My sister sent me a 52 second video on gun safety (or the lack thereof).

Click on the picture or youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHdg3yeU2iY

Watching the video triggered the thought of staring down the barrel of a gun and that an entire safety meeting could easily be developed on this topic.

I doubt that the video is real, but it looks real to me. Don't get hung up on whether or not it is - I guarantee no one will sleep through it, and you can use it to generate discussion about gun safety, decision making, personal accountability, near-miss reporting, risk taking, and more.

After watching the video, some will say, "No one in their right mind would do that!". I can't tell you how many times I've heard similar sentiments when doing a risk assessment or conducting a Root Cause Analysis. It's a tough challenge for lots of folks to realize when they are "staring down the barrel of a gun" or being in the line of fire… until it's too late! Quite often, it has become a "normalized deviation" where they feel comfortable taking unconscionable risks.

Do you encourage or discourage near-miss reporting? When people make embarrassing mistakes, how likely are they to try to hide it? What's in it for them to report? Can they report anonymously? That's what the Chemical Safety Board has asked DuPont to do following a fatality in West Virginia. Do you know enough about your organization to even answer these questions?

Many organizations will be discussing gun and hunting safety this time of year - kick these ideas around and come up with some creative and interesting training ideas. Let us know how it goes.

Click on the picture or youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHdg3yeU2iY

Watching the video triggered the thought of staring down the barrel of a gun and that an entire safety meeting could easily be developed on this topic. I'm not sure the video is real, but it looks real enough. Don't get hung up on whether or not it is - I guarantee no one will sleep through it, and you can use it to generate discussion about gun safety, decision making, personal accountability, near-miss reporting, risk taking, and more.

Clear communications that are well understood by all affected parties are critically important in safety. Some organizations use “echo protocol”, where communications are precisely repeated to ensure understanding. Echo protocol is a great safety technique that should be adopted by more organizations to reduce risks, especially when precise understanding is needed in critical tasks. To see and hear echo protocol in action, visit a Waffle House restaurant and notice how your server and the cook make sure your order is right. For many people, getting their food order right is of critical importance.

The airline industry also uses echo protocol religiously. When I have taken advantage of the opportunity to listen to pilot and air traffic controller conversations, I can fully appreciate the value in repeating instructions back and forth. When the air traffic controller issues instructions to the pilot, the pilot must precisely repeat the instruction back. A simple “gotcha” or “roger, wilco” will not do… the pilot must repeat the exact instructions (bonus points if you know what “wilco” means). The controller will continue to repeat the instructions until exact confirmation is received from the pilot. It is habit, an industry standard, it works, and I’m glad it does.

The utilities industry has similar echo protocol. Breakdown in task-critical communications can, and have, resulted in tragic outcomes. Poignant examples recounted by experienced and apprentice linemen drive home the dire consequences of having too much bravado (or too cool) to repeat instructions; or becoming complacent and comfortable with a long-time co-worker. It takes a little extra effort to confirm, and not assume.

In the eighth inning of the 5^th game of the 2011 Baseball World Series, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa had all kinds of communications problems with his bullpen, resulting in the wrong pitcher being ready, and the right pitcher not being ready. This fiasco was rife with misunderstood instructions, false assumptions, no double-checking, that resulted in a game-winning double made more likely by the wrong pitcher-batter match up.

Baseball is a game where mistakes in communication are made that we can live with.  We can easily correct a smothered, but not double-covered, hash browns mistake for breakfast. But, when it comes to safety communications, there may not be room for errors – we may not be able to live with the consequences. Does your safety skill set include the willingness and ability to give and accept task-critical communications in a professional way that greatly reduces the likelihood of a mistake?

If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 2.5 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only a few things left to do.

Write Permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If your blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts, comments, and blog attachments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder. 

If you wish to use a database to to store your blog data, we still encourage you to enable this write access for an images you may wish to store for your blog posts.  If you are interested in using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, SQL CE, or other databases, please see the BlogEngine wiki to get started.

Security

When you've got write permissions to the App_Data folder, you need to change the username and password. Find the sign-in link located either at the bottom or top of the page depending on your current theme and click it. Now enter "admin" in both the username and password fields and click the button. You will now see an admin menu appear. It has a link to the "Users" admin page. From there you can change the username and password.  Passwords are hashed by default so if you lose your password, please see the BlogEngine wiki for information on recovery.

Configuration and Profile

Now that you have your blog secured, take a look through the settings and give your new blog a title.  BlogEngine.NET 2.5 is set up to take full advantage of of many semantic formats and technologies such as FOAF, SIOC and APML. It means that the content stored in your BlogEngine.NET installation will be fully portable and auto-discoverable.  Be sure to fill in your author profile to take better advantage of this.

Themes, Widgets & Extensions

One last thing to consider is customizing the look of your blog.  We have a few themes available right out of the box including two fully setup to use our new widget framework.  The widget framework allows drop and drag placement on your side bar as well as editing and configuration right in the widget while you are logged in.  Extensions allow you to extend and customize the behaivor of your blog.  Be sure to check the BlogEngine.NET Gallery at dnbegallery.org as the go-to location for downloading widgets, themes and extensions.

On the web

You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.  Again, new themes, widgets and extensions can be downloaded at the BlogEngine.NET gallery.

Good luck and happy writing.

The BlogEngine.NET team