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Looking back over 2022. Looking forward to 2023.

- english gareth lock Jan 01, 2023

2022 – Another ‘interesting’ year 

There were a number of plans made for 2022, and most of them were fulfilled. However, a small issue in April meant that two of the face-to-face courses had to be rescheduled!


Blogs

The Human Diver team planned to publish at least one blog a week (in English) to keep the content and knowledge flowing. As I have found over the years, consistency is key when it comes to getting the message out there. Most people can’t read every blog or email when it is sent or published, but many find the time when sorting out inboxes to click and see what has been going on.

As a team, the plan was to write a blog a week, and we managed to write 52 blogs plus Andrzej translated 22 blogs into Polish! Jenny wrote a whole series of blogs under the banner of ‘HF in Diving for Dummies’ as a way of getting some basic concepts across. This led to an interesting response from some in the community who thought it was a negative approach because of the term ‘Dummies’. However, if you look on Amazon, there are quite a few advanced topics published by the ‘Dummies’ company. Mike wrote 4 blogs covering a range of topics, more focused on applying HF to divemastering.

We now have more than 150 blogs in the library - something for everyone. They are tagged on the right-side of the blog menu page, so if you want to look for a specific topic or author, then it is made easier for you.


Webinars and Presentations

Over the year, the team have been involved in a number of presentations at conferences and clubs. Some of those presentations are available on

If you'd like members of The Human Diver team to give a presentation, please get in touch.


If Only…

This documentary continues to reach divers around the globe. Last year there were 2500+ views of the video on the Vimeo channel, and 8000+ views on The Human Diver website. I know there have been numerous workshops run by dive centres and clubs, getting the message out there that incidents and accidents are very rarely a single failure, but rather numerous minor issues that come together at just the ‘right time’ and ‘right place’ such that the capacity to manage safety is exceeded and an accident happens.

https://www.thehumandiver.com/ifonly

 

Under Pressure

This year we changed things slightly in terms of the face-to-face classes, with each student getting a copy of Under Pressure as part of their course fees. This allows them to refer back to the core materials, and if they’ve already got a copy, they still get one so they can give it to a needy friend!

There were more than 750 print sales and 320 digital (Kindle & iBook) sales over the year, which was up 150% on 2021 figures. The book is also available on Audible.

The book is now available in Polish too, thanks to Andrzej Gornicki, and German and Italian versions are being worked on.

https://www.thehumandiver.com/underpressure

 

Essentials Class

This is the entry-level course for the Human Diver education programme. As a team of instructors, we have decided after the current Level 1 course which starts on 26 Feb, the Essentials class will be a pre-requisite for ALL human diver educational courses, including the new Learning from Unintended Outcomes (LFOU) course which will go live in 2023.

The course has been purchased by more than 200 people directly and used as mandatory pre-learning for 75 students undertaking rescue, cave, CCR, technical or instructor development. Big shout outs to Marc Crane, Guy Shockey, and Tec Clarke for referring 57 of those students! The feedback has been consistent from the 31 instructors who mandate the Essentials class – the Essentials class adds significant value to the students’ knowledge as it pertains to teamwork, situation awareness, communication, and leadership.

If you’re a diving instructor or dive centre manager and a graduate of a Level 0: Essentials class or Level 2: Face-to-face class and want to learn about referral and affiliate schemes, drop Gareth a line to find out more. You will make a difference to your students and the diving community if you start including the Essentials in your own training programmes.

https://www.thehumandiver.com/HFiD-Essentials

 

Level 1 – Webinar Series

Two courses 10-week courses are run each year, one in Feb-Apr, the other Oct-Dec. Forty-five people were trained this year in this programme from around the globe, attending every Sunday between 19:00-20:30 for a live webinar and interactive session, and then completing consolidation homework. Eight of the ten webinars had book prizes for the best submission. This 10-week programme also acts as the foundation knowledge for the next intake of Human Diver instructors.

The next Level 1 class starts on 26 Feb 2023, details are here. https://www.thehumandiver.com/hfid-level-1-webinar-series

 

Level 2 – Face-to-Face Courses

As always, there were more courses planned than fulfilled! And as always, those who did attend a course were full of praise, stating that these concepts and tools should be part of all SCUBA training, but especially those involved in leadership and higher-risk activities. Overall, we trained 107 people face-to-face, from Vancouver Island, to Sao Paulo, to multiple locations in Europe (including two scientific diving courses), and three courses in Australia! Two of these Australian courses led to another instructor, Mike Mason, coming online. He has two courses in March 2023, running at Perth SCUBA, which have only got a couple of spaces left.

The Human Diver team also got training on new software for the face-to-face programmes, more details of which are below.

Finally, we have four new instructors who have started their instructor candidate process. This entails around 80 hours of online and self-paced learning culminating in a two-week instructor development workshop in the UK where they will teach 16 students in live classes before (hopefully, if I’ve done my job properly) they graduate. 

https://www.thehumandiver.com/hfid-level-2

 

Media Diving Teams

At the end of 2022, a number of UK-based media divers who produce media for organisations like the BBC, Netflix and NatGeo undertook face-to-face GemaSim and online InterLAB training with The Human Diver. The debriefs highlighted that there is definitely a need to bring these high-performance team skills into their operations to improve safety and reduce the number of problems they face, and we are looking forward to making this happen in 2023 and beyond.

 

What’s planned for 2023!


More Instructors

Four (maybe five) more instructors will come online in 2023. Windal Adams (Plano, Texas), Pedro Cunha (Sao Paulo), Alessandra Figari (Mexico) and Andrzej Gornicki (Poland). The 5th instructor candidate is Florida-based.

Two of the five slots of the 2023-2024 Instructor Development Programme have already been filled.

 

InterLAB

To start with, we are moving away from GemaSim to something new. GemaSim has been an excellent platform for us over the last 7 years. However, it has limited options when it comes to where we as The Human Diver want to go. To that end, six of the team undertook training with Alex Stork from Ninecubes to learn about the Interpersonal Skills LAB software they provide. We start using it in January and February with Gareth and Guy delivering face-to-face programmes in San Francisco, Calgary, Edmonton and Regina. The rest of the instructors will all be qualified to use it from the end of May 2023. 

The software allows us to quantifiably assess the teams and their improvement over a series of missions, looking at not just non-technical skills, but also how they have managed their error rates. Multiple teams allow competition (and subsequent errors!) to take place and a new version available at the start of Q2 will be ideal for those who work with remote or disparate teams and need to coordinate and collaborate to get the most out of them.

InterLAB runs in English, Italian, French and German and so courses can be run in these languages natively. 

The cost for licencing InterLAB is less than GemaSim which means the basic course will be £350 (or local equivalent) instead of £450 per person (plus travel expenses for the instructor). For two days of intensive, reflective training plus the Essentials course and a copy of Under Pressure, this is excellent value.

InterLAB also allows us to run team diagnostic sessions lasting 2.5 hours, whereby you can see how effective your team (or you as a team member) are before committing to a two-day face-to-face course. As with all of the InterLAB-based training, we can now offer class sizes from 4 to 12 depending on your needs.

 


Learning from Unintended Outcomes – Learning-focused Investigations

This course was originally put together in 2021 and beta-tested with a team from DAN USA. Since then, it has been a challenge to edit it and get it out there. However, I am committing to make it happen and the first face-to-face course will take place in Malta immediately after RF4.0 on 24-25 April 2023. There will be a 3-hour online course as pre-learning to get the core theory in place, and the two days will be spent looking at case studies, looking at causal and contributory factors, interviewing those involved in an incident, and then putting together a learning-focused report and other learning products.

 

Rebreather Forum 4.0

The Human Diver is a sponsor of RF4.0 which is taking place between 20-22 April 2023 in Malta. We will also have a stand there with at least two other instructors from the team present. Gareth will be giving a presentation on the role of HF in rebreather diving. In addition to running the LFUO course on 24-25 April, there will also be a two-day face-to-face course running 18-19 April near RF4.0 co-taught by Gareth and Andrzej.

 

New Human Diver ‘backend’ Software

The Human Diver training portal runs on a platform called Kajabi. They have recently released a new community-focused platform which will allow courses, coaching, community discussions and meet-ups to be held within The Human Diver. There will be the opportunity for challenges and interactive engagement with the community, without being tied to Facebook or similar. This will be a game-changer for the education of divers when it comes to HF and non-technical skills in diving.

 Logotype | Staff Pages

Research Opportunities

As some of you might know, I am undertaking a MSc degree at Lund University (Sweden) in Human Factors and System Safety. 2023 is thesis year and I have a couple of ideas: 

  • Does understanding a ‘second story’ increase learning in diving?
  • Culture in Diving: What role does it play when it comes to safety and risk management?
  • Risk Savvy: How do divers manage risk and uncertainty in an inherent risk activity?

Or something else that the diving community considers important, as it relates to HF and System Safety. Ideas to me via the contact page!

 

Blogs

We will continue to write at least one blog per week, maybe two. With more instructors coming online who have English as a second language, there will be more opportunities for non-English materials including blogs. The plan is 2022 was to include one case study per month and we hope to make that happen in 2023. 

We will also look to put together some mini-video series to help get some of the points across.

 

Another Documentary…

I’d love to produce another documentary like If Only…, so if you know someone who has been involved in a serious diving incident who would like to have their (and their team’s) story told like Brian and his dive team was in If Only… please get in touch. If it is recreational diving focused, even better.


Gareth Lock is the owner of The Human Diver, a niche company focused on educating and developing divers, instructors and related teams to be high-performing. If you'd like to deepen your diving experience, consider taking the online introduction course which will change your attitude towards diving because safety is your perception, visit the website

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