Charles,
Your point about maybe changing the order of business is to me spot on and worthy of consideration. I will talk with the other officers and see if maybe they want to try doing as you suggest. We all recognize the problems, they aren’t new to our recent gatherings.
I think everyone wants the same end result that you do: To “have fun” at these meetings. One problem for me personally is that one person’s “presentation” is another person’s “business” and vice versa. Someone doing a presentation on how to use a SWR meter to tune an antenna; that one is easy, that is a presentation. Not so easy: Is our 50th Anniversary a presentation or business? Is a discussion about new offerings of merchandise a presentation or business? So, to me there is a bit of conflict in the difference between presentation and business. Not always, but sometimes. If someone will please point me to the rules on that so that I will know what they are, I for one would benefit. LOL I am averse to holding myself or anyone else accountable for rules that many, if not most, don’t know about. That is kind of why I am trying to codify some of our Club stuff. “We have never done it that way before.” seems to be a virtuous rallying cry for some. I guess some people might not like me because my attitude is “So what? Just because we never have doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.” I think the converse is true too. LOL That may explain my curiosity at trying what you suggest and do presentations first. Since I have been a member of the Club we have never done that, so would that make it wrong? If people dug it, to me that is perhaps an indictment of doing things the way it has “always been done”, instead of that being some virtuous point of order.
Here is an example of something new and innovative that I am trying to push on the Club – Make a plan and be proactive. Do not wait until the last minute and then run around like our hair is on fire trying to catch up. An example of that is this – Never before has anyone had a comprehensive list of all – Club Reports & Registration – (now up to 21 items) the tasks that must be done to keep the Club up and running as a legal entity. As another, to my knowledge we have never proactively planned presentations. My ambition for some time now has been to get presentations scheduled a year in advance and get them posted on the Club website. Well, there are just a handful of us doing all, and I mean ALL, of the work. The officers have now asked twice – two times – for someone to please raise their hand, volunteer and start the process of putting together scheduled presentations. Forty-eight members have been asked twice and not a single person has followed up with us. Do the Club members really not care about presentations? Does nobody have fifteen to twenty minutes a month to make a call or two and/or email a few people to solicit presentations and presenters? I am a bit baffled at the apathy. So, following along on these posts in this thread I just decided to get it knocked out. I am not going to do this every year, but if we post the volunteer position as “The job is actually done, you can just sign up now and coast for months…”, maybe that will attract someone. LOL All kidding aside, if someone will please just reach out to us (please click here) and tell us that you will take over this newly created position; we have made it pretty easy to continue. So hopefully someone will. If so, thanks!
We have the following Club meeting dates scheduled for the balance of the year, presentations as noted:
April 22 – Presentation: Field Day 2023 – Charles Penry (WA5VHU), Field Day Coordinator
May 20 – 50th Anniversary (Moved up a week to deconflict with Memorial Day weekend and as a consequence we moved it to the same weekend as Dayton Hamvention.) – Presentation: 50th Anniversary – Multiple persons
June 24 – Field Day is on June 24-25, so if recent history informs us – That will be the presentation. Presentation: Field Day final preps – Charles Penry (WA5VHU)
July 22 – Tour de Paris (TDP) is July 15 so to me logically the presentation for July 22 would be reference TDP. Or is that business? If TDP debrief is business and not a presentation then we have no presentation scheduled as yet. Presentation: TDP Debrief – Mark Johnson (W5PTX)
August 26 – Presentation: Home brew: A general discussion – Johnny Thomas (WB5JT)
September 23 – Presentation: NanoVNA-H4 – Jim Vignali (W5VIG)
October 28 – Presentation: No presentation scheduled as yet. Ham Radio & Self Reliance – Matthew Murphy (KF5NRU)
November 25 – This again falls on Thanksgiving weekend and the group may want to move the date to November 18 to deconflict. Presentation: Direction finding using an ICOM IC-705 and a handheld small loop antenna – Charles Penry (WA5VHU)
December 23 – Sunday is Christmas Eve and I am guessing the group will again want to move the meeting to deconflict with Christmas. No presentation scheduled as yet.
Conflicting events are a common theme with the meeting on the 4th weekend. When I first joined the Club we did the meeting on, as I recall, the second Saturday of the month. We did the change mostly as an accommodation to the then Club treasurer. There are still some that prefer it on the 4th weekend, but when you see that the 4th weekend is Memorial Day, Field Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, we automatically have four of twelve (33.33%) Club meeting weekends get blown up by Field Day and three national holidays. At some point we might want to revisit what weekend we do Club meetings.
Alright, we have identified some programs and potential programs and by my accounting above we have October 28 and December 23 (likely to be be moved up) that need programs. If TDP debrief is business then we need one for July too. That is two (or three) months that we need presentations and presenters and I currently see these opportunities:
SWR meters and tuning antennas – Who is willing to make a presentation on this?
GMRS/GMRS repeaters – Who is willing to make a presentation on those?
It is probably good that the GMRS piece is currently pushed to later in the year. This so that it can be advertised to people outside of the usual ham radio group. There is obviously overlap, some ham radio operators also have a GMRS license and use that gear, but there are some GMRS operators that are not involved with ham radio. We need a little time to get the advertising message out to them so that we can maybe get some of them to the Club meeting, do the presentation and cross-pollenate with them and maybe recruit some new hams to the Club.
What else? Anybody see any other conflicts with the dates above? Anybody have any further suggestions for programs and presenters? Suggestions for programs or anyone willing to do a presentation please email me.
Thanks,
Phillip
