The Dive Locker, episode 11.  In this episode you’ll learn why airway control is such an important life saving skill for scuba divers.

Welcome to The Dive Locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest and diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business. I’m your host Tec Clark. You know the term airway control has been thrown around a lot and there’s lots of angst and discord out there about masks on foreheads and snorkels versus no snorkels. So what’s the big deal? Well, I’m going to share a case I worked as a forensic diving accident investigator where a loss of airway control actually cost a diver his life. We’ll get into that in a moment.

This episode is sponsored by the Scuba Exam App. I have partnered with the award winning Swedish app development team by Boboshi for this enhanced diving knowledge tool that helps students pass their scuba exams. This app was first released in 2010 since then, it has helped thousands of people on their way to getting their dive certification. The Scuba Exam App is loaded with features. You can customize your quizzes by selecting whether you want it timed or not, unanswered questions only or repeating questions. Questions you have flagged for follow up, incorrectly answered questions, and how many questions you would like to be quizzed on are all part of these settings.

You can also select to be quizzed on general questions or dive tables or both together, and you can choose which agency’s dive table questions you want to be tested on; PADI, NAUI or SSI. You can also select whether you would like your dive table questions to be in meters or feet. And every question comes with an explanation detailing the reason for the correct answer. There’s even a 17 chapter dive theory guide with tons of extra content. The Scuba Exam App contains over 200 scuba theory questions and 50 dive table questions and you will find that these questions can help any level of diver. The Scuba Exam App is only $4.99 and it’s available for iOS and Android. And, there is the Scuba Exam Lite. That’s a free version with less content and less features. So use it and turn your students onto it. It’s available in the Apple App Store or Google Play Apps.

All right, pros, let’s dive in.

Airway Management 101

So let’s get real here. What is it that makes the aquatic environment hazardous to humans? Bends? Marine life? Equipment failure? Look, those are issues that have led to fatalities, but there’s tens of thousands more fatalities taking place from drowning. So fundamentally, we breathe air and when our respiratory tracks are blocked by water, humans have a very fragile and limited window to breathe again. So we hear about this term airway management. Most training agencies reference this and some have it explicitly built into their training standards and educational materials. But countless dive professionals claim that this is an area that is completely overlooked in our industry and they’re right. Airway control or airway management is basically the ability to have respiratory tracts covered and with the ability to breathe with little to no water intrusion. This is accomplished by wearing a mask and breathing through the regulator or snorkel.

Well, duh. How else would you dive? You’re right, but this includes the surface too and that is precisely where we are seeing a major breakdown. Divers of all levels on the surface of a scuba dive have exposed respiratory tracks when they perch their mask on their forehead or around their neck and remove their regulator or snorkel. This is an issue when dive site conditions have even the slightest wave action on the surface. Now hang on. Before you go deleting this episode and saying Tec is an overly conservative worrywart. Here’s why this is such an issue.

The Case

Years ago as a forensic diving accident investigator, I worked a case. This case involved a diver that came up at the end of the dive. It was at wreck dive. The boat was moored to the wreck, the diver surfaces at the bow and there was a strong current. And there was moderate wave action about two to three foot seas.

Now the diver came up and immediately put the mask on his forehead, took the regulator out of his mouth and started talking to the people on the boat, telling them how great the dive was, how awesome it was, what he saw on and on and on. Everything was perfectly fine. No fast ascent, no running out of air, no distress, a perfectly fine dive. The diver is drifting towards the back of the boat. As he’s approaching the stern, he’s still talking to everybody up on the boat and now the divemasters see him and say, “Hey, will you please put your mask on and put your regulator in your mouth?” He doesn’t do that. He’s still talking. Well now he’s coming closer to the stern and the divemaster says, “Hey, grab onto the tagline, grab onto the tagline.” So behind the boat was a tagline for the people to hang on to so that they could wait their turn to get on the ladder.

So the individual swims over to the tagline still with regulator out of the mouth, snorkel out, mask, perched on the forehead, and talking to the people. He swims over to the line and he grabs hold of the line. Now imagine this, once he grabs the line, the current now is fighting him because he grabbed on, the current has kicked in and now the waves are hitting him in the face. So he’s got this death grip going onto the line because he was told to grab onto the line. He grabs onto the line. Well soon as that happens he takes a few hits to the face with a couple waves. Well with that the crew is saying and yelling at him, “put your mask on, put your regulator in your mouth.” Well what does he do? He lets go of the line to try to grab his mask and do something with it and he can’t and he realizes he’s now drifting.

So he grabs back onto the line. A couple more waves hit him, he lets go. He does this a couple more times. He can’t get his mask. By this time his mask has popped off his head and his regulator is dangling behind him. He can’t, can’t even reach it because of the current. Folks, that individual drowned right there at the surface. Right there he went unresponsive and drifted off the line. They had to go and get him and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. So when people tell me that airway control isn’t an issue, that putting your mask on your forehead isn’t an issue, that not having airway control by either having a regulator in your mouth or a snorkel in your mouth is not an issue. It’s absolutely wrong. I have seen the dark side of what happens when that’s not followed.

It Starts With Instructors

You see, there’s a bunch of you out there that are teaching in lakes and quarries and you are not vigilant about this because there’s no current and the conditions are as flat as a pancake, right? So you’re thinking there’s no reason to have these protected airways right now. We can put our mask on our forehead and we can have a nice discussion floating up the surface here. But the deal is this, are your students becoming divers to only dive in your quarry all their life? No, they’re going to go to the ocean someday and they need to train for that from day one in the pool, in the lake, in the quarry. It doesn’t matter, but from day one, airway control has to be put into place.

So here’s what we see. You’re at the surface as a dive professional. You come to the surface and you put your mask on your forehead to talk to your students. Once you do that, your students do the exact same thing. They mimic you. You do this over and over again. Every time you pop down, you do a skill. Then you come back up, you put your mask on your forehead. Had you talked to your students over and over and over again in multiple pool sessions over and over again at the lake, the quarry, the open water dives, whatever. This is, guess what? This is motor memory. You are actually creating a pattern of behavior of motor memory for your students because now they realize when they come to the surface and they inflate their BC and they give a surface okay, the next thing they’re going to do is put a mask on their forehead, take their regulator out of their mouth to talk. Wait a minute. We can’t do that because what happens is this, when they go to the ocean and surface from a dive, boom, the mask goes on the forehead and now we’ve got problems.

Now, if you don’t believe me, all you gotta do is spend time on dive boats, especially down here in South Florida or the Caribbean or wherever we’ve got some good wave action and currents. You’re going to see every dive trip divemasters and captains are saying, “diver, put your mask on. Put your regulator in your mouth,” “diver please put your mask on. Put your regulator in your mouth.” It’s happening all the time and it’s because of the way the divers were trained. They don’t know any better because they were trained by people that are doing it themselves.

Now consider this. Competitive swimmers can control their airways, right? I mean, here’s water and humans and they don’t need masks. They don’t need a regulator to control their airways, right? In fact, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of breaths are taken in, on top and underwater by collegiate swimmers during one season of practice. Think about that. Now take that to the open water like in a triathlon. There’s a reason why they will cancel the open water swim of a triathlon if the water’s too rough and you know what it revolves around? Airway control. You see the conditions are harder, which can lead to more fatigue and exhaustion. Combine that with a wave action that impedes airway and you have a hazardous situation, so they cancel the open water swim.

Now think about that for diving exhaustion. Now we’ve got someone who is breathing heavily at the surface with no airway protection and there are waves. Because they are breathing so heavily, they take out their regulator and remove their mask to get more air, but waves keep washing over their face. Another scenario, someone runs out of air. Now the regulator is not an option at the surface and there are waves and they have no snorkel to switch to. Why? Because people are really poo-pooing snorkel wearing right? Now you’ve got an issue. How about this scenario? Someone has a BC malfunction and the dump valve comes off underwater and it can’t hold air. Now the person is struggling to keep afloat at the surface and their airway keeps going under.

Friends, these are all genuine incidents that are currently happening in our industry and the outcomes are drownings. Look, some of us have spent hours in the ocean. For me growing up one mile from the beach here in Fort Lauderdale, I’m truly at home in the ocean. But just two weekends ago I took out college students that had never been in the ocean. They look like toddlers learning how to walk. It’s so foreign to them. It’s so unnatural. They awkwardly resist the waves and the surge. This elevates stress, a stress that is naturally there because they’re looking all around already thinking of sharks going to eat them.

And it doesn’t matter how well I train them in the pool or gave a great briefing that no shark’s gonna eat you, but these are new experiences that the body and mind must process for the first time when they’re in the ocean. But here’s the thing, because I teach that the mask and snorkel and regulators state in when ever we’re in the water, none of them got into anything problematic. There were no breathing issues and this was a beach dive, so there was lots of surface swimming. No matter how comfortable we are in the water as dive professionals, we must put ourselves in the shoes of every one of our students and divers and train them for the environment they’ll be in.

Please friends, be vigilant about airway control by keeping masks on for the entirety of pool sessions and dives. Do this yourselves so that you aren’t exemplifying poor behaviors so that you are not exemplifying lack of airway control. Teach this to your students. Get them comfortable with a mask on their face. Dear goodness, we want that to be built in that, yeah, we’re going to keep a mask on and not be constantly putting it up and on our foreheads or around our next, come on. So the same thing goes with the regulator and the snorkel. Look, I mean, when I break the surface, I’m going to show them the regulator to snorkel exchange before I pull that out of my mouth and start saying, “Hey, good job everyone.” Right? Show them at first so that that way they do it and keep it in for them. Look, if they need to talk to you or something like that, then obviously we do that. Don’t be militaristic about it, like you can’t ever do this. No, we’re just talking sensibility here.

And also show them what it’s like to have airway issues. I do that for my students as well. I show the reason why we don’t put a mask on the forehead. I’ll splash myself in the pool or I’ll go under or things like that and explain to my students that what it’s like when that saltwater wave hits your face and starts to get in your tear ducts or your nose or your mouth. It’s slightly uncomfortable, we all know that. But did you also know that it creates mucus production? Just that bit of salt being in the tear ducts, the nose, what not. Now we are aggravating our sinuses and that leads to mucus discharge, which leads to inability to equalize.

So there’s a whole bunch of reasons and I think a bunch of you that I know and folks I’ve trained with and everything throughout the years, you all know the thing about putting the mask on the forehead and talking about that it’s a sign of distress in some cases; not a signal of distress as distress signal, but a sign of distress when uncomfortable or panic divers come to the surface and they immediately put their mask up and get it off their face. That is actually a sign of distress.

Okay, so that’s one of them. And then how many of you also are teaching that, Hey, if we perched our mask on our forehead, then if a wave comes along and knocks it off, that’s another reason. So use these reasons that don’t make that a smart thing. But look, folks, I’m telling you, there are cases out there where airway control at the surface has led to problems; to fatalities. We’re not talking about a lost mask. We’re talking about a lost life. So I take this very seriously. I’m very passionate about it. I hope you agree with me. And, and now I know because I’ve been in this industry for 30 years, that there are those of you that absolutely do not agree with me and absolutely don’t believe it, don’t get it, and you’re not going to change.

I’m begging you to consider this. I’m begging you to point to the educational materials in your agency, the standards in your agency that say, here’s what airway control looks like. Here’s what a regulator to snorkel exchange looks like. Because while we’re on that topic, we’re teaching to do a regulator, snorkel exchange, right? It’s in most agency standards. Now are we also teaching how to do the regulator snorkel exchange when your snorkel is coiled up in your BC pocket? Well, you see what happens is some people are sitting here going, “I don’t like snorkels. So I don’t wear a snorkel, so I’m not gonna show that for my student. And the standard says I need to carry a snorkel, so I’m just going to carry it on me. But when it comes to the snorkel regulator exchange, you know, here, I’ll show it one time, but then eventually the students are not going to want to do this.”

“They leave the class, they don’t do it, and I sell them a pocket snorkel just like I have a flexible folding snorkel just like I have.” Well folks, did you actually train that flexible pocket snorkel to do the snorkel regulator exchange? You don’t. Most people aren’t. And I’m saying this because this is what we’re seeing. So please think very, very carefully at what you do, how you do it, and the lasting affects that your training has on your students. Remember this, I always say your fingerprints are all over your students. The level that you teach at is what your students reflect. Your craft, the quality of your craft is reflected in your students. And yes, this is going to sound judgmental, but it’s the truth. And many of you are going to agree with me. We can come onto boats and trips and training locations and we can see divers and look at them and go, “Whoa, where did you get trained?”

And when they say, we can go, “yep, that makes sense. That makes sense. Because that professional doesn’t teach this, that professional doesn’t teach this.” And now here these poor people are on the dive boat getting yelled at by captains and divemasters because whatever the issue. And this is one of the biggest issues we see every weekend on all of these dive trips. So there you go. Airway control. That’s what it’s about. That’s what this episode is. And I just want to implore all of you to really, really think about this and make this a priority in your training.

Hey, if this episode ruffled your feathers or if this episode made you fist pump and go “right on brother!”, whichever way, hey, let me know. Go to the scubaguru.com notes page for this episode and click on the microphone and let me know what you think because we really do need to share. We really do need to discuss issues that are issues in our industry, and this creates a bit of a forum. So let me know. Contact me through the show notes page, click the microphone, send me a message.

Thanks For Listening!

That’s it for today, my friends. Once again, this episode is sponsored by the Scuba Exam App. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher. That way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live and please leave a show rating. Items talked about in this episode can be found on the show notes page at scubaguru.com and there you can also click that microphone and leave us a comment. Thanks again. We’ll see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care of my friends.

Thanks to Our Episode Sponsor

Podcast (thedivelocker): Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

The dive locker, episode 10.  In this episode you’ll learn how to make your time at the DEMA Show amazingly productive.

Welcome to the dive locker podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business. I’m your host Tec Clark and we are only one week away from the DEMA show. In this episode, I am going to give you my top recommendations of what to see and how to do the DEMA show. Now, it doesn’t matter if you’re going all four days or even just one day. I’m going to show you how to be ultra productive at the show. If you’re going to the DEMA show, this episode is absolutely for you and please share this with anyone else who’s going and you know what?

This ties nicely with our episode sponsor, which is the DEMA show. The DEMA Show 2019 taking place this November 13 through 16 in Orlando, Florida is the world’s only international trade only event for dive, travel, and action water sports professionals. Attending DEMA show provides unrivaled opportunities for professional and personal growth. Make new connections that can elevate your business, meet face to face with peers from around the world, and learn new ways of thinking to help increase your success. Learn more and register at demashow.com

So here we go, dive pros. Let’s get into this.

How to Work The DEMA Show

Okay, so hopefully you are one of the 9,000 plus dive pros who are attending the DEMA show next week. Now look, if you’re going for one day or all four days, it doesn’t matter. I want to make your time as productive and valuable as possible when you attend the DEMA show. I’ve attended DEMA over 20 years. I mean, I’ve been a pro for 30 years and I’ve missed only a handful of shows. Today I’m going to share with you not only how I do the DEMA show, but I’m going to share with you what I recommend that you should see. These are things that I’m going to see and do and be a part of. So I’m going to share that with you two today. So let’s start with how to efficiently and effectively work the show. And that starts with the DEMA show app.

Now for some you app is a three letter word. Okay, four letter word. It’s three letters. But you know what I mean and know if you’re not digitally inclined, let’s put it that way. You might resist the notion of turning to an app to use as an information tool. Look, I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter how tech savvy or non tech savvy you are, you need to use the DEMA show app to make this efficient, effective and productive. You will absolutely thank me once you install this app and you do the show the right way using this app – guaranteed. Absolutely guaranteed. It’s one of the coolest things that DEMA has done. And the show management team has done for participants, it’s absolutely awesome and it gets better every year. So that’s where we’re going to start. You can get this DEMA show app on Google play or the app store, depending on what device you have, right? Google play app store, just type in DEMA show 2019 you’ll find it.

Now you can also have, if you’ve got like blackberries or other things, there is a hybrid app that’s available to for that. Now you can find that at core-apps.com um, I’ll put links to this. Basically just go to the DEMA show, page the webpage, and go to the DEMA show app, pull down, you’ll find it. And then all the information is there depending on what kind of device you have and you can find it. All right. So, uh, and if you’ve downloaded this from a previous year, all you do is go to that old one and hit exit show list and then find the DEMA show 2019 tap download. And then you’ll get the new one re-downloaded. It replaces your 2018 version and you’re all good to go. All right, so once you’ve downloaded the app, first thing, make your profile, just go to the settings wheel at the very top of the app.

That’s that little gear looking thing. Touch that. The first selection you’re gonna see is my profile, right in your name, right in your email address, whatever one you want to share. And then you can add a ton of information there, your Twitter account, your Facebook, LinkedIn, all of that. You could put your phone number, I don’t, but um, anyhow, you can tell people who you are and that’s a really cool thing. Hit save. And then that is going to be part of the attendees list. So why do we want an attendees list? Well, it’s pretty darn cool. You can see other attendees that are going to be at the show. If you go back out to that main menu, once you hit save, you’re on the main show page. You’re going to see a little thing called attendees down there. Now that attendees icon with a couple people on there, just touch that and you’re going to get to a list of attendees.

These are other people that have put their profile on there. Now as you scroll down this alphabetically, you’re going to see a star next to people’s names. And by the way, I do recommend that you throw a picture of yourself in there. That’s cool. Um, and then you’re going to see a star next to people’s names. What’s cool is you just punch that star and you will get a friend request sent to that person. The same thing can happen with you. So the next time you log into the app, what’s going to take place? You’re going to see a little banner at the top with a number and that people icon, that means how many friends are trying to connect with you. Now you could go with your dive shop and you could just hit only your friends from your dive shop or your employees or whatever and put them on there.

And guess what? You can share your calendar of what you’re going to do with the show, with your other dive shop friends, they get to see it and they then might choose, “Hey, if he’s going to be at this presentation at that time, I’m going to be at that presentation at that time or divide and conquer. You’re going to that presentation. I want to go to this presentation and we will compare notes later.” So this is a really cool thing and I want to tell y’all right now, if you are listening to this podcast, find me Tec Clark and put a star next to my name. I want to be friends with you. I want to run into you at the show. It’d be great to meet you. So please put me down as a friend and let’s catch up when we are at the DEMA show.

Okay, so go back out to the menu and by the way, this podcast is going to be great, listen to it one time, but then listen to it again. When you actually have downloaded the app and you’ve got the app, this is going to be great information to know and if you’re savvy with the apps already, Hey, you can just listen to what I’m saying and it will be extremely intuitive to you. When you do download the app and play it, play with it, it’s going to be totally fine. So either way you want to go, just know that a that you’ll be able to negotiate through this super easy. All right. The first thing I love is the my schedule calendar. The my schedule calendar is the first little app icon. It’s got a little calendar thing going on there. When you touch that, it’s going to have every day of the DEMA show set up there and you can just scroll through there and you’ll see that all the hours are listed out and so forth.

Now if you go up to the top, you’re going to see a little alarm clock. That’s the what’s on now, that’s pretty cool. It tells you what is going on at the DEMA show at that time. So let’s say you didn’t have any plans and you got an hour to kill something like that and you’re going, “Hey, I wonder what I could go see right now.”  This is pretty cool because they’re keep updating it and you will know what you could go see. But that’s kind of a last minute planning thing. I’m not into the last minute planning. I plan out the DEMA show hard ahead of time and you’ll see why and this is part of the productivity of this. Okay. And then you’re also gonna see a little plus sign next to that alarm clock. That plus slot sign allows you to put in a scheduled item.

So this could be a meeting, it could be a lunch, it could be a breakfast, it could be whatever you want it to be. This is where you can create your own meeting. The next icon that’s super awesome is the exhibitors icon. It’s got a little picture of a booth there, the exhibitors icon. Once you hit that, you can browse all the exhibitors alphabetically or you could browse them by categories. So let’s say you want to look at, uh, companies that are doing books and periodicals. You’ll find there’s 36 of them. You hit that little link and all 36 are going to pop up. Now for me, let’s show you what I’m gonna do. So, exhibitors, I’m going to hit exhibitors and I’m gonna hit all exhibitors. And I’m going to go down to H. why? Because I want to check out the new Henderson wetsuit.

I don’t know if you guys have heard about this. It’s called greenprene, 100% neoprene free wetsuits. That’s pretty darn cool. I want to learn more about this. So the way that I’m gonna do that is I’m going to mark Henderson as a “must see” booth at the DEMA show. So just scroll down to the H’s. Now you’ll find Henderson aquatics inc right there. It tells you what booth number they’re at. But here, let’s make it super easy. You’re going to push the star. Once you highlight this as a favorite, it now tells you that this is what you want to see. So when you go to the show floor map, every company, every exhibitor that you put a star next to that you want to visit their booth, it’s going to be on the map. So when you’re scrolling the show floor, you get to then see all the booths that are actually highlighted in yellow that you want to see.

So you won’t miss any booth that you just kind of wander by and say “Oh, I forgot to go there.” No, this is going to be on the app. It’s on the map and you’re going to see them. So if you hit Henderson aquatics, you’ve already given it the star. You could, start on the previous screen or you could start when you’ve opened up Henderson aquatics. Now if we’re in Henderson, it’s going to tell you the booth number. It’s going to give you an about, it’s going to give you all their contact information and it’s going to tell you what categories they are listed under if you did an exhibitor category search. All right, now I want to dig into this little icon bar that’s over to the left of all exhibitors. Now you’ve got that first thing that’s a star. That star is your bookmark and it is letting you know that you’re going to go visit that booth at some time.

Now here’s what’s really cool. You go, you check out the greenprene, neoprene free wetsuits at Henderson. You learn all about it. You get some literature and you have now visited them and your task is done. You then hit the check mark that’s “Mark as visited” and it takes off that off your map. So that way when you go the second day on the show floor, you’re not confused by the ones you want to see. Now you go back and you see the only the ones that you still need to see. So check off that and that’s a mark as visited. You’ve also got this little weird icon that has like a little networking model to it. I don’t know what you call it looks like a tinker toy to me, but that is the share icon. And so this is where you get to share with your friends.

So that could be that you visited the booth and you are telling your dive center friends. You guys have got to check this out. You then hit the sharing option and you touch the friends that you want to go see. Then you’ve got a little pencil that’s edit your notes. Now what’s cool is you can link this to a note feature. Now I use Evernote. Evernote is absolutely awesome for notes and lists and to do items, um, anything like that. So I’ve linked it. So when I want to do notes, I just pushed that and it will link straight into Evernote, add to schedule. That’s the calendar looking thing. Now I could come back because let’s say they’re going to do a presentation or they’re going to do something special in their booth at some time. Remember, GoPro. GoPro always, you know, gives away a GoPro at the show.

I think they do it each day or they used to do it each day. I don’t know if they’re going to do it this year. Don’t, don’t hold me to that. But anyhow, and traditionally in the past, GoPro will give away a GoPro, at the DEMA show. So you could hit the GoPro booth mark and then go add the schedule and then put the time of the day that they are going to do their drawing. You have to be present to win. And a lot of the booths, by the way, give away tons of things. I’m telling you folks do this by the way. Here’s a little bit of advice. Do booth giveaways. Not a lot of people take them seriously. So your odds of winning are actually really good. That’s a little secret. I’ve known tons of friends that have won things because they do it.

So that’s a little tip so you can add the schedule. Now here’s another cool feature. This little arrow looking thing that looks like a posting with some arrows to get to places. Well that’s the get directions icon that get directions icon is super cool. When you hit that, it’s going to ask you what are you near? And you could search what you’re near. And then what are you looking for is let’s say the Henderson aquatics booth. You hit locate and it will literally give you directions how to get to the booth you want to go to from where you are right now on the show floor. I think that is super slick and then finally you’ve got this little map icon that we’ve all seen before that is locate on map. When you hit that it’s gonna bring up the show floor map and it’s going to zoom in to where the booth is so you can quickly quickly see it.

Hey and this little question mark at the bottom, if you don’t remember what these icons are, just hit that question Mark. It expands and gives you the labels of each of those icons so you can’t go wrong. This is awesome. The exhibitor feature, the exhibitor booth feature is a great way to keep up with what you want to see on the show floor and market on your maps so that you hit every, every exhibitor that you want to see. Now to do that means that you do need to spend some time beforehand. Don’t wait till the show has started to look up these exhibitors, do it beforehand, go through them and pick who you want to see and what booths you want to visit.

All right. And then the next big icon that you’re going to want to know about is the maps icon. The maps icon is the show floor map. This allows you to zoom in, be mobile. The more you zoom in, the more details you’re going to get. What booth, what booth number. Now the other cool thing is that if you have marked favorites for exhibitors, they are going to be highlighted in yellow. So now you’ll know all the ones that you want to see as you’re roaming the show floor. Oh, and by the way, what you can do is go up to the little bars up on the upper right and push that and you will get that locate menu item that comes up again. And so that’s going to ask you what are you near and what are you looking for? And you can locate directly from the exhibit hall map as well. Now, the next thing I want you to hone in on is the events icon. The events icon looks like a little screen or a Blackboard or something like that.

And so click on that and what you’re going to see is browse by day or browse by track. Now these are events, these are seminars, presentations and parties and different things like that. So again, you can either browse the day to see what’s going on or you can browse it by track. Now what’s really cool about this is that you’ve got your two big items that I’ve already told you about before that are so important when attending the show. And those are those seminars. Now you’ve got DEMA sponsored seminars and you’ve got exhibitor sponsored seminars. Those are listed here under those tracks. So let me give you an example here. First, you can browse by day, so if you hit browse by day, it’s going to pop up with Tuesday, November 12th wait a minute, I thought the DEMA show was Wednesday through Saturday. You might be saying, well, guess what?

There’s a lot of companies that will do pre show training. This is worth looking into because there are seminars that are usually all day seminars that organizations put on and these seminars or they’re actually training, a lot of them are certifications that they take all day. So to put it on during the DEMA show itself means that you don’t get to see all the things going on at the show. So there’s a lot of companies that like to put on there their own trainings a day before the show starts. So you’ll see that, that there’s Tuesday, but then you can touch all of the different dates Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then you just scroll by time and you will see all of the seminars that are going on. Okay. So as we just keep going through here, you’re going to see some really, really great topics that are from the different organizations that you want to see.

So these could be, you know, anything from the training agencies to other exhibitors like travel and photo and video companies. And now they’re doing their seminars or their presentations to give you more information. So let me show you how to do this. If we go to Wednesday the 13th and I’m scrolling through here and I’m looking at things that interest me, man, there’s a ton of things that interest me. I just love this. Look, I’m going to go here, Oh at noon I get to see divers alert network is putting on fluid management for divers. What you need to know about hydration. Oh that sounds awesome. So I can touch that and it’s going to give me an explanation about what this is and what the seminar is all about and it tell you when it is at to tell you where it is. All right, that’s cool.

But here’s what makes this so easy. All you do is touch the star and that is your schedule. You have just now put this on your schedule, you’ve bookmarked it. So when you go back to your calendar and you are looking through your, my schedule calendar and that icon, well on Wednesday, November 13th at 12:00 PM there it is. It has popped up, divers alert network, fluid management for divers and it tells you the room that it’s in right there. And if you needed a reminder, you could touch that appointment and it will take you back right to the event and you’ll see all the details of it. Again, when you’re in an event, you can do notes, you can share with people and say, “Hey, you got to get here or you should see this.” And then at the end you can even rate the event so that you can tell the people of DEMA and the exhibitors themselves how you liked that event.

That lets them know if they should bring it back next year. So this is one of the coolest things that you can do is to go through the events schedule either by track or by day. However you want to do that and pick the things that you want to see. Now let’s say I also want to see advanced search engine marketing strategies to maximize return on investment. Well I look at that and I go, “Hey, that sounds really cool” and I hit the add to schedule star. I put it there. It says, “Hey, you already have an appointment to see the divers alert network fluid management for divers seminar.” So this gives you an alert that you’ve got an overlap. That way you get to pick and see which one you want to go to. Now how do you do that? Well, for me, you’re going to wind up looking to see if these presentations are done again at another time.

Now that takes a little searching, but it is worth it because guess what? Companies like Divers Alert Network, they will do presentations a couple of different times quite often so that that way if you can’t make one you can make another. So look into that and that way you’re not going to have any conflicts. So you might be thinking that it’s kinda hard to then go through every day and look for that same presentation that Divers Alert Networks down. Oh my goodness, I got to go through a lot. Well, all you gotta do is go to the search bar. The search bar in the events tab will let you to type in. And so I’m going to type in divers. Once I type in divers in the events area, all of the Divers Alert Network are going to be posted and that way you can scroll through there and see if we can find the fluid management for divers.

Again, Hey, so there it is. Divers alert network fluid management for divers. What you need to know about hydration is also going to be done on Friday, November 15th from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM awesome. I can put that in my schedule and as long as I don’t have any other conflicts with that, then I have just easily and efficiently found when the next one will be held. Okay, so right there was the heart and soul of how you affectively and efficiently go to the [inaudible] show and with precision hit the things that you want to accomplish while your there. Again, that is mostly about visiting the exhibitors at their booths, seeing new products, getting information and just learning as much as you can as well as attending the seminars. So that’s how you do it. That’s the way to go. Trust me folks, the DEMA show app, will make this a dream for you as you’ve got all of these different things that you’re going to look at, plan ahead of time, schedule out, and whether you’re on the show floor or whether you are going to a seminar, how does it really go?

It goes like this. You walk into the show, you’re gonna pick. I start from the left or the right and you start going up and down the aisles, right as you start knocking off the different booths that you wanted to see and you go, you start, you talk to a booth, you do your thing, you check it off. So now you have attended it. Now guess what? You’re going to get an alert that says, “Hey, you’ve got 15 minutes till your next seminar starts, or something like that. And by the way, give yourself time to get to the seminars. The convention Hall is pretty big. So you’ve got to walk through the convention. All you gotta go to the meeting rooms, etc. So you want to give yourself enough time to be able to get to your seminars. Now, once you’ve gone to that seminar, now it’s time to go back to the show floor, right?

So once you come back to the show floor, it’s awesome. You get to pick up right where you left off because the app is showing you the next booth that you wanted to go to and go see. So it’s such a great way to keep track of your schedule. Hit every seminar that you want to see. Hit every one of the exhibitors that you want to see. This is the secret to how I do the DEMA show and to how lots of other savvy dive pros do the DEMA show. I highly recommend it. Now look, there’s a bunch of other things that are on this app. They’ve got a treasure hunt, which is kind of fun. You can look up the bio’s of the speakers, you can post photos, you can link to social media and make some posts on social media. Of course, we’ve already talked about that.

You can link up and be friends with other attendees. There’s things like local places to go eat and visit. You can hit the locate me now button on the app and it will show you where you are on the show floor as well. And it asks you again where you want to go. You can see show specials, what’s on now we’ve already talked about, you can do some notes. I like this one to the activity feed. The activity feed tells you what’s popular. That’s kind of cool. But global activity feed shows you what is trending and that means what are people bookmarking. So you can look down that list and see what is popular, what is going on? And then you can also query all your favorites, the things that you have bookmarked and that’s in there as well. So there’s so much to the app, there’s so many great things. Please download it, use it. You will thank me later. And by the way, if you are a visual learner, I have a DEMA show app tutorial on YouTube. It is on TheScubaGuru YouTube channel. It’s called the DEMA show app tutorial. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes page. That way you can see all the buttons I’m pushing how to download, install, do everything. It’s all in a visual as well.

What to See at The DEMA Show 2019

Okay, so now let’s look at what are some of my top recommendations for any dive pro who’s visiting the DEMA show to be immersed in? Okay, so the only way to get to the DEMA show is that you’re a dive pro. How did you become a dive pro? That means you’re a divemaster or higher and you got that through a scuba training agency, right? So with our training agencies, that’s where I want to start. You are going to be a part of a training agency or multiple training agencies, whatever the case is, you want to start there and that means go to the events area and then type in in the search field, the name of the agency that you want to track or follow or visit their seminars on. Then type into the search field in the event screen, the name of the agency that you want to find all the different seminars that they are offering for.

So, for example, I’m going to type in PADI and as I type in PADI now, all of the seminars that they are putting on will be listed. Everything that they offer. Now you’re going to find that there are dozens and dozens of different seminars that are being put on by the training agencies. So specifically as I’m going down the PADI list here, there’s tons of things. Anything from the risk management to travel to business tips and techniques. It goes on and on and on. So this is where you want to first identify what your training agency or agencies are doing and what they’re offering. So do that for each agency. If we plug in NAUI, you’re going to see the huge list of offerings that now he is putting on. Same with SDI, but Hey, remember they go by International Training. So if you just type in SDI, you’re only gonna see a couple presentation listed.

But International Training actually has tons of presentations that are on there as well. Again, we’ve already done divers alert network cause we use that as an example before and they have so many offerings. So here’s my big tip when it comes to the training agencies first is that when your training agency is offering anything related to updates, standards and programming changes and risk management, those are my top three always that I go for. Those are really the heart and soul on the education side of things. Now you can also go to any type of talks that have to do with business or sales or whatnot. That’s great. But guess what? There’s also going to be DEMA sponsored seminars that are all about marketing, business, sales, et cetera, and they’ve brought in specialists that this is their job, this is all they do, and they give this information in these seminars to corporations all over the world.

So I tend to lean a little bit more on the specific content that I’m only going to get from the agencies right from the horse’s mouth. It’s usually the training directors that are giving these type of talks when it comes to programs and standards changes and risk management and all. So this is really great stuff. So I would cue in on those areas for the agencies that you are with. Okay. So speaking of business, we are dive professionals. That means we get paid to do diving, right? It’s not just a hobby anymore. Getting paid means that this is part of our living. This is what we do. And to do it effectively and well means we need to be business savvy. So that brings us to the business side of this. So when we want to look up what there is to see on the business side, the first area I go to are the DEMA sponsored seminars, the DEMA sponsored education.

So go to that whole event track and hit that event icon again, and you’re going to see the tab that says DEMA sponsored education. Once you hit that, you’re going to see that you can look into subtracts. So deem has done a good job selecting presentations and speakers based on their content area in different tracks to cover all the bases. So there’s marketing, there’s operations 101, there’s operations 201 that’s a little bit more advanced side of operations. Then sales 101 and sales 201 one again, one’s a little bit more preliminary and the other one is a little bit more advanced. I love it. So marketing operation in sales are the subjects here. So what I do is I come into the DEMA sponsored education parts and I’m going to hit like marketing first. So we take a look at that. There we go.

Uh, there’s the thing I think I’d mentioned earlier, the advanced search engine marketing strategies to maximize return on investment. Very cool. Um, then you’ve got catch the Google wave SEO best practices 2020 and beyond. That’s going to be search engine optimization. Awesome. Then you click the next date over deep dive into marketing analytics. You’ve got the 15th on Friday beyond demographic and psychographic clusters, how to muster a meaningful cluster in a retail environment. I don’t even know what that means, but I’m going to be interested by tapping it, looking into that and so forth. Then advanced SEO secrets only found in Google’s annual report, et cetera. That was all under marketing. Now, if we look at operations, you’ve got productivity, you’ve got a merchandising GPS for increased sales. Interesting. That sounds pretty cool. Affective small business leadership. That’s Larry Mesereau. Now he’s been to the show many times.

He’s a very popular speaker and lots like him. I think this one’s cool. Employer, hazmat training responsibilities, hazmat. Hey, did you know that if you are in this diving business, you are around hazmat all the time? Yup. A scuba cylinder is considered a hazmat item. So Mark Gresham with PSI is actually going to be giving that. I think that’s awesome that they’ve put him on that stage as a DEMA sponsored seminar. Even though he’s an exhibitor too. I’m with PSI. But I think that that’s just awesome that they’re doing that. When we start getting into, um, the 201 level of operations, you’ve got productivity and the three biggest hiring mistakes and create your dream team. Hiring in my world is one of the most important things that you can do. I love that. I tend to see that one sales when you catch the sale, when you get into the sales, catch the wave, how social selling can catch more business for you.

Do we know what social selling is? Yes, it’s selling on social media. This is awesome. It’s Ken Countess who’s doing that again. Ken has been coming to the DEMA show for years. He’s one of the top presenters, very, very popular and he gives some great presentations so I’ll probably be on that one as well. Um, you’ve got sagging sales, how to up your game, quit selling and just make your day. That sounds good. Service that sells up sell, cross sell and beyond and bond with your customers. I love that. That’s another Larry Mesereau presentation. So you catch what I’m getting at here. There’s a lot. And then, Ooh, I love this one. On the sales 201 side using local imaging to grow your business. That’s done by Annie Crowley, you may have heard Annie, she is super popular. If you haven’t heard of her Looker up, go to her social media accounts.

She is amazing. Award winning photographer and filmmaker. And um, this one’s going to be a great one. So if she’s talking about using images to grow your business, I’m all in. This is going to be great and she’s awesome. So there you go. That’s just kind of a sampling of what’s out there and what you can do to get more business savvy. So I highly, highly, highly recommend that you look into those DEMA sponsored education seminars as well as of course the exhibitor sponsored seminars. There’s two more areas that we as dive pros need to really focus on hard and that is environment and legal issues. Now for environment. I want to point you to someone. I think that is really, really creating some massive change in our industry as it relates to how a dive pro can connect with environmental efforts. And that is Dr. Alex Brylske.

I’ve talked about him before in previous episodes. He has just been appointed as the sustainability editor for dive training magazine and dive center business magazine and he has his a company which is ocean education international and he is going to be doing three seminars at the show. That’s going to be greening your business, creating a more sustainable and profitable business. Also, trends and predictions for the dive travel industry, a 21st century perspective and eco pro training for dive professionals for the 21st century. I can’t recommend enough the presentations that Dr Alex Brylske does. They are fantastic. I’ll be there. I’ll be listening. Uh, because he just ties it in. He has this background in this way to do it and so he is an absolute leader in our industry when it comes to sustainability and environmental efforts that we as dive professionals can literally do to make changes so I highly recommend those seminars and the next area is going to be in legal issues.

Risk management right now I mentioned that to you before that you’ll get that with different scuba certification training agencies that are doing presentations on risk management and so forth, but I want to clue you in on one that is an absolute must see for anybody. It doesn’t matter what agency you’re with, anybody that is a dive pro at any level at all should be seeing these presentations. They are the presentations that are given by SSI called navigating today’s legal environment and proper paperwork, a legal perspective. Now these presentations are done by Craig Jenni. Craig Jenni is an attorney and a forensic dive accident investigator. He brings one of the most absolute real down to earth and actual sides of our industry as it relates to legal issues and risk management, I mean he’s talking case work that is out there and it’s things that are happening in our industry that have impacts on our insurance, that have impacts on the way that we operate, the things that we’re doing wrong ever that are going wrong all over the place.

He exposes so much of what we need to know as dive professionals as it relates to legal issues in this litigious society and how we can be what we call defendable and protect ourselves in the best way possible to do proper risk management. I can’t recommend this enough to you. So both of those presentations that uh, Craig is doing with SSI are going to be Thursday and Friday. Those are morning sessions, 10 and 11. Again, Friday 10 and 11. Um, I’ll be there and I, I just can’t recommend these two guys and their presentations enough. We do need to get more involved in environment and legal issues and Hey, that’s part of what this podcast is all about is, is excelling in areas like that.

Now the next area we’re gonna look into is going to be the resource centers. So if you are into photography or videography, you want to go to the events and then under the track you want to look at resource center snapshot sessions and there you’re going to see the tracks of photography and videography and then technical diving.

What’s going on here is out on the show floor in these resource sentence centers that I’ve mentioned in a in previous episodes. Now is the list of all the presentations and seminars that are taking place at the resource centers by day. And again, their topics are only exclusive to that resource center, whether it’s going to be image related and photo and video or technical diving related. So there’s tons of things to look into here. They are not where the other exhibitors are. Um, necessarily. So they are on the show floor is what I’m getting at. So definitely hone in on those. And then of course for the fun stuff, you can see the scuba demonstration pool. You can also look at the new product showcase. That’s pretty cool. And there’s even a first timer orientation. If you’ve never been to the DEMA show, there’s a first timer orientation that they put on to help you kind of navigate through what it’s about.

But I think this, this, uh, episode probably is a, is a pretty good orientation in and of itself. And Hey, if you go take a look at the new product showcase, there’s going to be all these new products behind some glass displays. You can go and see what booths these things are at. So you go, you look and you see, Hey, there’s the new NEMO that that’s out there, a power snorkeling device. It’s a really cool, uh, item that’s, that’s a new this year. And you’ll see that that’s part of the Brownies Marine Group. So all of a sudden you whip out your app, you punch in under exhibitors brownies, it will show you them on the map. You put that on a bookmark and you find the location and it will give you directions right there and that way you can check out the item in person. You see it’s that easy to navigate the show and be super efficient and effective for all the things that you want to see.

Bonus Show Tips

All right, and here’s a couple bonus tips for you before we close out this episode. One, drink tons of water. I know that sounds weird. You’re in the air conditioning all day. Look, I’m telling you because it’s an air conditioned environment, you are actually going to get dehydrated. Walk in that show floor, so drink tons of water. You’ll thank me seriously. Next thing, because you’re going to be running your DEMA app so much that’s going to drain the battery on your phone. Make sure that you bring a portable battery. That way you can hook up and recharge your phone on the go so that you don’t have to go somewhere in the convention center and find a wall outlet and sit there and get your phone to charge.

No, don’t do that. You don’t have time for that. Bring a portable battery so that you can plug in and recharge your phone on the go. Next is I like backpacks. Backpacks are a great way to tote the things that you want to tote around at the show. They keep a little bit more strain off you than if you’re carrying the bag around the show. You tend to kind of switch arms and that kind of thing. Backpacks are pretty popular with people, but on that same note, I want to caution you. No matter if you have a backpack or if you have a tote that you’re carrying in your hand, don’t pick up every single piece of literature you can from every booth. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get that. You’re going to get back to the hotel room. And when it comes time to pack your bags and go home, you’re going to be throwing out a ton of it anyhow.

So one of the things that I recommend is don’t go overboard on all of the items that you can carry away. Just go for the things that you really want to put your hands on. Otherwise, remember, so much of the information that you can get at the DEMA show can be emailed to you, can be sent to you in PDF formats and so forth. And by the way, for business cards, lots of exchanges for business cards, I’m going to give that plug and shout out again to Evernote. Evernote has a feature in it where I can actually do a digital scan of a business card and it will automatically take it, populate it and put it into my contacts in my phone. And all the person’s information from that business card is there. So that’s a really cool thing that Evernote does and that helps me from having pocket foals of business cards from, from people that I’ve met.

So those are my cool show tips. Little as little add on there. Again, I hope that when you come to the DEMA show here that you link up to me as a friend and we will meet hopefully sometime on the show floor, introduce yourself. It’s just a great networking thing to do. And Hey, networking, make sure you go to the socials, make sure you go to the different parties. Look, there’s going to be so many of them. The sea of change, one done by head and SSI, the divers alert network one, the Patty one, the DEMA awards presentation party, the deeper blue breath hold and brew party. I mean, look, there’s so many. Uh, what else am I missing? Women’s divert hall of fame, um, the NOGI’s and, and, American Academy of underwater arts and sciences. So, I mean, there’s so many great things out there.

So look at what else is going on with the different agencies and the different groups and organizations that are attending. It’s just a great time. So I can’t wait to see you all out there. And again, if you’re not going, please promote this episode of this podcast to someone that you know is going or is on the fence about going or, or zoned to go in for one day and they don’t know how to do it. This episode is really gonna help them.

Thanks For Listening!

So that’s it for today everyone. Thanks again to the DEMA show for being our sponsor of this episode, and I want to thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher,. That way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live every week. And please leave a rating. Items talked about in this episode can be found on the show notes page at scubaguru.com. I’ll put all kinds of links there to the stuff we’ve talked about as well. You can also click on that microphone and leave us a comment or a suggestion or something for a future episode. Thanks again everyone. We’ll see you in the next episode safe diving and take good care of my friends.

Thanks to Our Episode Sponsor

Podcast (thedivelocker): Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS