2025 Locution User Group Conference – Schedule of Events

Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024

Location: The Golden Hotel, Golden Vista Room

• 7:45 am – 8:45 am – Breakfast Buffet in Golden Vista Room, The Golden Hotel
• Note: We will take a moment of silence in remembrance of the losses incurred on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Golden Hotel Ballroom will be divided into two rooms during the AM period Wednesday. Feel free to change rooms with each session based upon which sessions are most interesting for your particular needs.

Location: Golden Hotel Ballroom – Track A Side

Track A: For all interested (zoning, automated tones and mobile subjects)

9 am – 10 am – Voice & Tone Basics – Tara Gover w/ Janet Neal assisting

Learn the basics of voice and tones in a Locution FSA system.
Learn of the 3 different ways to configure voice and tones (from the most basic yet easiest to configure, to most versatile yet complex to configure)
Learn the 3 different voicing options available

10 am – 10:15 am – INTERVAL / Coffee Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am – How To Choose The Right Zoning System – Matt Crabtree & Luke Williams

Many users presently have our Core system in their stations. Did you know that if this is the case, and it was purchased within the past 9 years, that a simple module can move this up to an EZ-Zone system? There are many things to think about when upgrading your system to zoned, even changing from one type of zoned system to another type. Different options for upgrading or even initially starting with a zoned system are discussed.

11:15 am – 11:30 am – INTERVAL / Coffee Break

11:30 am – 12:15 pm – Responder Mobile App – Matt Crabtree & Nick Romanyshyn

We’ll be showing operation and new additions added to our Responder Mobile app, including its ability to tie into Apple Watches.

Location: Golden Hotel Track B side

Track B: More Based Upon Specific Needs of a Department’s Particular Setup

9:00 am – 10:00 am – Secrets of Advanced Voice Configuration (also known as ‘dbconfig’) – Glenn Neal

There are three parts to Locution’s Advanced Voice Configuration with respect to the incoming AVA string sent from CAD: defining announcement preambles for each incoming field (e.g. incidents, street address, units…), defining how each field is to be announced, and defining the resulting field or unit ordering. And each of these parts have further depth: For field preambles, should single or multiple field preamble options be defined for each field category. For announcing incoming fields, up to fifteen different numeric announcement types can be defined as well as simple a,b,c letters or phonetics can be pronounced, as an example on apartments or different areas. And for ordering, separate ordering rules can be defines for radio, station, or move-ups; on whether the new order should result in a newly ordered announcement, a printout only without announcement with an option to specific the times this should occur, and on whether an announcement should be dropped totally (common on incidents such as bomb threats). And addition to all this, special algorithms can be defined for extremely special announcements of particular field, highly used on mile marker addresses.

10:00 am – 10:15 am – INTERVAL / Coffee Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am – Advanced Tone/Paging Configuration – Glenn Neal

This defines how to setup very complex toning definitions and scenarios based upon incoming field information using wild cards and Boolean equations. Field information include streets, units, incidents, as well as other information passed from CAD.

A great amount of additional capability has been added this year. This includes use of complex aliases, ability to define, not only which tone to use, but also the channel or the particular radio node to use. This also includes control of the frequency to use for a particular channel as well as a new capability of controlling the announcements in various ways, such as repeating or different ordering announcements depending upon the agency chosen. Thank you to both Warren County and Barrie for assisting us in putting in the new advancements to this capability.

11:15 am – 11:30 am — INTERVAL / Coffee Break

11:30 am – 12:15 pm – Customer Success Items including Hardware End of Service Life and Sharing/Comparing Customer Configurations – CS Team, Tom Wultich, and Glenn Neal

This session is divided into three parts.

In the first part, we discuss the latest events happening in the Customer Success Team and welcome any questions you have for them.

In the second part, we discuss End of Service Life, EOSL. We have started upgrading some client(s) that have had very successful, over 20 year installations, and during these upgrades, from observations and discussions, have discovered the best way to provide EOSL is using a custom approach based upon the customer’s system as opposed to a one size fits all solution. We find it’s best to provide each customer their own timelines and definitions of how they want to upgrade, going to a move advanced version of their existing system, moving up to a higher zoned system, or supplying some of our additional advances that we have incorporated over time.

In part three, for all who like to share their system setups, whether standard or custom, and compare them with others, we will bring up any requested ‘customer profiles’ for your department and show how their setup compares with others. Our systems are based upon four standard station setups (with one additional ‘station in a station’ option that can be added to any of the four), with other special customizations put in place based upon a particular customer’s needs.

Location: Golden Vista Room – Lunch Time

12:15 pm – 1:15 pm – Lunch

Location: Golden Hotel Ballroom – Common Track: For All

1:15 pm – 2:15 pm: Station Information Display Systems – Nick Romanyshyn plus First Arriving’s Ross Hopkins

This will be divided into two parts.

The first part will be a discussion of a basic highly economical, efficient solution that provides dispatch information, street view, as well as mapping information.

The second part is for those who desire significant additional information at each station. This solution includes potential ties into the Chief’s Facebook announcements, graphs of how the different shifts are doing, weather information, as well as numerous other displays of information about the your area using Locution’s integration with First Arriving’s Dashboard. First Arriving presently has ties into over a 100 different APIs nationwide.

In addition, did you know that with your purchase of a Locution FSA system, you have already paid for an advanced, fast direct interface between CAD and Locution. When this interface is tied into First Arriving’s Dashboard, it not only supplies fast data (not multi-layered data through email which can quite often delay timing of the information), but also unit status, meaning you have the ability to observe where each unit is on active dispatches.

2:15 pm – 2:30 pm – INTERVAL / Coffee Break

Location: Golden Hotel Ballroom – Common Track: For All

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm: Locution Advancements: Next Innovations – Glenn Neal

Advancements #3 and #4 – Stay tuned – The next two ‘Locution two major advancements provided each year’ will be announced at User Group 2024 at 2:30 PM. These both will take the world of FSA into the next level of efficiency.

3:30 pm – 3:45 pm – INTERVAL / Coffee Break

Location: Either Golden Hotel Ballroom, or bus for West Metro Station Tour

3:45 pm – 4:45 pm – Q&A Open Discussion – Glenn Neal & Tom Wultich

We will discuss new ideas and things you’d like to see.

OR

3:45 pm – 4:45 pm – West Metro Station Tour – Gary Christianson

The bus will leave from Locution taking you to a near-by West Metro station fully setup with Locution’s FSA system.

Location: Golden Hotel Ballroom

Optional: This is for those wanting to be part of Configuration Manager Focus Groups meaning those interested in having a say in future tech plans of Locution. We want to divide the groups to have the right number of people in each group so we request you commit to being part of the focus group by end of day Tuesday.

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm – PrimeAlert Configuration Manager Roadmap Focus Groups – lead by Glenn Neal, Tom Wultich, Nick Romanyshyn

First, we will discuss the methodology we’ll using to put together a roadmap.        

Continuing from the initial User Group session (Locution Advancements – Present Innovations), with the mission of adding or adjusting Locution’s present roadmap plans, we will then break into individual groups and each group will discuss from our list which items you’d like to see added onto the Configuration Manager Platform. Users should feel free to add their own ideas as well.

5 pm (or 6 pm) on: Free Evening for Attendees

Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024

Location: The Golden Hotel

7:45 am – 8:45 am – Breakfast Buffet in Golden Vista Room, The Golden Hotel

Note: instructors and class curriculum are subject to change up to the day of user group conference. Please refer to Locution website for up-to-date details on any potential changes.