William Pigeon Podcast Transcript
William Pigeon joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Will Pigeon. Will Pigeon stands at the helm of Tablet Command as its CEO and co-founder, steering the company to the forefront of emergency response and incident command management solutions.
A native of the East Bay, San Francisco, Will’s journey took him to San Diego State University, where he delved into computer science before securing ABS and information systems. While attending San Diego State University, he began his fire service career in 1998, taking on roles from firefighter and paramedic to fire dispatcher and flight rescue medic, primarily within the San Diego region.
In 2005, his path led him to the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, where he started as a firefighter paramedic. Before ascending to assistant fire chief in 2018, Will left the fire district at the end of 2020 to work full time for tablet command as its chief technology officer before becoming CEO in 2023.
Well, good afternoon. We’ll welcome to the show!
William Pigeon: Good afternoon, Brian. Thank you so much for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you for making the time jumping on and doing a podcast. I love it. You know, I’m in Kansas City freezing to death in our subzero temperatures while you’re probably enjoying a little bit of sunshine out in California.
But again, just appreciate you really making the time to do this. I know calendars are sometimes hard to get everybody in line. So, we’ll jump in and lets. Let’s start to talk about your story a little bit as one of the founders and technical lead for tablet command. What was the inspiration behind starting the company, particularly focused on the intersection of technology and emergency response?
William Pigeon: Yeah, Brian, thank you so much. Excellent question. So, it reminds me in terms of the intersection, it reminds me when I was in the fire service down in San Diego. I remember there was an engineer. That I worked with down there is who said while I was going to school at San Diego State, I was starting in computer science ended up in information systems.
I remember this guy that I worked with saying there is no way that computer science or information systems has any like intersection, if you will, with the fire service on. I was a brand-new firefighter. I just kind of held my tongue at the time and just kind of smiled. And so, flash forward in 2005. I was hired by Contra Costa County as a firefighter start started my Northern California fire career up there, and in 2007 we suffered.
Contra Costa Fire suffered two line of duty deaths. Matt and Scott in fire captain and a fire engineer basically lost their lives in a thousand square foot house trying to rescue an elderly couple. And so, as any department has any near miss or line of duty death event. Departments start looking at and start asking questions in terms of, you know, what could, what could we have done better?
What went wrong? And just kind of looking as an opportunity to, you know, make things safer and improve operations in the fire department. The other co-founder, Andy Botso, was a, a brand-new firefighter as well. And so, during that time, post, post the line of duty deaths you know, there are a lot of conversations happening and they asked, some chief officers asked Andy.
What did they do? Cause Andy came from the Pacific Northwest as a firefighter before he got hired with Contra Costa. And they said, “What did you guys do up there for an accountability solution?” So, Andy shared with them what they did. And I believe they had clip on tags where if you show up to a fire, you clip your tags on, or if you go into a structure, you clip your tags on.
So that got Andy thinking, and he was this is right after the iPhone. And the iPad was released and he was playing and he was playing words with friends with a friend in Texas and he was dragging a letter out to the board in words with friends and it, you know, had a letter and had points associated with it.
And he thought, why can’t this be a fire engine company that has three personnel being dragged out to the map or to a task? So that was the epiphany that Andy had with Words with Friends. And so, we were working together on a project inside the department. He knew I had a background. In technology, I went to school and started computer science, like I said and then since I’ve been in the fire service, I’ve always had this intersection, as you said, with how can we take things in technology and bring them into the fire service really to provide.
So, I’m always looking at those different things and when I was growing up as a firefighter, I would always be shepherded in to conversations with you know, command staff or chief officers, battalion chiefs, or even captains to, you know, try to implement technology in different ways. And so that was.
With Tableau Command, that’s how Andy and I kind of formed the company and started that back in 2000, I think it was like 2010-2011, where we started drawing everything on cocktail napkins. Yeah, and since then, you know, we’ve, Tableau Command is, is what it is today.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate the story. As you know, I mentioned earlier, my dad was a firefighter for many years and first responders are so important to our daily lives and I appreciate them so much.
So, I appreciate the story and how this came together. And of course, I’m a technologist, so this all resonates with me. So, thank you. And Will, next question I have for you is how do you ensure that tablet command remains user friendly for first responders who might have varying levels of comfort with technology?
William Pigeon: The great question, Brian. When we, when, when Andy and I started drawing the application idea down on cocktail napkins or. You know, we wanted to focus on it to be simple because one of the things that technology has the tendencies to do, and we see it today with our kids and, you know, with friends and stuff is that it sucks, it sucks people in.
And that was one of the very first requirements are that we did not want the application to be something. That people are depending upon and that we’re drawing focus to the screen instead of the fire situation. So, when we started, it was Andy and I thinking about that. We worked with a user experience person that specialized in mobile applications to kind of take our ideas and then turn those into essentially the foundation of tablet command today.
And since, since then, you know, we’ve worked with we get feed, we’ve lived the fire service and we’ve lived our applications. Andy’s still using it today as a acting battalion chief in Contra Costa. I used it for many years as both chief officer and as a captain. So, you’re always thinking about how the application is being used and what your actual focus is on.
And then flash forward to today, when we’re designing the application or adding new features today, we still are always thinking back to that, where we do not want to be a distraction. We want the user interface to be very simple. So much as you know, we’re thinking about placement of the button, of certain buttons, for example, envisioning a captain that’s responding to a structure fire.
Who’s tethered to their seat because they have an SCBA in the seat or a breathing apparatus, and they’re extending their arm out to try to reach the iPad. I mean, those are the thoughts that we’re always thinking about. And the same thing goes true for the UI. Like right now we’re releasing a feature pretty soon for splitting crews.
So, if a department has a truck company and they’ve got four on the truck and they want to split the truck, you know, we have a UI that’s in beta right now. And we’re just talking with firefighters. We’re talking with battalion chiefs that are familiar with our application. We have our knowledge and insight in our experience.
But the focus is not just to deliver the feature, but to deliver the feature enough and listen to that feedback, you know, from those users and what they’re considering making the UI as simple as possible. Cause we’ve been in that situation.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I love that you’ve been in the trenches. You’ve had to roll up your sleeves.
You understand what firefighters go through. And that’s what makes your platform. I’d say successful and you can totally relate to those first responders that are on the ground and having to attend to, you know, life or death situations. So, thank you for breaking that out for us. And Will, could you walk us through a real life scenario where tablet command played a crucial role in managing an emergency incident more effectively?
William Pigeon: Yeah. Let me think, you know, the first one that comes to mind is the one that gives me chills every time I’ve told the story. So, I think it was the car fire in 2018. Forgive me for those that are checking me on that. But there was a large. campaign fire in Northern California. This was the second fire in the nation’s history to create a fire tornado, where it modified the weather so much that it actually created a tornado caused by the firestorm.
And the story goes, it was a Marin County fire crew, and they were assigned on a strike team. I think it was a company of three or four personnel on a fire engine. And they got separated from their strike team and it was right around, they were on a road, and I think they were working with somebody with the public or helping them get turned around.
And they got separated from their strike team and they ended up on a road, I think it was called Keswick Dam Road. And at the time that they got separated from the strike team, this is when the conditions started to change to conditions so bad that, you know, they described it essentially as like blackout conditions.
And I believe this was in the middle of the day to give you an idea in terms of how smoky and how the conditions were. So, they radioed their strike team leader on the radio, indicating that they got separated and that they’re not, it wasn’t looking good in terms of the situation. And when the battalion chief looked up on the map in Tabak Command, where their vehicle location was reporting to Tabak Command, he saw where they were, they weren’t in a good position relative to where the fire was and the conditions changing, and his part sunk.
But he used the tool used to have a command. He was able to walk them through to a safety zone, an area where they could be without deploying their shelters, and they were able to push through based off his direction, and they were able to make it to essentially the Keswick Dam parking lot. where they were saved.
The crews there’s actually a, an interview on this. We actually have this on our website. It’s called one day in July and the crews, you know, in the interview said that the outcome would have definitively been different. So, you know, even today, Like, you know, because I’ve been, I’ve been in situations like that.
And I know that there’s other situations that happen on a daily basis where tablet command affects quicker response times to, to incidents or is able to allow a captain to see, you know. Just information that they normally don’t see with some of the legacy solutions, and it makes a difference in the response, but it’s nice.
And you also just working in the job for so long, you know that there’s other situations where the application has made a difference, you know, either to the public or to the crews that are responding. And it’s, it’s, it’s nice to hear those stories. But even telling that story today, it just gives me chills, goosebumps in terms of being able to affect an outcome like that because of the software that we built.
Brian Thomas: That’s a really great story to hear. And it’s a positive one with a happy ending. A lot of times we know that doesn’t always happen as you had mentioned early on in the conversation this evening. But thank you. And again, love how the technology is enhancing your ability to keep people safe. Just, just love that story.
And we’ll last question here of the evening as technology continues to advance, what future developments or features are you planning to incorporate into tablet command? To further aid first responders.
William Pigeon: So, yeah, I’m going to, by answering that question, I’m going to step back a little bit just to talk about some technological features that we’ve added just as a highlight.
And then I’ll just at a high level, talk about some things that we’re looking towards. One of the features that we added that I think has kind of changed the game, if you will, especially on the wild land and also just the mutual aid and automatic aid. Side of things is we introduced a feature called shared ADL or shared vehicle location.
And what that is, is, you know, anybody that’s worked in a fire department, police department, or an EMS agency knows that typically within your communication center, you can see the location of your app right this. But what we did is we took the location of those apparatus inside your communication center, and if the department wants to, they can opt in to share their location with those vehicle locations with other departments.
And when you do that, you’re able to see those other department locations as well. And that has been, I wish I was in the industry when we released that feature or out, out on the engine companies, if you will, when we released that feature. But from what I’ve heard is it’s an absolute game changer because you’ve taken, you know, the fog of war and decreased it so much where you can be operating either in an automatic aid situation where normally you’re just given maybe like a freeway off ramp.
And I see name and attack channel, and now you can actually see the location of other units from the other side of the state to, you know, units that may be even coming from outside the state if they’re tablet command customers. So that’s one feature that we’ve. We’ve that we released, which really kind of changed, changed the game.
And today we see over 14,000 shared vehicle locations especially predominantly in California, Colorado, and Florida. So, in terms of to, to answer your question, what are we looking at? We’re looking at building things, like I mentioned, splitting crews from like simple user interactions like that, but we’re also looking at more advanced features like being able to share other things potentially like incident data or map data those type of things and some other things that, that I can’t actually talk about because I just can’t, I can’t mention those things.
Brian Thomas: I totally get it. And I appreciate you sharing some of the things that you can share. Obviously, it’s a continual process improvement as far as one life is too much. Right? So, I totally get what you’re trying to do to improve the system, improve it, where it can be more effective, more efficient, as far as.
Managing a particular incident, but also protecting lives. So again, I fully understand what, what you can and can’t share this evening, but we do like to dive into some of the technology. So, appreciate that. And Will, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
William Pigeon: You too, Brian. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. And I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
William Pigeon Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
