we talk about all the time, that we never go to the same fire over and over again. So it's like, yeah, you're going to Amazon again for a fire, but what's on fire? What's the location of the fire? How far into the building is the fire? So I mean there's just so many things that we start with right that whole decision-making thing. It starts with the critical factors. So the building isn't changing, the layout isn't changing, but the location of the fire and what's burning is changing, which impacts. How long did it burn and how big did it get before that sprinkler system went off? And in this case, the the fire was still just this. Last case the fire was still, like all three of them, totally contained by the sprinkler system. They had to, you know, obviously, mop it up a little bit.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I'm looking forward to that, that podcast, because they were going to talk about big box, but we're also going to talk about how they use the after action reporting system and then share that with their own personnel as well as other people that respond mutual aid with them into that facility, so that we can all learn from those experiences. So that's really good. And then I think last time I looked at it, we have 24 victim rescues that have been entered into there. So it's good being able to see that information and talk to organizations that have had rescues. And then I've had a half a dozen of those organizations I talked to and they said, yeah, we pulled out a victim and if we didn't have this after action reporting thing, we would have said high five, we saved this person's life and we put the fire out, great job. And they still did that. They they verified all of the things that they were doing correctly and kind of shored that up.
Speaker 2:But then they had an opportunity to take a deeper look and say, but what can we still do better? Because that's what we should be doing every day, like, what can we do better? And if you can't find anything that you can do better, then you're probably honestly not looking too hard, right? I mean, it doesn't have to be a big thing. There's always something I think that we can consider or something that we can probably do better. And you notice, I'm not saying that we did wrong, but something that we can just do better to provide the best service that we can possibly provide with the capabilities and resources that we have available to do so. So that's been really interesting.
Speaker 2:And then eric phillips is he's had many, many, many meetings now with people who do data analysis and all the super smart science people. If you, you will not fire science, but science when it comes to data collection. And then what does the data really telling us? And then how do we display the results for the end user so that they have the best opportunity to fix it within their own organization, without saying no, no, you were wrong.
Speaker 2:More of the opportunity of no, we have an opportunity to do something better. Not, you did this totally wrong and we're going to. We have to do something about that. And there's there's plenty of cases where you know we do things I don't think anybody does anything intentionally wrong but where we do things wrong and it's like no, that's, that's dead wrong and we're never going to do that again. Versus the, we have an opportunity to improve. So we've been in kind of in a state of refinement of what that data dashboard for organizations looks like. Dashboard for organizations looks like, and it really just comes down to what's acceptable, limits and then what's not acceptable. And you know, in our world we should be striving for 100%, not mediocrity.
Speaker 1:Right and we always want to be fixing ourselves too. That's something that we say all the time. We're always living within the command function where we're revising and reviewing and trying to make it better. That was another one of Bruno's things. So with that on the AAR module, they're adding a couple other features to that too. I see that are going to be turned on soon. What's in the works for AAR in the future for AAR in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, instructors, when you look at your dashboard now, it says there's two things on there and it says coming soon.
Speaker 2:They're there because we built it out and it just hasn't been turned on. One of them is the hot wash component, so that you can link a hot wash, you know, right after the tailboard talk, right after an incident, to you know your actual AAR program. So, number part one, hot wash. Part two, you're, you're, you're entering and doing the AAR stuff with your audio and your video and and pre-plans, and looking at all of those parts and pieces. And then part three of it, which will be down the road, even a little bit further, is like the full scale getting input and feedback through survey forms that'll come right from the system to all the companies, or whatever companies you choose to send the survey to, to gather you know, what did you do, what did you think we could do better, what did you see, what did you hear, what worked, what didn't work, all of those things that really might come out at a larger scale review. It may be a larger incident, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I know we've been using it at my departments and it's working very well for us. It gives us a really nice platform to be able to review those incidents where it's done very objectively and, I think, just the format, and not that we had a huge problem with this anyway, but it just seems like people don't take it personally when you frame it the right way and you're doing it in this format. Versus Billy, I didn't like what you did on this incident, or you know, jimmy, you could have done a better job on that size up. We can actually listen to it now, judge it using the same criteria as we judge everything else and make it just kind of a nice objective way to learn and improve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the beautiful thing with the AAR is it's it's. The AAR part is based on the SOGs and best practice and the training that we provide, so it takes the emotion out. It's as long as you're doing that, as long as you've told people what to do and then you've taught them how to do it, you know the AAR should be no surprise and no hurt feelings to anybody. Really, what it is is a lot of times a reflection of the organization, as Eric Phillips says all the time. Why do I keep going to training and training on the same thing that we do really well, and everybody says that we do really well, but meanwhile there's a list of things that we've identified that we can do better, but we don't address that.
Speaker 1:We'll help you out on that. Get into our after action reviews and use that module. It's available to blue card instructors, so it's not on everyone's dashboard. You have to have an instructor license, but you can share it then after you do it with those in your organization. The other thing I just wanted to mention on there too, because we only talked about it really once is we added the data exports that are on there now. So you know we had reports on there that you can download into an Excel spreadsheet ever since we relaunched really. But this is more of a clean way to get a progress report on on the various programs you may have within your department. Are people using that? Is there anything else we want to say, or just remind people that you can use that report function on on the toolbar too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think if you're if you're not looking for it, you probably don't see it. So they're on the left side of your screen. If you're not looking for it, you probably don't see it. So there on the left side of your screen, if you're an instructor, there's a place there that it's an option where you can click to export reports. So if you go there, you're not going to hurt a thing. You can go there and export all kinds of different reports and it just streamlines really tracking, for you know, renewal, eight functions of command, how many hours people have.
Speaker 2:Basically, if the data's in the system, you can get a report out of the system very easily now that way, or you can still do the old school way of dropping it into an Excel sheet and then you can do whatever you want with it. So, yeah, I think people are. People are using it More and more. People are finding out about it when they call the office and ask Jen, how do you do something? And then she directs them to it and they're like, oh, like that, that makes it real easy. John, I think you said that you know, once a month, just print this thing off, give it to the training officer, give it to the three battalion chiefs, give it to whoever and this person's behind, or whatever it is, so that it just stays right in your face and you don't have to spend a ton of time chasing recertification hours or any of those things, because it's pretty simple. Right on a report.
Speaker 1:So what's coming up? I mean, I know you've got a couple other plates spinning. When we get through the conference next week, we're looking ahead at 2026, and we have some new things coming online that our lead instructors are working on right now and you're working on Josh. What's that look like?
Speaker 2:We've been working for about a year on what used to be called the Blue Card SOPs, which was that 240 something page document where we've been in the midst of revamping that, rewording it, making it a more usable reference guide.
Speaker 2:Basically for blue card organizations it's going to be probably going to be called the blue card model procedures guide. So it's going to be. It'll be on the website, just like it always was, as a you know free download, but then instructors will have access to it as a word document so you could tweak it and change it and update it for what you do at your own organization. So that's going to be really nice because that's going to line up with the third edition of fire command. So it's looking like the third edition of Fire Command is like 400 to 450 pages, so about the same size, maybe a little bit bigger than the second edition of Fire Command. So this is just going to be a little bit of a shorter document, not for an organization to adopt for what you do on the fire ground but, like I said, more of a reference guide or more information regarding the eight functions of command and rapid intervention, response, air management, all those parts and pieces that were in the blue card old blue card SOP. So we're going to be rolling that out in January and right there in that same time frame when the third edition of Fire Command is rolling out, we're also in the middle of updating the 13 SOGs that we've. I think it was 2022 when we first launched those, john, and put them on the website in the free download section, and I know those have gotten hundreds of thousands of downloads from departments. You know, everywhere Organizations doing blue card and those that don't do blue card. So, just like fire departments should be updating and reviewing their SOGs. You know we feel the same way. So we've been refining those SOGs. We're going to push those out also in January.
Speaker 2:This last year we pushed out four new command CEs and likely one more still coming out before the end of the year. Then the Silverback leadership right now, everybody who has full access has access to all of the Silverback leadership stuff. So we will have pushed out four Silverback leadership modules over this last year. The new dispatch module so they refined, basically and put into a new platform. But the dispatch module has relaunched this year. Chris, jt, sean and that whole cadre of instructors that worked on the ARF module. They launched that. The first trainer, I think, was in June and now they've been right back at it working on CE modules because if you're going to have a certification then there has to be CE connected to it to maintain a certification. So they've already jumped on that so that there's continuing education going to be available for the ARF program.
Speaker 2:And I'll just back up we're also working on the CE for the dispatch module. So when that, when we first launched that, you know every intention of of having the CE. But we've been on a, we've been on a ride wide open for five years and quite frankly, it didn't make it to the front burner. So now it is on the front burner and we're we're building those, building out those modules. And then, like we just talked about, with the after action reporting program, that continues to be refined. It will continue to be refined forever.
Speaker 2:As long as, anytime anybody's looking at data, I think there's always right around the corner there's another, better way. Or if there's not a better way to collect the data or ask the question, there's a better way of what do we do with it. So, with the after action reporting piece, our lead instructors and our staff, you know, look at where organizations all blue card organizations are falling when it comes to, you know, performance. So you know the first thing that we do is I'll give you an example where organizations, when you look at every, every single after action report, we're scoring like low sixties on declaration of strategy. And we've we took a hard look at ourselves in the mirror of how well do we do delivering, why it's so important that we declare a strategy and what does that really mean. And so we're revisiting how do we address that? If it's indeed a training problem on our end, are we giving the instructors the tools that they need to get their students and their own organization to give the strategy Not once, but three times right Initial radio report, follow-up report during a command transfer. So we're looking at that.
Speaker 2:So, with that said, we're in January we will also be pushing out a bunch of updates to the day one PowerPoint. We haven't done a lot of updates with that in a couple of years. So, based off of end user customer input feedback, you know, we're making some updates and changes to that. The biggest change is going to be how we deliver the five-day train-the-trainer session so that we, based on feedback from end-users again, that we make sure that we're covering everything that we need to cover and then, as we continue to evolve and add parts and pieces and components, making sure that we're covering all of that during that five-day class and then continuing to support it after the instructor leaves class and goes to deliver.
Speaker 2:So I think we do a really good job supporting instructors already. Good job supporting instructors already. I mean, if you have a question, don't sit there and try to figure it out yourself. Pick that phone up and call the office or email or call any of us and we'll help you out with it. But I know that everybody in the office does a really nice job. On that support piece, jen gets an email this morning and 10 minutes later she was sending them an answer and we didn't fix the problem already, but we already addressed it for the person which in today's world I think that's unheard of you don't even get transferred to another country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and no bots. We don't have a bot helping you out. It's actual people that know what they're talking about. So that's one of the nice things about our customer service. Well, we wanted to hop on today and just give everybody a bit of an update on where we're at. We like to come on with these blue card rundowns to give everybody an update on where we are with programs and dates and what's coming up through, at least next couple of months. So I'm sure we'll do one or two more of these before the end of the year and get people together. Did you have anything else today for us, josh, before we go?
Speaker 2:I don't think, so I'm going to jump back on my computer and get some other stuff tied up and wrapped up for the conference that we'll, yeah, six days away now five, five days, five days. You guys will be here. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a good time.
Speaker 1:I am too. Thanks for all your hard work that you've done out, and I know that's it's occupied a lot of your time, especially since it's there in your backyard, but you're the you're the driving force behind this. So thanks for all the effort you put into getting all of us together and giving us some continuing education. That's going to help develop our command skills, so I do appreciate it. Well, we'll see you next week, josh. Thanks, thanks, john.