The Red Escudo#

The network is the people. Everything else — the button, the signs, the software — is scaffolding around a list of neighbours who said yes in advance.

Yes, wake me. Yes, I’ll go if I can.

That’s the whole commitment, and it’s deliberately small. A member is not on duty, not rostered, and not obliged to answer any particular alert. Declining is a normal answer; the network works because someone answers, not because everyone does.

Who’s in it#

Anyone who lives in the village and is over 18. Not only the fit and the young:

• The neighbour who can be at any house in four minutes.
• The one who can’t run anywhere but is home all day and answers the phone.
• The one with the tractor, the water bowser, the ladder, the 4×4.
• The one who is a nurse, a first-aider, a retired firefighter.
• The people the network exists to reach. Anyone can raise an alert; everyone gets the button. There is no separate list of the vulnerable.

Around fifteen to fifty people works for a village of a couple of hundred. Fewer than ten and a summer weekend empties the network; many more than fifty and the group gets noisy and people mute it.

Joining#

At a sign-up meeting, with phones in hand — never by leaflet. Two minutes per person, and it never stops: people move in, say yes late, and above all change their phone.

1. Join the group, and open Botón Escudo once so the buttons appear. Look at them; don’t press one — every press alarms the whole village.
2. Set notifications to make a noise, and prove it before they leave. A silenced phone is the single biggest failure mode in this whole system, and an ordinary message in the group tests it without alarming anyone.
3. Read the Response protocol. It is the one page every member should have read.

The jobs somebody has to hold#

Not ranks, and not authority over anyone. Jobs, named out loud so they don’t quietly become nobody’s.

The Coordinator — one person#

The Red Escudo is somebody’s responsibility or it is nobody’s. One named person holds the whole thing:

• Owns the member list and knows who is actually in the network this month.
• Is the known face for the Junta Vecinal and the Ayuntamiento. Not a spokesman for the village — a phone number that gets answered.
• Closes off incidents in the group, and calls the drills.
• Decides the boring things so they get decided.

One, not a committee. A committee of three postpones; one person with two helpers acts. But name a deputy who can do the job for a fortnight in August.

Assistants — one or two#

The Coordinator’s hands, and the reason sign-ups actually finish:

• Sit next to neighbours at sign-up and get the phone working — that’s most of the work.
• Chase the people who joined the group but never pressed Start, and the ones whose phone has been on silent since March.
• Take the list, the drills and the sign-ups off the Coordinator when needed.

The Technical lead — one person#

Deliberately separate, because it is a different skill and it is the one role where the village needs somebody who genuinely enjoys this:

• Sets up and runs the Telegram bot and the group. Holds the bot’s token — the only password in the system.
• Runs whatever the bot runs on, and keeps it running.
• Registers phones and devices as households ask, and keeps the test rota that proves they still work.
• Hands over cleanly. The token, the config file and the accounts written down somewhere the Coordinator can reach them. A village that can’t replace this person hasn’t finished setting up.

This is the role most likely to be a son, a daughter or a grandchild, and it does not require living in the village.

Keeping it alive#

A network nobody has used in a year isn’t a network. Twice a year is enough:

• A drill. Someone raises a test alert. Count how many phones made a noise and how long the first neighbour took. That number is the health of the Red.
• A review of the list. People move, die, fall out, change phones.

If the answer to how long did the first neighbour take is getting worse, fix notifications before anything else.