24/7 Software Blog

“On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a case with a surprise plot twist: The jurors were told that the accused was guilty of a triple murder — not by the prosecutor, but by the defense lawyer,” writes Nina Totenberg in their recent NPR article entitled “Do You Have The Right To Plead Not Guilty When Your Lawyer Disagrees?”

What Totenberg explains sparked our interest.

According to the article, "there is no way reasonably possible that you can listen to the evidence and not come’ to that conclusion, he said.”

“In an effort to avoid the death penalty, the defense lawyer refused to follow the instructions of his client, who contended he was innocent. The question before the justices is whether that violated the client's constitutional right to counsel,” explains Totenberg.

Well, this is getting interesting.

According to Totenberg, here’s what happened that led to this trial:

“In 2008 Robert McCoy's wife, Yolanda, took her infant daughter and fled Bossier, La. after her husband held her at knife point and threatened to kill her. She left her 17-year-old son with her parents in Bossier so he could finish high school and graduate, and went into protective custody in Dallas.”

The article goes into further detail, and we recommend you read the remainder – it’s a thought-provoking read.

But today, we want to take the insight from this Totenberg’s article in a different direction.

We’re going to discuss your right to plead “Not Guilty!” and what you need to put in place to help your efforts.

Keep reading; we’re going to share our thoughts below.

“For the first time, U.S. airports would be required to develop detailed plans to deal with crises like last year’s Fort Lauderdale airport shootings, under legislation introduced Monday by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” writes Megan O’Matz in their recent SunSentinal article entitled “Airport safety bill introduced in response to Fort Lauderdale shootings.”

According to O’Matz, “the legislation requires major airports to build expansive operation centers in which police, airport managers, airline representatives and others can work side by side, using advanced technology to monitor airport activities and respond more quickly to emergencies.”

“The legislation also forces airports to submit security plans to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration that include detailed training programs for active threats, crowd management, mass evacuations, and restarting operations. The congresswoman wants airports nationwide to improve how they communicate information in a crisis to airlines, passengers, ground transportation crews, the media and others,” the article explains.

We could not agree more.

Every life counts, and it’s your responsibility to put the best practices in place on your property to ensure the safety of your customers – passengers and visitors.

O’Matz continues later in the article that “four South Florida Democratic representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of Wasserman Schultz’s bill, called the Airport Advanced Logistics, Emergency Response and Training Act — or ALERT.”

This legislation sounds like Proactive Operations to us.

What do you think?

One thing is for sure: you need to be ready for it – and we’re going to help!

We’re one month away from the official end of summer.

We figured it would be an excellent time to reflect on how you did so far. How do you think your season is coming along?

Did you oversee a number of events? We’re aware of the summer of festivals, and we know your guests are paying big bucks to have fun.

But, with that brings the potential for threats to your operation. From issues to incidents, you must be prepared for all things.

How would you measure your efficiency? If you’re not sure how to measure your ability, here’s a question for you:

• As an event manager, how stressed are you?

If your stress level is high, there’s a very high probability that your efficiency could be low.

We get it; knowing this is overwhelming.

But, we’re going to help you get through it and understand the areas of your operation you should address to reduce this stress.

We’ve created a principle that helps you understand your current strategy – it’s called the ACDA Principle™ (pronounced act-duh).

It covers the four areas of an operation:

This is the year you've committed to change.

You’re going to fight hard against the forces of the status quo. You’ve embraced becoming a data-driven leader.

We like to hear that.

Empowering your staff with the ability to communicate effectively will give you the information to fully understand your operation.

It’s the only way to manage because now you’ll know what you’re managing!

You get it. You want it.

You need it!

Any other day we’d tell you why it’s so important to institute best practices and then give you the how.

But today, we’re going to show you how to put your incident management infrastructure in place first.

Then, we’ll show you all the reasons why your new foundation will give you Proactive Operations, on so many levels.

Are you ready? Let’s get started.

“The war in Syria is a conflict of the social media age. Everyone — the rebels, the government, ordinary citizens, everyone — has a cellphone,” according to Joe Palca’s recent NPR article entitled “Activists Build Human Rights Abuse Cases With Help From Cellphone Videos.”

“And that means almost no bad deed goes unrecorded by someone,” Palca continues.

According to the article, “A Syrian-born human rights lawyer in Washington, D.C., is collecting those videos, hoping someday they will be used to build criminal cases against the perpetrators of the violence.”

“But he also faces a major problem: The volume of videos is staggering,” writes Palca.

"We have 600,000 videos, and we're in the process of downloading almost 2,000 videos a day," says Mohammad Al Abdallah, executive director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, a nonprofit supported by the State Department and a handful of European governments, in Palca’s NPR article.

This article caught our interest immediately. Why?

The power of text communication comes to mind.

Technology is evolving, and the benefits of a texting system can be profound for your property’s operation.

We get it; the obstacles for Abdallah are greater since he is challenged with reviewing hundreds of thousands of videos.

But, the key takeaway here is the opportunity technology such as this offers.

Abdallah can use it to build human rights cases against the bad guys, and you can catch people before and during offenses on your property.

Can you imagine the abilities you gain by enlisting hundreds, thousands, and even millions of eyes to prevent, deter, and build cases against offenders of all kinds?

Now, you can ensure all bad deeds are seen and reported.

Put your pen down.

Stop writing.

You know what you’re doing is bad for your operation. But, you’ve been doing it so long it’s hard to stop.

You’re using pen & paper.

Not just to write notes and doodle either.

You’re using pen and paper to record everything vital to your operation – especially incident reports.

The recording device that you’re using to capture important incident details is pen and paper.

How could you!?

Please, put your pen down, step away from the incident report on your desk, and read this article in its entirety.

Because we know you’ll tell us you’ll stop writing.

But, we don’t believe you.