Case study · The Gym

A national emergency service's spokespeople knew one AI tool. They left knowing three, and using them on real messages.

One day with the spokesperson team at the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority, January 2026. No slides about AI. They brought the messages they actually publish, and built with them.

Organisation
Israel Fire and Rescue Authority
Who
The spokesperson team
When
January 2026
Delivered through
The College for New Media

Where they started

A spokesperson for a national emergency service writes under a clock. The message goes out while the event is still happening, it will be quoted, and there is no second draft. That is not a place where anyone experiments with a new tool.

So the honest starting point, in their own words on camera: before that day they knew ChatGPT, and only ChatGPT. Not because they were behind, but because nobody had ever sat with them and connected a tool to the actual work.

What we did

1

They brought a real message

Not an exercise. The kind of announcement this team actually has to publish, with its real constraints and its real reader.

2

We built with the tools, not about them

Hands on the keyboard, on Gemini and on NotebookLM alongside what they already knew. Everyone works. Nobody watches.

3

They left with the output, and with the method

Something usable the next morning, and a way of working they can repeat without me in the room.

What changed, in their words

“I got so many tools I didn't know. Before this I only knew ChatGPT, and now I've learned to work with Gemini and with NotebookLM, tools that are super practical for our profession. I feel it lifts me several levels up. The announcements I put out can be far more professional now.”

A spokesperson, Israel Fire and Rescue Authority · Filmed at the end of the day · Published with her approval
“A productive day, packed with knowledge, effective.”
“I took so much from this day, for my work as a spokesperson and for everyday life.”

Why this one is worth reading

Because it is the least forgiving room I could have walked into. If a tool does not survive contact with a message that has to be right the first time, it does not survive anywhere. And because the outcome they named was not “we learned about AI”, it was that the work they already do got better.

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