New Orleans Foundations Training

Build real-world skills in the Events & Emergency Operations Bootcamp, a full-day training targeted to hone the operational capacities that overlap most directly between event production and emergency readiness. This training unfolds on the campus of The National WWII Museum, one of the country’s most important cultural institutions. Whether you’re strengthening organizational operations, positioning venues as community resilience hubs, or building practical skills to support your community through disruption, you’ll gain hands-on experience through interactive training and scenario-based exercises.

Welcome & orientation

We’ll get settled into the space, walk through basic housekeeping and orientation on the grounds of our fantastic host campus of the Higgins Hotel and National WWII Museum, and introduce the learning arc for our training day together.

Event & Emergency Resilience: An Operational Framework

Icebreaker Activity: Four Pillars Roses & Thorns

You’ll assess your own organizations or past events through the Four Pillars lens, identifying strengths and gaps, then share patterns across institution types to recognize common challenges and opportunities.

Opening plenary

This panel brings together practitioners who have managed real events and emergencies at scale — from citywide disaster response and active-threat incidents to the daily security calculus of venues hosting tens of thousands of visitors to coordinating planning for Mardi Gras and hundreds of other events every year. Panelists will draw on that operational depth to discuss where event infrastructure and emergency response already converge in practice, what the last two decades of hard lessons in New Orleans reveal about preparedness, and where they see the greatest untapped potential for cultural venues and emergency management to work from shared systems.

• Collin Arnold — Director, New Orleans Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness (NOHSEP)
• Jon Barnwell — Associate Vice President of Safety & Security, The National WWII Museum; Host of the IFCPP 2026 Conference
• Andrew Palumbo — Director of Security, New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center; retired NOPD (25 years), former Special Events operations and incident planning lead

Events as Cross-Sector Catalysts for Disaster Readiness

Opening plenary

This panel brings together practitioners who have managed real events and emergencies at scale — from citywide disaster response and active-threat incidents to the daily security calculus of venues hosting tens of thousands of visitors to coordinating planning for Mardi Gras and hundreds of other events every year. Panelists will draw on that operational depth to discuss where event infrastructure and emergency response already converge in practice, what the last two decades of hard lessons in New Orleans reveal about preparedness, and where they see the greatest untapped potential for cultural venues and emergency management to work from shared systems.

Panelists

Jon Barnwell — Associate Vice President of Safety & Security, The National WWII Museum; Host of the IFCPP 2026 Conference

Norris Yarbrough — Senior Security Manager, Armed Division, WWII Museum

Joseph Frank — Chief of Public Safety, Caesars Superdome and Smoothie King Center

Operational Systems Hands-On

This session provides hands-on training in four operational systems critical in both events and emergencies: water/sanitation, power, radio, and audio/PA. Rotating through stations in groups, participants will learn to operate essential equipment and recognize when to coordinate with specialists versus make informed decisions independently. By the end of the session, participants will be able to perform basic capacity calculations for water and power systems, operate radio and PA equipment using proper protocols, and assess operational decisions through the four pillars framework.

Foodways “appetizer” session

12:30 – 1:15 PM | Lunch

Introduction to the afternoon program

Regroup and transition from this morning’s frameworks to our afternoon program, including an interactive gameshow to test our knowledge. Time for questions.

Mapping local readiness ecosystems

Calm and clear communications

Ingress, Egress, and Evacuations

A walking tour of The National WWII Museum grounds that doubles as a live learning session around topics of ingress, egress, and evacuation. We’ll learn about screening techniques, emergency messaging systems, and accessibility considerations for evacuations, while also taking a hands-on look at the campus generator and other critical operational systems.

Wrapping up