National Warning Corporation was founded in May 2006,
but its roots go back much farther.

 

On a stormy night in 1977, David Coursey was working at a Dallas radio station, reading weather bulletins as a line of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes marched across North Texas. Coursey, then only 18 years old, worked at one of the few radio stations that actually interrupted it’s programming to read weather bulletins. Most stations, despite being in the Midwest’s famous “Tornado Alley” simply continued playing music—ignoring the danger their listeners faced.

 

“I imagined some middle-aged guy and his family, driving up North Central Expressway, listening to music, and being surprised when a tornado crossed right in from of their car,” Coursey said in a recent retelling of the story.

 

“Listening to the ‘wrong’ radio station didn’t seem like a very good reason for someone to be injured or even killed when bad weather struck without warning.”

 

Coursey remained active in radio for a number of years, became a National Weather Service storm spotter, started writing for USA Today, and eventually joined the technology press.

 

But, his concern about emergency warning remained.

 

Throughout a successful career in technology journalism, Coursey had the opportunity to offer suggestions to major companies, such as Microsoft and others. Online services, he realized, could do much to improve public warning, though the technology to do so did not yet exist.

 

As the Internet became common in homes and businesses, Coursey began to identify technologies—such as email and instant messaging—that could deliver specific warnings to individuals wherever they happened to be. Cellular telephones could also play an important role.

 

In early 2006, one of the seeds of his emergency warning idea—planted years before—took root.

 

Coursey was contacted by a large software company, which expressed an interest in distributing emergency warnings online.

 

In March 2006, Coursey invited Art Botterell, widely regarded as the “father” of the Common Alerting Protocol, to a meeting with executives at the software company’s headquarters. The company's team was impressed with the CAP architecture and its potential to revolutionize emergency warnings.

 

That meeting resulted in more discussions and a series of proposals, which led to a development contract and the creation of National Warning Corporation. In an unusual move, reflecting the company’s belief in the importance of CAP, all of the software NWC creates for the software company has been licensed back to NWC for use in its own products and services.

 

As his initial team, Coursey selected Deb McAlister, who had worked on his other startups over the previous decade, and Jon Sapir, a software entrepreneur with whom he had also worked in the past. Botterell provided the company with invaluable advice and direction.

 

Today, National Warning Corporation is regarded as a leader in use of the Common Alerting Protocol and is building a business around it and other next-generation emergency management protocols.