The EIIP Virtual Forum Celebrates Tenth Anniversary of Providing
Online Educational Opportunities for Emergency Management

August 15, 2007 -- The Emergency Information Infrastructure Partnership (EIIP), today celebrated its tenth anniversary of providing educational opportunities for professionals and volunteers engaged in all hazards emergency management.

Using online text "chat" in the Virtual Forum, over 500 guest speakers, comprising a virtual Who's Who in Emergency Management, have presented a wide variety of related topics over the years, providing attendees with opportunities for real time, interactive participation from their desktops. Archived transcripts of the proceedings provide an unsurpassed reference resource.

To mark the occasion, a special birthday event was held earlier today in the Virtual Forum, including EIIP Officers, Partners, past Guest Speakers, and well wishers offering their congratulations. Dr. Joanne McGlown, Chair of the EIIP Board noted, "You may not realize how successful the EIIP Virtual Forum has become and what a marvelous vehicle it is for knowledge transfer and interaction." Over the last two years, the EIIP Virtual Forum Website had over 2 million hits, with the average visit lasting over 20 minutes.

Mike Selves, current President of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), offered written congratulations stating, "On behalf of IAEM and its Board of Directors, let me congratulate you on the 10th Anniversary of the EIIP Virtual Forum. This unique and valuable venue for sharing and discussing the critical Emergency Management issues of the day has developed and matured over the past ten years."

Following opening remarks by EIIP President, Avagene Moore, CEM®, Vice President Amy Sebring demonstrated recent enhancements to the Virtual Forum Website, including Partner mission statements, RSS News Feed, Google Custom Search, and a new chat moderation feature. Additional enhancements are planned for the future, to provide more opportunities for user feedback, in accordance with the EIIP Strategic Plan.

The Emergency Information Infrastructure Project is a non-profit educational organization, dedicated to enhancing the practice of emergency management, and thereby public safety, through offering professional development opportunities to practitioners and other interested persons at no cost. Bi-monthly Virtual Forum presentations are open to the public, and no advanced registration is required. For further information, see http://www.emforum.org.

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