To Care About Software

Most software is a means to an end. You build it, ship it, move on. NICS was different from the start, and I knew that before I could articulate why.

This journey began one Saturday afternoon when I got a call from a recruiter about a position building software for first responders, specifically firefighters. I had no prior connection to the emergency management community. But something tugged at me, and I knew it was a perfect fit. So I interviewed and got the job.

I was invited onsite for a demo of NICS in its earliest form, and I loved it immediately. How do you have a connection to a piece of software? I can't possibly explain how to reproduce it. I loved it before I'd ever seen it in action.

But as we explored in our first post, relationships are what sustain this work, and it was the people who truly brought it to life. NICS is built on the Incident Command System (ICS), so I was learning our nation's incident command system from the very best in emergency management as I was coding. This added a depth of meaning to the work that I never expected. And as we've shared this platform with more nations and more people, it has grown in value. A value that cannot be quantified.

The system belongs to the first responder community. It is meant to be used and grown and serve those who are doing the most valiant work, not commercialized in a way that makes any single person profitable. So I love NICS. Building and growing NICS in a way that serves the entire span of the disaster response community is where I want to spend my time.

-Steph