Mother is a communications environment which is to radio users what Windows or MacOS is to computer users. The client gets the most utility and ease of use out of the equipment without having to be an expert in the arcane aspects of the machine. Event Communications without Mother is like computers at DOS command level.

Mother is of great benefit in events and situations where there are a large number of radios (generally over 50) in the hands of people who don't normally use radios; or when the pace of the event is so frantic that radio users don't have the time, inclination, or spare brain capacity to conceive or worry about how their communications system has to work. In the most complete sense, a communications system is only half hardware...the other half is the users of that system.

A Mother event communications tree is loosely based on the Incident Command System (ICS) which was developed in California to organize communications and task resources on very large wildfire incidents. It has become the standard method of allocating and organizing resources for every type of incident, whether large or small, in the Fire Service.

The difference between Mother and ICS is that Mother is based on Collaboration and Cooperation, where ICS is based on Command and Control. We believe that these are mutually exclusive philosophies, each of which has its proper application and place. ICS is micromanagement, Mother assumes that everybody knows what they are doing and just need support to make communications work.

Mother is a communications centered model, where ICS is a Command Centered model.

When we began doing large events, we quickly became aware that arcane radio jargon (unit 102 to base, etc.) was distracting and off-putting to creative-brained people. The call-sign "Mother" was found to have a calming effect on system users who are overloaded and need help. Users prone to aggressive responses to frustration or collapse responses to overload can just call Mother to solve their problem. After all, you don't yell at your Mother, do you? Your Mother will help you won't she? Mother keeps everybody cool and encourages them to play nice.

A Mother team is men and women (any of whom answer to Mother on the air) who understand the priorities of live events, and who are familiar with production and event organization to the point that they can anticipate the solution to a problem and set about solving it, or more important, find the people who can solve it and get them moving in that direction while it is still developing. Mother is like having an extra team of really good production assistants "looking down on the event from a balloon" whose job it is to know where everybody is all the time, and have the means to find them immediately. The Mother operators are very good at quickly learning the organizational tree of the event and understanding how the event works in terms of its communications priorities and key people.

We do events where we have 16 to 24 or more radios channels running, hundreds of radios out, and we are always aware of all the moment-by-moment operational aspects of the event. We can hear all the traffic on all the channels and can track situations as they develop.

To be sure, Mother is a premium service, but if your event runs on good communications you need it. If your typical two-way radio experience on an event is anarchy and aggravation, but you know that your event can't function without them and "there has to be a better way", then you are a candidate for Mother service.

Mother makes event communications work.

See testimonials for some client reactions to Mother service.

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