Alerts, Cats, and Ice Cream: Getting to Know Jeannette Sutton

Who is Dr. Jeannette Sutton, and how did she become one of the most influential voices in emergency alerting and warning research?

In this special episode of The Alerting Authority, co-host Eddie Bertola turns the tables and interviews Dr. Jeannette Sutton about her personal journey, professional influences, and vision for the future of emergency communication.

From her early work as a chaplain and victim advocate following the Columbine tragedy to conducting rapid-response research after 9/11, Dr. Sutton shares the experiences that shaped her career in disaster research, risk communication, and public warning systems. She discusses the mentors who influenced her, including Dennis Mileti and Kathleen Tierney, and reflects on groundbreaking research involving social media, disaster communication, and public response to emergencies.

The conversation also explores:

•  The evolution of emergency alerting and warning systems 
•  Why research and real-world emergency management often struggle to connect 
•  Common mistakes in emergency alerts and warning messages 
•  The importance of plain language communication 
•  Public trust, alert fatigue, and over-alerting 
•  The future of AI-generated emergency alerts 
•  New warning standards and best practices 
•  The Warning Bootcamp and improving message design 
•  Dr. Sutton’s life outside of academia, including quilting, birdwatching, hiking, and endurance trail events 

Whether you're an emergency manager, public safety communicator, researcher, student, or simply interested in how life-saving alerts are designed, this episode offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at one of the field’s leading experts.

Every second has a story—and today, you’ll hear Dr. Jeannette Sutton’s.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi, I'm Jeanette Sutton.

SPEAKER_04 0:08

And I'm Eddie Bertholetta.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

And we welcome you to another episode of the Alerting Authority. And as always, we encourage you to subscribe, follow, listen, and most importantly, participate in these podcasts. We want your questions, concerns, ideas, problems, your pain points, and your success stories so we as alerting authorities can do our jobs better and make our communities safer. And today, this episode is brought to you by the Warn Room. So if you have 360 characters to save a life, are you ready? I'm Dr. Jeanette Sutton, and at the Warn Room, we turn disaster science into life-saving action. If your agency is struggling to craft the perfect alert, we're here to help you get it right the first time. We offer specialized warning boot camps to sharpen your team's skills, expert consulting for crisis message development, and access to the warning lexicon, a plug and play library of evidence-based templates for nearly 50 different hazards. Stop guessing and start alerting with confidence. Visit thewarnroom.com to book a training or explore our message libraries.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

Okay, so are you thinking who we're gonna have on as the guest today? Um I'm thinking that. I'm sure you are. No, this is the episode of it's one that I think is gonna be a lot of fun. It's the who is Dr. Jeanette Sutton episode. And I have we're gonna take this opportunity, and poor Jeanette does not know all the questions that are gonna get asked of her today, which I think makes it even better. Um, but we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit about it. Um so instead of going through, you know, in different bios, and we'll hit different pieces um of our own bio, right, in different episodes. But I think this is just gonna be a fun episode. So I really hope everyone is gonna just listen. And and there are some questions that I think are are kind of fun and others that are um, I think pretty uh pretty good to really help us understand a little bit more about what what made Dr. Jeanette Sutton who she is today.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Now I want to know what the questions are.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Okay, but first we're we're just gonna start off pretty easy, right? As you look and see for some of these interviews. So these are just some some rapid fire questions, just a little bit about you as a person before we get into everything else. So number one, what is your favorite movie of all time?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Well, Christmas movie would have to be Christmas Family Vacation.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Um, I know most of the lines from that movie and truly appreciate the humor and the silliness of the whole thing. And we normally watch that Thanksgiving weekend to prepare for the holiday season.

SPEAKER_04 3:01

Love it. Okay, if you could instantly become an expert in something completely unrelated to what you currently do, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Wow. Uh a hard one. Shoot. I mean, my first thought was something that I already do, and I'd love to be more of an expert at it. Um what's that? I I love to quilt.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yes, you do.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

And um, I I do that as something that um is very tactile because I sit in front of my computer all day long every day. And quilting is something that, you know, when you finish it, you finish it. And there's always something in your quilt that's that you know is not quite right, but nobody else will see it. And you just it's just the way that life is. Um, but I'm practicing a new technique, which is making curves. And it takes a you have to go much slower, uh, but it's really fun to learn something new. So if I could become more of an expert at different quilting styles, I think that would be great.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

That is awesome. And I have benefited from your quilts. I have one and it it's amazing. We're probably gonna start promoting them on the Alerting Authority or Wardroom to say you can buy uh an actual Jeanette Sutton quilt.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

You know, it's crazy. My son was just home and he was staying in the spare bedroom because he moved all of his stuff away to his apartment in another state, and the spare bed was piled with all the quilts that I've made that I don't know what to do with. And he said, Mom, I I counted. There were 10 quilts on the bed and there were another 20 in the closet. What are you gonna do with them? Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

Yeah, you heard it here, folks. We're gonna start them. Um okay. So we'll I'll take all that. Now, what you you cannot mention quilting in this next one for an answer. So if you had um something that you don't have very often, which would be an actual day off, complete day off, would you spend it relaxing at home or would you go out and do something?

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Probably go out and do something.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Um, and um right now that would be going for a long hike.

SPEAKER_04 5:16

That's right, in preparation for some pretty exciting stuff. But it will lead to another question. What is your favorite seasonal ice cream? And you're gonna have to go into maybe just quickly about the whole what is seasonal ice cream because you introduced it to me and it sounds pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yes. So in New York, when the weather changes finally starts to get out of winter, there are little ice cream stands that pop up all over the upstate area. And then people go and visit them and they they vote on their favorite ice cream stand. And we have one not far from us called DeVoe's Rainbow Ice Cream, and DeVoe's is an orchard. In fact, I feel like there is an emergency manager by the last name of DeVoe, and that he might be related to this, so we should look him up. Um, so they have a their first week they launched, it was last week, and it was pistachio. And this week is black cherry, but I think maple is coming up, and that maple flavor is probably my favorite one.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

Right. Oh very nice, and that is DeVoe's in New York. Somewhere up there. Seasonal ice cream.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 6:33

Okay. What is the one place you've traveled to that you would go back to tomorrow? Just for a visit, not to live forever.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Um we love going to um Little St. Simon's Island in Georgia. And it is a nature preserve. You can get there only by taking a boat over. There's no car traffic except for the vehicles they've moved over for the for um the camp area. And it's it's just lovely. It's there's so many birds that migrate through, and you stay in a cabin and you go for long walks and you look for lizards and snakes and turtles, and there's alligators all over the place. Um, but just beautiful seasonal birds coming through nesting and then raising their young there before they fly off for the next season. I love that place.

SPEAKER_04 7:31

For those that don't know, and I guess it's a good place to just say it, she she is a birder. She's a bird watcher. Is that is that the term? What is it?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Yes, I am a bird watcher. I love, I love I'm actually I I love to listen to birds even more than see birds because my vision's not really great, but I'm pretty good at birding by ear, which makes it really fun because right now, as all the new birds are coming through, I'm picking out the ones that are not familiar. And so I'm hearing a lot of warblers and thrushes and all the guys that are um we have Orioles that have stopped in our backyard. So they're all flying north right now. And it's just, it's like a chorus. It's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 8:12

All right. And then the next one is um, would you rather, and this is multiple choice here, would you rather read a book, watch a documentary, or go for a walk?

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Go for a walk.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

So I go, I would love to go for a walk while I'm listening to a book.

SPEAKER_04 8:28

Okay. So and you've actually done meetings or taken calls on walks as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Because I've interrupted you before. Yes. Um, favorite weather event to watch, and we're what I'm stipulating here is no one would get hurt in this. So this isn't a tragedy. So, what's the most kind of intriguing weather phenomenon that you're just like, I could watch this. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Um I'm not a meteorologist, but I do love seeing the the visuals of the shelf clouds forming where there's the rotation and it looks like this big plate that's just settling over the top of uh an area. And it's fascinating to me to see how that cloud forms. And I cannot speak about it in any accurate terms. Then ain't any me any meteorologist knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's this really amazing, high up in the air shelf. Um I like watching it. I can't talk about it very well though.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

I love it. So mine is similar, just throwing it in. Mine's the marine layer, um, that really dense, I mean, from California, um, and maybe other places have it, but I remember being in the city and or that San Francisco for non-Californian people, but in the city, and you could be uh in a mountain or anywhere else and just watch this thick marine layer come in, and it's absolutely gorgeous. Um, and it drops the temperature like 25 degrees. It's right, yeah. Love it. Okay. Next one is what is your go-to comfort food after a stressful week or another meeting with me?

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Well, a coffee. Um my go-to comfort food. Oh. Um I really like Oreos and milk. Um Yeah, it kind of depends on how I'm feeling.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Salty or salt or sweet. Salty would be chips and salsa. Um, sweet would probably be like an Oreo or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

Okay, single or double stuffed?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Single.

SPEAKER_04 10:53

Okay, mint, lemon, or pure? Because there are like there's uh cake, there's a whole bunch of different ones. Are you a purist?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

I so we have I'll tell you a quick story. Um, so every year I do a taste test with my family of some sort of a food that has multiple flavors or varieties. And last year we tasted 15 kinds of Oreos.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

Oh my goodness. So I don't even know there were 15 flavors.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

There are, because we I ordered some from Japan, like strawberry and other fruit flavors, and then you had your peanut butter and your mint, and um, they had like a gram cracker, like a s'mores flavor, and then they have your holiday colors like green and orange for Halloween. Um, but honestly, the my favorite was just the plain, consistent style of Oreo. It was, I thought it was better than all the other ones. And even some of the flavor, even if it's not a flavor thing, sometimes it's a texture thing, like some of them were just a little too crunchy. But the plain Oreos, like the original is it's great.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

Well, I can say I've never had an overseas Oreo. And so maybe maybe it is different. But okay, so Oreos. That's that's what you would go for?

SPEAKER_02 12:08

I I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

And again, just standard pure?

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Yeah, standard Oreos. Okay. But milk. It needs milk.

SPEAKER_04 12:16

To dip or drown?

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Yeah. To dip.

SPEAKER_04 12:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:22

Um, okay, cool. I again stuff, folks, I didn't even know before, and it makes me think, okay, who is this person?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Um I know. Oh mystery.

SPEAKER_04 12:32

Are you are you more of a planner or uh figure it out as you go?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Oh depends on what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Um and I'm not gonna bring in Mark to to add, you know, give me no, it's really this.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Well, see, that's the thing, is because right now we're planning this big trip, but really I'm not doing the planning. I'm just letting somebody else do the planning for me. And I love that. Um, because in my work life, I'm constantly planning. But in my other life, like I will put out the the goal of doing something, and then the planning gets taken care of, and then we just arrive there. And I love that.

SPEAKER_04 13:12

That's hey, it's good to have a good team, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:16

It's it absolutely. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 13:19

Okay. Um, last couple is if you weren't working in emergency management, where do you think you'd be working? And I think emergency management uh being the whole of what we do.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

So including my professoring?

SPEAKER_04 13:34

Yeah. Oh. So if you weren't in this subject matter, like where would you be?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

So in professoring, it would be probably environmental sociology or something about collective behavior, um, which are both foundational to the space of disaster research. But before I started studying disasters, which you're probably going to start asking me about this in a second, anyways, but um, when you first get to grad school, you have to select a topic really quickly because you need to get into conferences and other things where you start to develop your skills. And um, I was looking around Boulder for a topic and I found out about the um the Save the Prairie Dog Coalition. And for a little while, I was studying prairie dogs and the collective behavior of humans around saving the prairie dogs as an environmental sociologist. And um, and then 9-11 happened, and I decided I wasn't gonna study prairie dogs anymore.

SPEAKER_04 14:36

There you go. Okay, your your last question before we get into the real question. Who is your favorite co-host of the Alerting Authority? Think about this one. You gotta alert.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

I've only had one co-host so far.

SPEAKER_04 14:52

So it's not the way to start the answer.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

That would be you, okay. Eddie Vertola, the person who convinced me to do this, and it's been a lot of fun so far.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

Okay, we'll have to take out the first part of how you just said that. Well, I've only had one. It's the best and the worst. Okay. Well, that's just a little bit kind of behind the scenes of Jeanette, and I want to get into some um, some I think more on point um type questions about you. And again, feel free to. I mean, this really is just I we want to know more about you. So if you if there's something I missed, please let me know. So before before we get into like specific projects or specific mentors that you that you've had, um, you've become one of the leading voices in alert and warning research. And obviously, I don't think you just woke up one morning and said, you know, I'm gonna study emergency management and alerts and warnings and all these things. So what what kind of led you to where you are? And you you mentioned 9-11, but what what led you to where you are?

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Well, um, 9-11 was certainly a turning point.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Um I I went to graduate school in Boulder, Colorado, which is the home of the Natural Hazard Center, and immediately was intrigued by Dennis Molletti, who was the chair of the sociology department and also the director of the hazard center. And um observing him and what he was doing and recognizing how much of an impact he had on all of the students and people around the world. In fact, the year that I went to Boulder was the year that the um the book, The Disasters by Design, had just been published by Joseph Henry Press. And he was taking a world tour and sharing this knowledge with people internationally, and it was just amazing to watch. So he absolutely had an effect on my decisions around what I was gonna study. Um when 9-11 happened, um, he called all of the students and faculty that might be interested in doing what we called quick response research and said, here's the situation in New York, in Pennsylvania, in Virginia. Put together a short proposal. And if it's a good study, we will provide the funding to get you into the field as quickly as possible to start doing your research and collecting data. And that was the turning point because prior to going back to graduate school, I had already identified a research question that I was really interested in, and it wasn't prairie dogs. Um, but I didn't know how to get into that space until 9-11. Um, I had worked in um Jefferson County, Colorado as part of the response to Columbine High School, the shooting as a victim advocate. And so I spent a lot of time with the faculty and with the students and with staff and thinking about mass casualty events and the kinds of support that is needed for the victims, but also for the supporters. Um, and not just like mental health support, but how do we do it better? And having prior to going and doing that work at Columbine, I was working in trauma hospitals and domestic violence centers as a chaplain. Because my my my academic past is kind of uh varied. I did get a Master's of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and so I was working as a chaplain, um, as a Presbyterian chaplain. Um, and providing spiritual care to people who experienced traumatic events was really important, um, which uh you you have to have boundaries around that. And I was really curious when 9-11 happened, what would spiritual care look like in those family assistance centers? Um, knowing that it would be completely inappropriate for a chaplain of any sort to proselytize, to um to force people to pray or to accept the the faith that I bring. Um, and so I was so curious to know how was that organized and provided in at 9-11 um in the world in response to the World Trade Center disaster. Um, so that's a long way of saying that that pathway took me to studying the organization of um response in family assistance centers, specifically looking at the chaplaincy, the spiritual care response that was attached to the Red Cross. Um, and uh from there I thought I was gonna continue on that path until uh Dennis asked me to join him and John Sorensen and Barb Vogt in thinking about alerts and warnings. Um and as always, what well, what frequently happens is that your dissertation does not end up being the same path that you end up taking for the rest of your research career. Um, and when I finished my dissertation and defended, um I was invited to do a postdoc with Kathleen Tierney, who was at that point the director of the Natural Hazard Center. And she said she had a brand new project with colleagues at UC Irvine that was looking at technology in disaster. And would I be interested in doing that? I thought that was crazy. I had no idea what she meant. Um, but it it opened brand new doors um that led, you know, one after another eventually to thinking about alerting and how it fits in with technology. And I'm yeah, I'm talking so much.

SPEAKER_04 21:11

Um, well, I think it's important for people to see. Um it's not like again, you went and did your undergrad in alerts and warnings or all these things, but things developed. And for people out there who are may they may be in a different field, but this is something that interests them. There are paths for you to to go and explore, you know, all these different things. And and again, just because you you may have a master's degree in in a different field, but this is something you want to transition to and study. Um, I think it's a good invitation to people to say, Yeah, you never know what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

You don't. You have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

I mean, you I had no idea I would be where I am. But honestly, the skills that you learn in your graduate program, that's Where your transferable skills of being able to conduct good literature reviews to understand the scope of what people have already done, your ability to design a research study with the appropriate methods, to analyze data and to write it in a way that it's publishable. But then most importantly is to explain what you've done in a way that translates that research into something that can be applied. That is the skill that they don't teach us much in graduate school, but you learn it by following in the footsteps of somebody like Dennis, who clearly shows how to present that information in a way that transforms the way that practitioners do things. And so I am just incredibly grateful to the example that he would provide of how to do that translational work for all of us.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Well, and then speaking of Dennis, right? Or Dr. Sorensen or others, were there any specific projects or people that you would think really shaped you postdoc, right? To where you're like, I feel like I have an okay understanding, but this really helped me take off.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

So that would really have to be my first project that was a large-scale project funded by the National Science Foundation. Um, I had a couple of smaller projects, but then this one large-scale one was with um my collaborator that I met when I was doing that, my postdoc. Um and my collaborator's name was is Carter Butts. And he is a um social network scientist and a computational social scientist, really, really mathy. Um just a brilliant scholar and always so intriguing to talk with. And Carter, if you're listening, I still just think the world of you. Um he was he really taught me so much about being an academic um and about writing, just brilliant writer. Um, and really helped to um open doors in the in spaces, academic spaces that I had no idea I was gonna enter. But we were studying um the use of social media in disasters. And so I my role was to do the qualitative analyses of all these messages that were being shared on Twitter. This was a long time ago. This was 2010. This was when Twitter was still like a useful tool for emergency managers. When it was Twitter, yeah. Um, Carter and his students would model the connections between the individual uh users of Twitter and also the connections between the messages and the message types. And it was fascinating to be part of that early, early research cadre that was looking at social media when I mean literally Twitter had only been launched a few years before. It was the only social media channel that we could easily collect data from because the API was open. And so we were just grabbing data and then choosing, like, okay, let's focus on this threat. Okay, let's focus on this event. So we had just these events that we were studying over time and were really able to establish an understanding of what causes retransmission of messages and thinking about how information is amplified across networks in disaster settings. Um, so Carter was really instrumental in those earliest studies from um 2010 to probably 2018, I think we were working together. I actually our last study, we had a small COVID rapid grant from NSF. And so we were doing some work around how messages on Twitter we um about COVID were being retransmitted and the characteristics of those messages that were really um getting a lot of attention.

SPEAKER_04 26:10

So, well, I now we're gonna transition, I guess, to that right there. So this is all how it's flowing really well, and I appreciate your your lead-ins to the next question based on you know your answer when you actually don't know what the next question is. But I I want to get to because you mentioned COVID, research versus real world. And there there are some things that are different and things that make that relationship really important. And I think one thing that makes your work different is that you've always tried to connect research to what actually happens in the field. And now this is from your perspective, um, and you have talked with hundreds or thousands of people who are practitioners in this field. Where do practitioners and researchers understand each other well? And where do you see disconnects between the operational and the academic sides?

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Um well, I'll I'll start with where there are disconnects in the academic space.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Our system within the ivory tower of rewards for academics does not incentivize us to write or to communicate for practitioners. We are judged by publishing in top-notch scientific journals where the language is so jargony and filled with technical information, and the measure discussion of measurement is so precise and I mean incredibly important. Um, and that's where you you can really truly make a name for yourself within the academic space by publishing in really high-powered upper-tier journals within your discipline. Um, but most of those journals are not accessible to practitioners. You have to pay to get to them. And then once you get to them, they're written, the articles are written in a way that it's it's it's so wordy, it's so complicated, it's so hard to dig in and find the nuggets of really useful information. Um, and so we have there has not been um an encouragement from within most universities for faculty, especially young career faculty, to translate that knowledge into something that's easily digestible by practitioners. Um, we don't get a lot of credit for that. So it took me a long time to figure out how to do that in a different space beyond publishing in journals and um giving talks and um trying to be more accessible. But it wasn't until just the last maybe five years or so that I started really stepping beyond what was recognized as legitimate scholarship by the university to actually thinking more translational and pushing that information out in the formats that I now utilize. Um for practitioners, um I think that there's a great deal of curiosity among a lot of practitioners and that they do want to know and understand better why the recommendations are made for doing things that uh to to improve their communication. But I think that the restriction is time. I mean, honestly, so many practitioners would, I think, love to have the luxury of being able to sit down and try and digest those journal articles. Um, but they are hard to read. Um, and just honestly, when are you gonna have the time when you're wearing five hats? Um, of you know, managing so many things and then trying to get this article and read it. Um, so I think that's probably where the the disconnect is. I mean, there is the Natural Hazards Center does this really wonderful job of trying to bring together practitioners and researchers every year at the Natural Hazards workshop. Um, last year, I think was the 30th year. Maybe it's more. I can't remember what the anniversary number was. It was a, it's, it's been around for a very, very long time. Um, but that workshop is designed to bring together practitioners and researchers and policymakers to just have conversations. And so it's not academics presenting PowerPoint presentations, and it's not practitioners wondering why am I here. It's it's designed around conversation, which opens doors for collaboration in ways that you don't get when it's just an emergency management conference or just an academic conference. Um, and I think that the gap is closed in that kind of setting so that we're actually speaking with each other instead of at each other.

SPEAKER_04 31:27

I I appreciate that. And and I can say that because whereas you and I have come together and we have, at least I have learned a lot from you, and it's I think it's been really I've had the opportunity to grow a lot um as as I can see where things are and and the the real value of the academic side and how it can translate um into the practical, you know, everyday use of all this stuff. Now, to transition to something that I think will be really fun, is this is a what drives you crazy type question. So for those that don't follow her, if you were to follow her on the Warn Room or LinkedIn or other things, you may have seen some things that might drive her crazy. And um, so it's as you study alerts and warnings, as you are looking through PBS Warn or other websites that show um the actual live use of either a wireless emergency alert or other types of alerts. Um what what do you like wake up and see and just you just like, oh my goodness, like you're you're killing me? Um or other times are are there those moments when you are looking at messages that are being sent to communities and you're like, yes, like you've got it right.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

So uh when I first started blogging about um alerts and warnings a couple of years ago, I started by creating an account on Twitter and it was called Warning Raider. Um and so I would look at messages that were on PBS Warn and I would give them stars. And they'd get a star for the inclusion of each different kind of content that we know is necessary for a warning. So they'd get a star for the source, a star for the name of the hazard, a star for including location, a star for including time, and a star for including guidance. And so if it was a five-star warning, they got a lot of kudos. But most of the time, messages are not five stars. Um, and so, you know, PBS warn, it's it's totally publicly available. Anybody can see it. And so I utilized that channel on Twitter to point out how we need to think about improving our wireless emergency alerts. Um and so uh what drives me crazy, I think, I think when I I don't always see the bad messages first now. I have a couple of people that follow me that send those messages to me and say, like, have you seen this? This is really bad.

SPEAKER_04 34:02

Um and calls, you know, or texts from people.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Yeah, like uh and I think it I recognize that um the gap it's I don't think that I mean it sure it drives me crazy, but I I think that truly the gap that results in that crazy making is that people just don't know. They just they haven't had the opportunity to get to go deeper and understand how we can communicate better and why it's important to learn how to do this better. They're just kind of winging it. And so what drives me crazy is that I am not sure how to get resources out beyond the network that I've been building over the last couple of years because I really want to help and to reduce those crazy messages that we see that are so incomplete and filled with jargon. And, you know, a message that starts with the word set and then tells the location. It's like, what are you supposed to do with that if you are not from that area and you don't know that set means prepare to leave because there's a wildfire approaching? If you're just supposed to understand that jargon somehow magically, um, I just really would love to figure out ways to get to those communities. And I guess that's the thing that drives me crazy is wanting so badly to help to get this information into the hands of people who can it truly makes a difference because it is a case, and many, many times it's a case of life and death. Like a good warning can save lives, and a bad warning delays action so that it could put people into greater harm. Um, and a bad warning also means that people are going to be less willing to look at to receive a warning the next time because they're just frustrated. Um, I came up with a a phrase earlier today as I was creating another blog. Um, they they perceiving messages as being irritating because they're the timing and the sound, um, irrelevant because it just doesn't matter to them, and then incomplete. Like those three things together, uh, you know, we have to improve that. And that that drives me crazy.

SPEAKER_04 36:28

No, I love it. Okay. So please don't drive her crazy anymore, folks. So get all your alerts and warnings correct so that we don't drive her crazy. She needs to have more, you know, good mornings. Okay. So along that topic, and and you actually mentioned it with the three eyes that you just did. After all these years in this space, if you had to summarize what it is that that either practitioners or or just people involved in this space just don't understand about the way people respond to alerts and warnings, like the the need that's out there, why it's so important. Because you mentioned it can save a life, right, when it's done correctly. I I've never met a practitioner, and I'm sure there are people like this, but I've never met a practitioner who wakes up and and they're like, hey, I'm in charge of sending alerts, you know, for whatever the situation is. And as some hazard happens, they're just like, eh, I don't really care. Let me just type this out and send it. I've never seen that. It's people want to do good. I I think they get overwhelmed so quickly. So the to you, so after after all this time, what do you think is like one of the most misunderstood things about the way that our communities receive and and need this type of information?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

About the public in particular.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Um I I think that there is a misunderstanding of um the tools um that relying on the people who have opted in as being the population that you need to alert um when there's a something really big and bad going on, that that just using the opt-in channel is gonna be sufficient. Um, especially, you know, I I talk to emergency managers and they say, yeah, we've got like 20% of people opted into our system, and we're gonna continue to try and grow that. And I think, well, that's great, but that's certainly not gonna get everybody who needs to know that they should not be drinking the water because of a water main break, and the water might be contaminated now. Like you gotta tell everybody, or you're not helping them to reduce their risk. So I guess technology would be one thing. Um and uh another thing about how people receive warnings, but I think we we are so used to when I say we, I mean the the emergency management community, we're so used to using words that are really familiar to us. And that is not reaching the community. Um helping to use plain language um to communicate complex things is a much better approach, partly because it reduces the effort that the individuals have to go through to understand what you're communicating, but also because it's just it's clearer that they don't have to translate these jargony terms that you're that you're utilizing um that are maybe unfamiliar except for in those rare instances when they hear from you. Um but also in terms of translation, those those technical words, if you are sending your messages in other languages, that translation piece means that our jargon needs to be easily translated into another language. Um, and especially as people are starting, well, they'll soon be coming to the United States for big World Cup tournaments across the states. And, you know, all these different languages, language speakers are coming into the US and using the jargon that's familiar to you as a local emergency manager, it won't translate well into the languages of the populations that are coming to visit. So using that plain language to communicate is just something that I press on a lot. And it's just incredibly important to think through what does my audience understand as I'm writing the message so that I can reach everyone.

SPEAKER_04 40:57

I wish people understood it better, right? And and I wish our our communities did. I wish um our alerting authorities did. I wish the executives over the the government, you know, or wherever it could be, whether it's your local municipality or county or state, understood it better. Um because I I do think there is a big gap there as well, where um you could have someone that will go to our training and they're just like, I'm ready to go, but then one or two levels up, they're like, Well, no, we're not gonna we're not gonna address it. We we think it's okay. Um if I can kind of break into that, we you and I do training. We we go out and we and it's it's a lot of fun. And for those that don't know, I hate to burst your bubble, traveling itself is not that fun.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

No, it's not.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

Like getting into a metal cylinder with a bunch of strangers that that are generally nice people, but still and you're traveling for hours in the air, then getting, you know, your rental car, going to hotels, conferences, and then back again. There's this whole like kid perspective where you're like, wow, you you're traveling to to Guam, you're going over all these places. It's like, yes, on a red eye in a small plane that's bumpy, yes, for for you know a day and then coming all the way back.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Um yeah, I I have um I have learned the the little commuter area of Dulles Airport so well, and I I can make recommendations about the timing of your flight. Like, don't take the last flight out. Because you're likely to just get stuck there and not leaving until two in the morning.

SPEAKER_04 42:46

Right, find a comfortable chair. Yeah. I think there's a lot of little travel tips. Um so as you and I have done training, I think we've we've experienced a lot of success where people will come up to us after and they're like, this is wonderful. It really helps shape everything. But then there's another gap that really emerges, and that's the how does it translate into my um, and we don't don't have to get into policy, but I want an actual message contents, um, which is I think one of the big reasons why the the warning boot camp was created, because it's like there's a gap. Like you've been to the training, that's great, but it's still not, you know, you it's not evident in your messages that you've been to it. And so what is the value and why is like the the boot camp, because you're we're pushing that more now, why is that a really good step to take?

SPEAKER_00 43:41

So, you know, when we do our trainings, it can be five hours, six hours, seven hours of of amazing hours. Interactive.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

But you know, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

It's interactive, it's entertaining. I mean, Eddie's a great host. We play games, we laugh, he divides people up into the the fired. Department and the police department, and there's all kinds of inside jokes that you all you practitioners understand better than I do. Um, and it's fun, but it's also like I it's it's so much information coming at you in such a quick fashion. And um, you know, you're taking notes or you're taking phone calls at the same time and answering emails and stepping out because there's an emergency. So you're, you know, in and out of the training throughout the day. And then you leave with this deeper understanding of alerts and warnings, but you're also left with this huge task, which is to take everything that you just learned in your eight-hour day. And while you're still on the clock doing all of your other 20 things you have to do in a day, fix your alerts. And it's that it's that fix your alerts thing that is it's finding the time to do it is exactly why we built the boot camp. Um, I remember working with one client and it was weeks that had gone by and they kept saying, we're gonna get to it, we're gonna get to it, and then I'm gonna show you my messages. And, you know, weeks go by, but they're just you all are just so busy. So when we created the boot camp, it was really to help you to carve out two hours a day over five days and to get this intensive time of walking through the key decisions you need to make to make all of your messages consistent, to create a standard format for your communication, to identify the critical hazards that you absolutely need to have ready at the push of a button because you really don't have time to be writing those under incredible stress when minutes really do matter. And so over the course of five days, we go through some of the basics. There's not a ton of teaching, there's like 30 minutes, but there's there is pre-work, which is a lot of reading that we developed a whole digital workbook to give people all of the materials that have been hidden behind those um paywalls in the journals. But we've we've taken the language from the journal articles and revised it so that it's much more accessible. Um, it's not written in super technical language. It gives you the key points that you need to understand about human behavior, um, risk perception, message design. And then we walk through the different kinds of hazards. So we have a day on natural and technological hazards, we have a day on law enforcement messaging, um, we have a day on all clear messaging, um, you know, sending that post alert message and how to close out the communication loop. And we spend a day on missing persons messages. And because it's it's your opportunity to um to choose what your critical hazards are. If if working on a missing person's message on that last day doesn't fit with what your priorities are, you could work on other things. But the great thing is, I'm still there through that whole two-hour block. Eddie's there during that two-hour block. And at any point, if you have a question, you can pull us aside and we'll have a conversation. And you get consulting during the five days of boot camp while um while you're looking at your messages and you get immediate feedback and um your questions answered, and you get things done, which I just love. I mean, how often you ask me, what would I do if I had a full full free day and I'd go out for a walk? Well, what you're doing is you're carving out two hours out of your day and saying, I'm dedicating that time to getting this done. Um, and you know, I I think that any organization that has the alert and warning writer, the person who's responsible for building those templates, like send that person to spend their 10 hours and get the answers directly from us. It's gonna move your program forward so much. Um, and not maybe you're not gonna finish all of your templates, but the confidence you're gonna have from spending that time with us is gonna move it forward dramatically.

SPEAKER_04 48:21

No, and and for those that are interested, please reach out. Um, there are different dates. And this isn't just a shameless plug to say, hey, we want you to come to another training and pay for this experience. I I really think it's something that we see as a gap. Um, because people are they're excited after the training. They're like, we need to make these changes. I can see our messages that we have aren't where they need to be. I need to do it. Um, and just as Jeanette said, there are some trainings where I mean, we're like, we know that you have other stuff going on. The emails don't stop, the phone calls are happening. We've had disasters and things uh, you know, happen, and and it's it's one of those real-time things. I want to say there was one we were we were in, and um there was an imminent, was it imminent dam failure, I believe, that was gonna be happening in in part of their jurisdiction. And so what was really nice is you know, we were right there to say, okay, use this, start writing this, and we can give you immediate feedback on that message. Like real life happens. And but at the same time, carving out a couple hours for five days, um, I think can really have some tremendous benefits to your organization. Um, just a couple more little things. I I know when people watch us um on YouTube, because we're, you know, we you can listen to the audio or you can see us on YouTube, they will ask questions sometimes about what is behind you. They want to know all that. Can you give us just, you know, you don't have to move the camera around or anything, but like looking like, hey, this is what this is, you know. I don't know, did you paint all that? Are you like an amazing artist to um go for it?

SPEAKER_00 50:10

Okay, so over my left shoulder are a bunch of quilts that I've made. Um, I participate in a mystery quilt every year where I get to follow somebody's pattern. I don't know what it's gonna look like until it's done. And so several of the quilts on the shelves and right on the chair behind me is a mystery quilt that was just an amazing, fun process that I do in December of every year. Um, right over my head is a picture of Sassy, who's my main coon who lived to be uh 13 years old. Um, she passed away in December, but that was one of her first pictures that was turned into art. So she's like a little Andy Warhol kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_04 50:51

That's what I was thinking. I'm like, that's the pretty cool pictures. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Yeah. Um, so she uh she's like a year old, and main coons grow so fast, she looked like an adult cat and she was just a baby still. She was like 13 pounds already. She was um 25 pounds, big, big, beautiful um orange and white tabby main coon. So then um I put her in in fancy clothes um along with her cat partner jingles. Jingles, uh Sir Jingles, and and Sassy McSnuggles are are in this picture. I don't know if if my camera is not showing, but I don't know if you can see the ones next to next to that over here. Can you see that also?

SPEAKER_04 51:36

We can't see that one close, but if things see it in the other ones, you'll see it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Yeah. So there's a if you get a wide angle of me, you'll see jingles standing behind the presidential podium in a suit. He's got he looks pretty silly. Um, and then right above me, right here, is a brand new addition, which is my um my medal that I got this weekend from doing the Ultra Tracks, which was a three-loop, um, three seven mile loops around the Greek peak, which is a peak um in uh Cortland, New York, is a ski resort. And so uh we we did three seven mile loops in about seven hours, and there was 4,500 feet of elevation gain, and it was raining and muddy each time. No, it was cumulative 4,500. Yeah, not each time.

SPEAKER_04 52:30

I was like, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

No, but cumulative, uh, so it was a lot over that, and so they gave out these very cool gray wolf medals to anyone who did three laps, and there were a lot of people who did four laps, so 28 miles, and we we were happy with three.

SPEAKER_04 52:47

You you got the medal, you were good.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

We yes, yes, yes, and usually jingles would be sitting right here on this blue poof that's to my left in front of the other quilt. Um, but he just left for slepaway camp for a month because we are going on a big adventure um and we couldn't have him home alone for a month.

SPEAKER_04 53:09

Yes. So she's a dog person, if you cannot tell.

unknown 53:14

Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:16

No, it's fun. So if you see us in other episodes, um you may see um Sir Jingles pop up and make his presence known, which is is fun. So, and then of course the quilts, which we will figure away to make for awards or something, because you have a few. Um and they're awesome.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 53:37

I have a looking ahead question.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 53:40

Okay, because I've I've teased you for a few years now, you're not allowed to retire anytime soon. Okay. And if Mark, um, her awesome husband is listening to this, I'm not trying to keep her working for a long, long time, but I mean, just at least a few more years. We've got some really cool stuff, I I think happening, and there's a lot of um progress in this space, and momentum is increasing. So you're you're very much in the space of not just the now, but what will be the next steps, the future of alerts and warnings? And whether it's dealing with message design specifically or addressing and studying public trust, um, the use of AI, uh, really whatever it may be, what do you think this field could genuinely expect to see or or improve on dramatically over the next few years?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Oh boy, you know, AI is definitely the specter out there. Um, but it's, I mean, it's already here. It's I think that we're gonna see dramatic improvements. Um, and I think that there's gonna be some organizations that are already adopted AI for building their alerts and warnings, and some that are going to be more willing to do so in the future. I do not believe that AI is gonna take away our jobs. Um, you will always have to have an understanding of what is an effective alert before saying, I agree with what ChatGPT or Claude or Llama has written for me. Um and it's it's even especially as systems start to bring in real-time data. If your AI system is writing a message for you, not only do you have to guarantee that it's accurately written in terms of the structure of the message and following all of the research, you have to make sure that it's accurately reflecting what's happening out in the field, like getting the right location information, identifying the hazard and its impacts, and telling people what to do. And who knows where those systems are getting that information from. And so the uh one of my side gigs is working with EM1. And I've been writing about AI generated alerts and warnings for probably seven weeks or so now. So every Saturday morning, you can read my Saturday morning post and see these academic kinds of approaches to thinking about benchmarking for AI-generated alerts and warnings and how we're going to assess these different large language models to determine whether or not they're meeting standards that we're setting based upon the research and subject matter expert practitioners. I think that there's going to be huge growth in that area. Um, I hope that benchmarks help to establish some standards around how those messages should be written. Um, and maybe that'll even help to create some standards in other ways beyond AI. I mean, one of the things that I'm also involved in with is with NFPA and um their standard around evacuation and community messaging. So 1660 is the standard we're working on, and in particular, thinking about wireless emergency communications and um not only wireless emergency alerts, but wireless emergency communications, things that are sent out over opt-in messaging, also, social media, because what goes into a WIA should be consistent with the formatting and the contents that goes into all of your other short messages that are out there. People always need the same kind of information. But there's never been a standard that says that messages should shall that's that's the legal language, shall contain the source, the hazard, location, guidance, and time. And if NFPA can incorporate that into their standard, that is setting the bar for organizations to to approach uh uh you know, the using the evidence to design their alerts and warnings. I would love to see us adopt those things and then organizations to say, yes, we are taking on that standard and holding ourselves to that as well. Um I think there's gonna be more research also. Um, Michelle Wood and I were just informed that we're getting another grant from USGS to study over-alerting, in particular to build models about why people choose to opt out of alerts. We did our first study with USGS funding two years ago, um, looking at what is over-alerting and what are the different conditions people say they would opt out for. But now we have that information and we can actually measure what causes people to opt out, which will help to answer questions that haven't been answered before and hopefully affect some designing around our policies and procedures about why it's so important to decide when you're gonna issue messages to which areas and what that content is gonna look like. So NFPA standards, more research. There's so much that could happen in this space. And I also also hope that there's gonna be some grad students who want to step into this space and start doing some really cool research to push the boundaries into new areas. There's definitely room for more people to contribute.

SPEAKER_04 59:38

No, absolutely. Well, thank you. I think the only other thing we had is what is your favorite color that we didn't ask.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

Well, I always wear pink, and this is this is advice for grad students. Um when you when you go to a conference, especially an academic conference, um, but you know, protect practitioner conferences too, you will frequently be surrounded by people in dark blue or black. But if you want to be seen, you have to wear something that people can see. And so at a conference, I wear pink because it stands out and it's easy to find me in this sea of black and blue uniforms. Um, I was not always like this for for my the first part of my career. I really wanted to be back in the shadows, but now I've reached that age where I'm I'm fine being totally visible and so hot pink it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:35

There you go. So if you are looking for her at a conference, there's a good chance it'll be in hot pink. And maybe with one of those cool little table signs that she'll put up to say, I'm right here. Come find me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:48

Um well, are there any other closing thoughts that you have? Because we'll we'll end this episode of who is Dr. Jeanette Sutton?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

No, this is this has been fun. I, you know, I I appreciate the opportunity to share some of my background and where I've come from. Um and, you know, I'm always happy to talk about research and about practice. And for anybody who wants to read more about the research that I've done, they can visit my academic website, which is jeanettesutton.com. That's where all my articles are posted. Now, if you want to read about the translation of that research into practice, you go to the Warn Room and read the blogs. Um, and then if you actually want me to help you to interpret some of these articles, then you just reach out to me and say, Hey, can we have a conversation? And I will gladly get on a call with you and talk about how this research can be applied directly to what you do. Um, so I guess that's about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:42

No, I love it. And again, folks, she is real, she is normal. Um if you do see her at a conference, just walk up and say hi. Well, because uh honestly, that whole academic shield. Um for people in my space who who really just live in the day-to-day practitioner environment, um sometimes talking to an academic can cannot be the most appealing thing because you don't know if they're going to really relate, you know, or just be critical. Um and and I will say you are very open to just talking with people. And I say very understanding, and that's because I think you have a good balance of not just the academic space, but in really working with people and from your own experience too, on what it is to respond to these things. And that there's a lot of grace that comes with it. Um, so anyway, if you if you see her there, feel free. I'm I'll I'll be the first one to volunteer. Just go up and go up and talk to her.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:45

Yes, absolutely. I love meeting people who are interested in this research space and application. And I've met so many of you at conferences where you've come up and said, like, I read the warn room. Um, or oh, please don't put me on the warning raider. I don't want to get on the warning radar. I shut that down like two years ago. But um, you know, I I love to hear from you. I love to meet you in person. And so please, you know, I AEM, Long Beach, this this uh fall, I'll be there. So look for me. I'll be in pink.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:18

Perfect. All right. Well, folks, thank you for joining us today. Jeanette, thanks for just being open to these types of questions. I know we normally talk to other people, but I think it's important to go into some of our backgrounds and things as well. So this is the alerting authority. And just as she said, if you have questions and you you want to reach out to us and say, hey, can you work with me? Whether it is, again, for a boot camp to sign up, whether it's for policy decisions, whether you've had a really great alerting experience where something happened recently that did not go very well and you need some advice, please reach out to us. Um, we are here for that. So this is the alerting authority, and every second has a story. And today you got to hear a little bit about Ginette. So thank you for listening.