ISA Update & Fundraiser
Hey all, remember that post about the International Suspension Alliance a while back? Yeah, well now’s your chance to really help out the ISA! There’s been a lot of time and money spent to get the Alliance to it’s current state, and all of that has been donated by the working group (so far as I know), but now the bills are ramping up, which is where you come in. Head on over to http://isa.causevox.com/ and drop a few bucks (or more!) in the hat. I know it’s the holiday season and money is tight, but seriously every little bit helps and you can donate anonymously. How cool is that?
In case you need more reason to donate, check out this picture of Wings of Desire member, Marita!
Dallas SusCon 2011 Preparations
Allen of suspension.org fame has once again graciously organized a massive suspension practitioner’s convention for this Spring. Dallas SusCon 2011 is proving to be bigger and better than the previous two years, which is precisely how it should be. Along with the normal 3 days of suspensions and classes, this year we’re actively stepping up the documentation side of things. There are many reasons for this, but I’m going to touch on a few of the most important ones.
First and foremost is for liability and protection. If something terrible were to happen, it would most likely all come down on Allen as the head of the event, which is obviously something we all wish to avoid. In order to minimize this potential outcome, I’m working on documentation of the chain of command and proper protocols to follow. By having all of this documented, it should be possible to redirect liability to more appropriate persons, and thus help to ensure that SusCons can be continued.
Secondly, it’s allowing me to stretch my wings in a different direction. I’ve slowly been writing up documentation for ihung’s training and operations, but it’s slow going as I didn’t exactly have any guidance or directions on formatting or anything of the like. I’ve been communicating with Mr. Vidra of Health Educators to make the documentation for SusCon as thorough as necessary, as well formatted in such a way that makes it very similar to piercing/tattoo shop documentation which is enough to appease health inspectors.
The tertiary reason is that I wholeheartedly believe that appropriate documentation is the second most lacking aspect of the suspension community. The primary lacking aspect is that of proper education in rigging, but we have classes and instructors at SusCon to work on that one already. One of my personal agendas is to push the if it isn’t documented, it never happened mantra into the community so that we can add more accountability and responsibility. Many of us in the suspension community fear that inevitably some sort of accident will happen which makes us a target for legislation, most likely of an extremely aggressive nature, and our best bet to have control over this is to have solid documentation of our protocols. The idea being that if we have paperwork that shows that we take every possible precaution to keep ourselves and the suspendee as safe as possible.
I’m working predominately on two documents; one is all of the protocols and procedures, in explicit detail so that everyone will be on the same page before even arriving at the space, and the second is a full fledged Exposure Control Plan. The purpose of this document is to define all roles and responsibilities that will be performed, as well as what precautions each role must take, what equipment is available and what the purpose of each of them is.
This is the first year that we’ll have these documents, as well as my first time writing them, so they will be rough, but just like the goal of the SusCon is to improve the minimum standards, that’s what I’m shooting for with this.
ihung.org migrating to google apps
Greetings loyal fans! We here at ihung are currently undergoing some transitions in how our backend information is stored. We’ve decided to start using Google Apps to handle our email, as well as shared calendars, documents, etc. Ideally this is going to help us run more efficiently so as to assist you more easily.
Since there have been some changes to our DNS entries, it means that email might be a bit wonky for a day or two, so if you receive bounce back messages or anything of that nature, don’t worry, just try to send it again in a few hours and it should come through fine. If there are still issues with email after a few hours, leave us a comment here. Thanks
