An Ontario Radio Society?

I'm hearing rumbling from Ontario Hams about a desire to form (reform) an Ontario Amateur Radio Society.

Imagine a unified annual membership, initiated at the club level, that would fund the Club, The Ontario Society and RAC.

Each level is funded for services it provides, with clear division of responsibility. Members choose to belong to a Club and elect an executive, Clubs belong to a Provincial Society and elect an executive, and the Provincial Society chooses to belong to RAC and appoint Provincial Directors. It's a bottom up structure and the financial flow ensures a Servant-Leader approach. If RAC fails to serve the provinces they may not get funded!

it is an interesting "inversion" of President Bawden's recent TCA message regarding ARES, pushing responsibility for ARES leadership down to the regions, effectively "outsourcing" the problems associated with lack of national leadership in Field Services.  Instead of outsourcing a problem down, the Clubs and Provinces would hold RAC accountable, or we will find a more responsive National Society to spend out dollars with.

 Imagine that, People that pay the fees being treated as customers instead of a tax base!

I think there may be some sound thinking behind this - at a minimum it is worth looking into. The numbers certainly tell a supporting story. Ontario has a significant percentage of Canada's Amateurs and is underrepresented on the RAC board. 

This might just be the method to shake up the status quo at RAC and force the Executive to be responsive to the needs of Ontario Amateurs. 

i think it's worth a look. 

A Director Resigns

To my constituency here in Ontario South, I wanted to share this email I sent to my Fellow Directors of Radio Amateurs of Canada today announcing my resignation from the Board.

It has been a pleasure to represent you.

Rod

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To Radio Amateurs of Canada, fellow Directors and Officers

With this email I hereby submit my resignation as Director, Ontario South effective as of 5 November 2014.

As I have voiced a few times now, I am uncomfortable with the current “health" of the organization, specifically:

1. The isolation of Directors and Executive from the members we serve, 

2, The resistance to representing ALL Amateurs in Canada, and 

3. A general lack of openness, accountability, and leadership.

I feel an engaged, open and healthy National Society would 

• publish meeting schedules, agendas and detailed minutes in a timely fashion to encourage member feedback / interaction with Directors.
• be concerned with the resignation of three Section Managers in rapid succession, conduct “exit interviews” and take corrective action.
• show leadership by having specific, bold objectives, clearly communicated to, and supported by, its members

I’m feeling alone in these concerns, as if other Directors feel that things are “Just fine”, I’m feeling frustrated and ineffective in gathering support for basic change in the organization, so I think it’s best to part ways. I’m going to apply my time and attention in other areas so that I can support, in my own way, this great hobby.

I am thankful to the constituancy for the opportunity to serve as a Director and I offer my best wishes to each of you.

Sincerely

Rod Hardman

A Section Manager Resigns

GTA ARES Community,

It will come as no surprise that I am greatly saddened by this decision. George Duffield is a fine, thoughtful leader and we are greatly diminished by his departure from the GTA Section Manager role.

George Duffield has the talent of putting us in touch with our "Better Angels". He was instrumental in my personal decision to stop heckling RAC from the sidelines and step up to try to make the organization better. He made me see that any idiot can tear a thing down, but it takes character to effect positive change and build a thing up.

To the rest of the ARES in the GTA, I call on each of you to re-examine how we have strayed from the path and come to this sad place.

We have a great hobby, with noble purposes in education and community service, yet otherwise good men stand idly by, allowing petty squabbles to erupt from sad little men seeking to build cardboard empires. Good men should never allow this.

To be blunt, we have all failed ourselves, our communities and our served agencies when our actions, inactions or self serving pettiness cause a thoughtful peacemaker such as George Duffield to leave our ranks. 

While I am deeply ashamed of our GTA ARES community tonight, I am still hopeful that this will serve as a wake up call to the good Men (and Women) of our community and some good will come of this.

Let's wake up tomorrow determined to do better 

Rod Hardman

RAC Director, Ontario South

Building a stronger hobby & an open RAC

There are healthy efforts underway to offer better Office Automation  for RAC.  Director Bill Gipps of BC has been doing a heroic job investigating this and I'm proud to be actively supporting him, as is a very smart fellow from Ontario, new Ham Brian O'Donnell, VA4BCO. (I prefer to call this "Open Office" as the automation should be an enabler, not an objective. The result should be an office more accessible to all across Canada)

I've been asked about which has the higher priority - Education or (Open) Office Automation?

At risk of giving a politician's answer, both. I support Open Office as very important but it won't solve all of our very real problems. Growing the hobby, including recruiting diverse voices and talents, will have a bigger impact. nevertheless we do need both.

Relative to population growth, the hobby is shrinking, this is true south of the border as well. This is not because of lack of interest. You saw at Dayton the potential of the Maker /Hacker community. Toronto is a centre of gravity for these folks as is Vancouver and Calgary.

We also need to look at Native communities, rural ARES opportunities and elementary /secondary robotics programs. (Note that none of these demographics are dominated by "old white men")

We need to make more Hams by making adult education more accessible to these communities. Youth education is secondary given our relevancy issue. If you want to appeal to youth, you need to be (and appear to be) relevant. 

Now from an association perspective, RAC still has a relevancy / value proposition problem. The hard truth is in our poor market share (number of RAC members vs  hams in Canada, benchmarked against the same numbers in the UK and USA) and I believe this is also largely to do with relevancy or - put differently - "what's in it for me?"

So it's critical we increase our total numbers, diversify that population and increase our marketshare. A good education program will help the first two issues. An Open Office could help fix the marketshare. How? It's about revitalization.

Revitalization will only occurred when the organization commits to becoming more transparent & inclusive. 

- Volunteers with equal access from across the country. 

- Open financials. 

- Consultations on important issues. 

-  Open discussion forums to identify what active Hams think are important.

- more time and attention on our critics not just our fan club

Most importantly we have to have value for dollars that speaks to all Amateurs in Canada.  

Office automation is important because it could be used to open the organization and increase the feeling that RAC is both willing and capable of representing ALL Canadian Amateurs.

Is this going to happen on its own or are we going to require a revolution in the streets? I think the answer, like many answers, lies somewhere in the middle. Its about good men (and women) standing up and making a difference. Yes, I mean YOU. only YOU can help shape the National Organization YOU would like to see. Stand up and make a difference.

I'm an unapologetic optimist. It's not a scarcity issue, it's a growth issue. It's not about management, it's about leadership.

/Rod

 (Thanks to Bill Unger VE3XT and Geoff ve4baw for a conversation that has really got me thinking about these issues )

Is Your Aging Analog ARES Response Obsolete?

With recent tornados in the US Midwest we are reminded how important our communications infrastructure is, not just for news, but to get the right info to the right people. 

For Amateurs, this means ARES, but I grow increasingly concerned that ARES has aged in ways beyond the chronology of it's members. It has aged in  thinking.

Generals are always fighting the last war they won. For ARES groups in Ontario, this means hurricane Hazel, where passing short messages on forms by Phone mode would probably be oK. When all else fails - it's better than nothing - but at the time of Hazel, Ham stations represented the latest technology, far superior to the average OPP mobile radio. This is no longer the case.  Sorry to burst the bubble, but ALL else is unlikely to fail.

Where we are useful, and will be welcomed by the Police, Fire and other folks that ARE in charge, is as an Auxiliary mode. This does not question  or criticise infrastructure taxpayers have sunk a lot of dollars in, and it's a happy, supportive role. 

We need to look beyond the Ham Radio community for inspiration - the Hacker / Maker Community is looking to support emergencies worldwide, via the internet, from the edge.

Despite the fears (hopes?) of the survivalist types, there will always be an "Edge" of a disaster zone, where normal infrastructure still exists and extraordinary volunteers are willing to staff computers providing all sorts of useful services - mapping, survivor/family connections, custom software for relief orgs - written in the moment!

Thankfully our Ontario Section Managers are looking beyond "what we have always done" and into a future where Digital Modes simplify interactions and increase velocity.

Here in Halton region, the Oakville ARES team is experimenting with D-STAR and HSMM Mesh (yes, I know the name changed marketing types, I like the old one) to provide new and interesting capabilities to our local Oakville CEMC. We are teaming with groups to our east and west to see how far we can push these digital technologies.

Some ARES members are quick to point out that, in their view, the internet is fragile and sure to fail immediately in an emergency. This of course is nonsense - The internet, or DARPANet as it was first known, was built to withstand a nuclear war. Sure, it is subject to power issues in the impacted areas, but redundancy is built in and there are always edges to a disaster - even the 2003 power outage had unaffected edges. 

It is from these edges that we will show our value, passing routine traffic to relieve pressure from the emergency infrastructure and provide additional inbound information that will add to a CEMC's situational awareness.

How do we make all this happen? 

First, contrary to the "professional amateur" camp's thinking, don't take ourselves TOO seriously. Golf shirts, not uniforms. No flashing yellow lights atop the family minivan. We are NOT first, second or even remotely third responders - and won't be. We are citizen volunteers with some useful skills. Nice folks with radios that can also fix stuff in a pinch. 

Second, positive culture kicks the butt of "emergency planning" meetings every time. Build a group that is having fun, engaged with the community (yes I mean practicing your skills and being seen in your bright shirts at the Marathon or dog walk) and ready to take in and train as we go the "converging volunteers" we will be blessed to have in a real emergency.

Third, conversations with served agencies trump internal ARES group meetings. Get out there, get known. Refuse to be a "best kept secret". Don't rely on ARES command structure, agency agreements or RAC executives to even be a factor. Local relationships, handshakes and smiles are all that matter when things really happen. (I learned this as an important lesson from front line folks in Katrina when I worked in St Bernard Parish months later)

This is an important part of serving the community. Adapt and evolve, let's not let historical thinking make us history.