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Keynotes, Workshops and Presentations

Below is a list of our current keynotes, presentations and workshops to choose from. I also expect to add new learning programs and can customize any of what is offered to meet your needs.

Keynote

I Disaster

They strike with fury and are increasingly becoming more severe and regular. I Disaster, will take the audience through a journey of different emergencies, how people react, and how we as responders can improve our response.

Using his experience from responding to disasters from Nova Scotia to British Columbia over the last 20 years as a firefighter, information officer and emergency manager, Tim uses storytelling backed by imagery to weave the audience through experiences he’s heard from residents, along with lessons from emergency operations.

Duration: 45 minutes plus Q&A

Workshop

Allopatric: An intense practice for the EOC Information role in a disaster

Drop your ego and title at the door. It’s time to enter the Emergency Operations Centre to learn how to rapidly build a functioning Information Officer team. Be immersed in scenarios where you are vulnerable to the unknown as the emergency shifts and new challenges appear. Failure isn’t an option. It’s the default setting for this disaster.

Prepare to be challenged by Tim Conrad, APR President of Butterfly Effect Communications Inc., a master of disasters and crisis communications leader who has worked on some of Canada’s largest and longest disasters and crises. Conrad is a globally recognized expert in emergency communications, backed by over 20 years of experience completing work from mitigation to recovery.

You should consider whether you are ready before taking this workshop. Do you fear the unknown, or does your adrenaline pump at the speed of an emergency? Maybe you’ve managed information in a wildfire emergency. Are you willing to wear a red vest when wildfires compete with more wildfires? Do you believe strategy eats tactics or prefer a buffet of tactics?

This workshop will take you outside your comfort zone, pushing you to function in unfamiliar roles and instantly come up with solutions to challenges as they appear. Expect to be gamed by the master, who constantly introduces new elements and information to force you to feel what it is like inside a major disaster.

Are you ready? Not likely. Book this workshop today for a unique and engaging preparedness workshop that will give you practice in a scenario that is likely for many communities.

Three outcomes:

1. Practice at a fast pace

2. Understand the impact of unknowns

3. Learning the value of process improvement

Preferred group size: 4 to 40 people

Duration: 3 hours

Presentation

Pathways to Preparedness

Few regions have been hit by disasters as often and hard as the Cariboo-Chilcotin. Since 2017, they have had over 400 wildfires, major flooding, and creeping and enormous landslides. Yet residents are still not dedicated to preparedness. Why?

Throughout 2023, Butterfly Effect Communications created and completed the Pathways to Preparedness project on behalf of the Cariboo Regional District with funding from the Canadian Red Cross. Speaking with hundreds of residents at 36 community events and sites, along with surveys and focus groups, we developed a deeper understanding of what holds residents back.

Next, we developed new communication tools, strategies and tactics to improve individual preparedness.

This presentation will unpack:

•          Mental well-being challenges and how they impact preparedness

•          Accessibility needs and how to overcome them for those residents

•          Why more information does not equal better results

•          How neighbours see competition as a way to move their community forward

Preferred group size: Unlimited

Duration: 60 minutes with Q&A

Keynote

Keeping Me

It's the temperature that is the worst trigger. His mind transports to that hot summer night on the side of a highway where the smells of blood and alcohol mixed with the twisted metal become present again. The trauma returns and he’s forced to relive the moment when hope vanished.

Decades later and thousands of kilometres away on another highway on a winter day it happened again. This time PTSD snuck out and attached itself to him, lingering for years before hope nearly vanished for good.

It was only then that he understood what was going on, and not long after he’d gain another friend who had always been there, ADHD. Together, the two acronyms built a bridge to mental well-being hell. Would he be able to build a bridge back to some state of normal?

This speech talks about the journey of an emergency responder and public relations professional who turned something hiding into something known, and rebuilt them into someone who can still be on the front lines when the worst has happened.

Duration: 45 minutes plus Q&A

Keynote

Disaster Safety

Disasters have become increasingly dangerous for emergency responders in Canada, both due to more extreme weather and incidents as well as how the public is responding. Threats of violence, protests, and sabotage and theft of equipment have joined flash floods, tornados and extreme wildfires.

This keynote reviews the evolving dangers responders face, and how to adapt so everyone goes home safely. This includes the impact on responder's mental well-being during and after the emergency.

Tim draws on his experience responding to over 20 disasters across Canada, including the very tense 2023 Shuswap and 2023 Downton Lake area wildfires and the mentally exhausting 2017 Cariboo wildfires.

Duration: 45 minutes plus Q&A

Workshop

Storyteller: Telling your Organization's Story using Brand Journalism

Does your brand have a story to tell? Learn the strategies, equipment, and practical hands-on skills so you can quickly get your story to the public.

You will learn how to plan, prepare and produce your stories and the equipment you will need.

·         How to write & plan your story from paper to production

·         The tools you will need to produce your story

Preferred group size: Up to 20 people

Duration: 3 hours

Workshop

3, 2, 1 Media Relations

Interviews with media are known for being some of the toughest parts of some jobs. Media today are much tougher as they are pushed by tight deadlines, a lack of resources, or a lack of experience.

Using a simple approach to media relations: prepare, practice and present, we take groups through the steps that support this approach, and how to use nerves to their advantage.

Available as a half day or full day workshop, including going in front of the camera!

Preferred group size: Up to 20 people

Duration: 3 hours

Keynote

You’re Not Ready: Preparing for Mega Disasters

100 days of emergency. 260 wildfires in one region. Landslides and floods during wildfire season.

Having responded to disasters since 2003, Tim shows how organizations have been challenged by a new threat - mega-disasters. While many governments and organizations can stretch resources for a normal disaster, mega disasters don’t just test resources, they destroy them.

Using photos, videos and stories, he demonstrates the real impact of disasters, and how organizations, media and citizens survive them.

This keynote examines how disasters have grown and how your organizations can adapt to the new normal of mega-events, and continuous disaster cycles with barely a break between them.

Duration: 45 minutes plus Q&A

Keynote

Bubble Communications

Ever wondered why some groups of people don’t connect with others? Developed for an appearance on a TEDx stage, this keynote examines how we communicate in today’s hyper-connected world, and how it connects with pre-internet communication methods.

Tim creatively looks at how people join social or topical groups, interconnect, and how groups grow, shrink and battle. This speech will take the audience from laughter to inspiration, and prepare them to adapt to bubbles.

Duration: 45 minutes plus Q&A

Workshop

Speaking Confidently in Any Setting

Sitting or standing, the feeling is the same. Anxiety stacked with nervousness and maybe fear. Many of us have been there. It’s time for you to start feeling more confident no matter where you are speaking: at events, in front of colleagues or fellow students, or on camera.

Join Tim Conrad, APR, an accredited public relations professional who has been seen by billions worldwide through media stories, spoken in front of crowds in the thousands, and has aced decades of interviews.

This course will:

•          Provide guides for preparing even when you don’t have time so you can perform better.

•          Give you tools to speak confidently in difficult situations, even during a crisis.

•          Leave you with templates and guides for job interviews, public speaking and media interviews.

Preferred group size: Up to 16 people

Duration: 3 hours

Presentation

Theft, sabotage and protests: How the public’s lack of trust became a disaster problem

Disasters love to make everything around them a disaster. Now they are collecting issues we see in our society and presenting novel challenges for emergency operations.

The new disaster sees individualism overpowering community resilience, bullying of emergency responders, and trusted information becoming misinformation.

Join Tim Conrad, APR, President of Butterfly Effect Communications Inc., a master of disasters and crisis communications leader who has worked in some of Canada’s largest and longest disasters and crises, including last summer’s wildfires in British Columbia. Learn how he led the public information role in three regions where evacuations met fierce resistance and sabotage, including the extremely devastating Shuswap wildfires.

The massive loss of trust in government and media is combined with a continual loss of journalism in Canada, Meta’s news ban, and the rise of alternative media and political division to create toxic situations on the front lines of emergency operations. 

Learn how Conrad and his team used research, media, social media, and community outreach to turn sentiment from drastically negative to positive in the middle of a record wildfire season that saw his team supporting three regional districts.

Preferred group size: Unlimited

Duration: 60 minutes with Q&A

Keynote

Embracing Chaos: Crisis Communication

Long days that become weeks which stretch to months with no sleep. The stress of being perfect in a situation you don’t control. The challenges of communication when faced with ignorance or misinformation. Embracing chaos is a real look at crisis communications and how it impacts organizations, the public, media, and how to respond and react to a dynamic daily crisis. 

Using experience from over two decades working in issues management, crisis, and disaster communications, Tim will guide the audience through what he’s learned are the best tools to face crisis and protect reputation.

Duration: 45 minutes plus Q&A