The Operator Perspective

Attendees arrive to an active vendor demo floor. 6–8 tables presenting genuinely forward-looking AI tools for EMS dispatch, clinical documentation, prehospital decision support, emergency communications, and all-hazards operations. Vendors self-fund participation. ATEC and EMERGENZ staff circulate as hosts. Demo floor remains open during both breaks and lunch.

Opens with the shadow use reality: what frontline personnel are actually doing with consumer LLMs right now, and what that costs the agency when it goes wrong. Moves through the honest current state of AI in public safety — distinguishing genuine tools from marketing — then closes with the forward argument: agencies building governance frameworks now will be in a fundamentally better position than those that wait.

Foundational AI literacy framed through risk and decision-making — not technology enthusiasm. Every concept grounded in a public safety operational example. Moderator redirects jargon to operational consequence in real time. Ends with each panelist naming one thing every first responder should understand about AI before their next shift.

The most operationally actionable session of the day. Gives procurement and leadership the practical framework for evaluating AI tools when they arrive — because they will arrive. Addresses vendor claim evaluation, what "AI-powered" means on a spec sheet, what evaluation questions reveal practitioner input, and what performance metrics should be required. Adversarial AI — ghost calls, deepfake command communications, AI-assisted targeting of responders — introduced here as a procurement and threat awareness consideration.

Three parallel tracks, self-selected by operational domain. Each group has a trained facilitator and a designated rapporteur. Output format: 5–7 documented gaps, concerns, or questions the group wants communicated to the technology and policy community. Outputs feed directly into the plenary documentation session. Flexibility note: if attendance is uneven across domains, breakouts can be merged or rebalanced on the day. No breakout requires a minimum headcount to be productive.

Rapporteurs from each breakout present their documented outputs — approximately 12 minutes each. The event moderator synthesizes across presentations and identifies common themes in real time. Rather than live voting or intensive audience participation, attendees are invited to submit additional observations and confirmations via a simple web form (QR code provided) accessible during the session and for 48 hours after the event. This captures signal without requiring coordination overhead or assuming full-room engagement throughout.

The moderator presents a draft framework of key themes identified across the day. The draft is shared with all registered attendees post-event alongside the web form for additional input. The final Summary of Findings is published within 5–7 days of the event under EMERGENZ's name as an educational and research document — not an advocacy statement. Participants may be named or attributed generally per their consent form. The East Coast Summary travels to San Francisco as the anchor document for the West Coast closing session.