By Charles M. Vitale

APCO’s national conference, held yearly in August, is packed with activities for all to enjoy. The backbone of the conference is the professional development education sessions held each day of the conference. How does one go from being interested in presenting to being able to stand up and talk about their topic?

The first part is to have an idea on what you would like to talk about. One of the questions that I see holding people back is, what qualifies me as an expert to talk about a topic? My answer: You do not have to be an expert, you have to have experience! There are many different roles and responsibilities that APCO covers from non-traditional ECCs to AFC and beyond.

The next step to figure out is who your audience will be. Are you targeting telecommunicators, management, leaders, cybersecurity, radio and wireless, NG9-1-1, emergency preparedness, industry products or cutting edge? Narrowing your focus will keep you on target.

After that comes the call for speakers process. This starts after the current year’s conference ends. The call for papers opens in October each year and submissions are accepted through mid-December. This is your chance to stand out from the crowd. There is an online submission form to identify what you want to talk to APCO attendees about. When submitting, there are a few crucial things to keep in mind. Grammar and spelling count!

Make sure you or someone you trust proofreads your submission. Those little details matter and can be the difference between selection and exclusion.

When filling out the submission, make sure you use all of your tools. Be specific with your objectives. An objective for a one-hour presentation needs to have substance. It should be more than just “I will explain FirstNet.”

A good objective will be specific and related to the track in which it is submitted, such as “The impact FirstNet will have in the role of a TERT deployment” in the Frontline Telecommunicator track. You would then expect to learn how using FirstNet would benefit a TERT telecommunicator.

Another benefit is multimedia! The software APCO uses can accept DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF and other files. While you may not have to have a finished product when submitting, a solid outline or base presentation is helpful to show the review committee the direction you wish to take the presentation.

After the call for speakers, comes the grading of the submissions. This is where the Professional Development Events Committee (PDEC) comes together to rate submissions. These hardworking APCO members are broken up by their specialties and are assigned a track to grade. Some tracks receive well over

100 submissions. So there are a lot of applications for everyone to work through. PDEC has a time frame of two months to get all submissions graded and to come together to suggest which ones should be on the conference schedule.

Each track submits their top 13 sessions and five alternates. The alternates are used if a speaker is unable to make the conference (we understand these things happen). After that, the chair, vice-chair and APCO staff liaison place submissions on what is affectionately referred to as the grid. The grid is what will become the conference schedule for educational tracks. The group makes sure there are no speaker schedule conflicts, no hot topics competing against each other and that topic selection is balanced.

We welcome submissions on any topic in the APCO world. The PDEC encourages everyone who has something to share to send their topic. The more presentations we have, the better the conference will be. This allows us to pick the best of the best.

The PDEC is here to help. Our members are happy to answer any questions that you may have so please feel free to reach out!

Charles M. Vitale, RPL, ENP, CPE, has been a Public Safety Dispatcher II at the Emergency Communications Department in Rochester, New York, for the last 20 years. He has been a member on the PDEC for five years and served last year as Chair.

PDEC Vice-chair Jason Bilich and staff liaison Jessica Yelvington contributed to this article.