Conference Reflection Be the Difference

The Denise Amber Lee Foundation was founded by Denise’s husband, Nathan Lee in June of 2008, 6 months after her tragic death. He has made it his life’s mission to travel the country telling her story, to help 911 centers across the country try to avoid a similar occurrence to someone else.

I attended the Denise Amber Lee: Be The Difference Conference in Myrtle Beach, SC. This conference was hosted at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. Myrtle Beach was mostly empty aside from locals due to the conference being held in the “off-season”. Most businesses are closed during the winter months and do not reopen until approximately mid-February. This was very evident as soon as I stepped off of the plane to a mostly empty airport. The background of Denise Amber Lee Foundation is known to most people in our industry, but the conference is new. This was the first in-person conference hosted by the Foundation. Previously, there was a virtual conference during peak pandemic. In case you do not know the Foundation’s story, I highly recommend looking it up.

Nathan Lee does not come from telecommunications and has no history in public-safety, but is a vital part of our industry, right up there with the likes of Hank Hunt (father of Kari Hunt from “Kari’s Law”). Hank Hunt was also present at the conference. There was not a day of this conference that I did not personally interact with Nathan Lee. Nathan Lee and his family were present for every aspect of the conference and some of the most approachable people you will ever meet. There were many guests at the conference. We got to hear from Nathan Lee’s 2 sons who were 2 and 6 months old at the time of her kidnapping. Jane Kowlaski, the 9-1-1 caller who is seen as the primary reason for the final location of Denise’s body, was present and had an indepth conversation with Nathan Lee on stage and discussed her memories of calling 9-1-1 that night. As previously mentioned, Hank Hunt was present. The author of “The Healthy Dispatcher”, Adam Timm and the author of “The Gift of Attitude”, Sam Glenn were both present and spoke on multiple occasions.

The class format was a little different from other conferences as classes were 2 hours in length, rather than the usual 1-hour classes. I attended multiple courses, including Melissa Alterio’s, Director of Cobb County ECC, “The First 100 Days: A Director’s Story”, Kris Inman’s, Director of Springfield-Greene 9-1-1, “Two Years on the Chair: Lessons Learned on the Road to Director”, Author Julie Giulioni’s “Developing Multidimensional Careers – The Manager’s Workshop”, and Halcyon Frank’s, DAL Training Director and sister of former Dispatcher Genevieve Frank, “QA/QI: Choose your focus Wisely”. The curation of these classes far surpassed that of other conferences I have attended and met the goals of the conference exactly. The goal was “be the difference in your center and your customer’s lives”. Every single speaker’s message was perfectly on tone with this goal. Extending classes to 2 hours gave them the right amount of time to communicate these messages and nothing felt rushed

The vendor floor was very small and only had about 7 vendors total, but it was nice to see some familiar faces on the vendor floor. This included Virtual Academy, Watson Consoles (they make our consoles), and RapidSOS. Everyone was very nice and wished us the best. The entire conference was very personal. It felt comfortable and not overwhelming every day I was there. Even outside of the conference hours, friendships and connections were formed at the hotel and nearby restaurants. I met multiple telecommunicators and professionals in our industry who I will definitely be in contact with in the future.

The overall conference was a huge success. I feel as though I learned so much and gained knowledge to be able to share among all of my coworkers. I brought back Julie Giulioni’s book “Promotions are SO Yesterday” and the Conference’s handbook filled with multiple worksheets from all of the classes. These have both been placed in the ECB’s Library for everyone to look at and hopefully learn from. The Denise Amber Lee Story is very sad, but very important to our industry. It speaks on how much we can and do matter to our customers. It is a shining example of the importance of telecommunicators in public-safety. If you don’t know it, look it up for the full story.