[HamWAN PSDR] director responsibilities

Tue Feb 18 12:37:24 PST 2014

Cool!  Good to see some other folks chiming in here, and not just me talking
into the wind.

In spirit I agree with most of the comments - both yours and Nigel's.  It's
a common situation - on one hand you don't want to make it too cumbersome
and "destroy" the hobby or "enjoyable" aspect of it - on the other hand it
can limit how far you can go.  If it becomes too much of a headache, why do
it?

How HamWAN decides to operate with respect to EMCOMM is certainly one of
those aspects that can be changed (if needed), and perhaps that is where I
am going awry.

There have been dozens of Amateur technologies that have been offered,
supported, and put into use by amateurs with varying degrees of success (in
EMCOMM environments).  In many cases individual hams or the agencies
themselves have bought amateur equipment and have installed it.  I believe
most likely we can get agencies to foot the bill for their own installs as
well - whether that is client station equipment or complete Cells worth of
equipment.  Additionally I think the case can be successfully made to have
them provide ongoing financial support as well.   This is where I think the
current structure will get in the way.  Public entities are wary of putting
ongoing funds into things that might not hold up to scrutiny on the 6
o'clock news.  IMHO this is a relatively simple thing to fix.   

If you're only looking to provide hobby level support to EMCOMM we can do
that - we just need to make sure that it's represented that way.  Then our
equipment can be purchased, installed, used, and supported, and left sitting
mis-aligned or unused on the shelf with the rest of the amateur gear - voice
radios, packet TNCs, and so on.  If you want HamWAN to be a solid and
reliable solution that gains the support of the EMCOMM community and the
agencies it supports, then you need to decide whether it's worth giving up
some of the "hobby" aspect of it to make it work in that arena.  I think
that having public agencies as satisfied champions of HamWAN would help
immensely - both in adoption by other entities, access to additional sites,
and funds to support the network.  This does not mean that amateurs cannot
still have "fun" with their hobby - in fact it would help build and pay for
the infrastructure TO have fun. 

The parallel to trusting employees is a good one - to a point.  Yes, there
is trust - but there are also consequences.  An accountant or controller
goes to jail if they cross the line because they broke a law.  If you are
running your business are you going to use a 1st year accounting student, or
are you going to use a professional bookkeeper or accountant?  Both answers
can be right at different stages of your growth.  Once  you start having
serious clients and business volume, you want to avoid mistakes and tend to
go with professionals rather than amateurs (no pun intended).   

In another non-profit I serve on, expenditures over $200 require two
signatures.  Yes, that does not prevent someone from draining the account,
but it DOES give us a defendable position if it happens.  It also gives us a
legal basis to file charges on.   Under the current HamWAN method, all you
can say is "Billy wasn't supposed to do that"; and there's nothing to
prevent it from happening again.   Both HamWAN and Amateur Radio get a bad
rep for something pretty basic that should have been avoided.

I think you have a definite point in the work vs hobby question.  I have too
many things that have become work that started as hobbies and I find myself
in a continuing battle to balance the two.  HamWAN can certainly go either
direction, and there are trade-offs that have to be considered either way.  

There is a LOT of potential upside to having active EMCOMM support for the
network - but to get it (and keep it) will require some WORK - whether that
is in governance, customer support, training and use of the network, etc,
etc.  Not all of this has to be done by the same 2 or 3 people - but getting
more people involved is one of those JOBS that needs to be taken on by
someone - just like all of the more mundane/boring crap of  creating and
running the admin side of an organization.   

 You can also decide that the potential benefits of getting the support of
EMCOMM entities is too much work and not worth the extra effort - and that
is fine too.  Just be prepared to have your radio and dish join the packet
TNC on the shelf when the 2 or 3 people supporting it burned and moved onto
the next "big thing."  

The key to growing a successful organization is drawing the interest and
participation of those people who are willing to put in the time in the
areas that they have expertise in - whether that skill is schmoozing and
obtaining sites, configuring a radio and antenna for an install, or
designing routing and security backend services.   When a network guru HAS
to pay attention to finance and organizational structure, then the "fun"
starts to disappear for that person and their interest fades - and so does
their participation.  

A lot of ground covered, and I apologize for the length.  Grand ideas and
worthy causes are never simple.  It requires many people to build the
organization into what it needs to be.  It also means that you need to be
flexible enough to change when needed.  It all depends on whether you want
to keep moving forward, or be stuck in one place.

</sermon>

Cheers,
Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Robert Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2014 10:46 AM
To: psdr at hamwan.org
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] director responsibilities

Hiya!

I know I'm new around here, in fact this is my first email (my apologies,
its a long one) to the group, I'd like to help, for what its worth, I'm an
FSE for Ericsson.

I've also served on several non or not for profit boards, and I have some
thoughts.

Good governance is really important, that said, you can do it without
requiring approval for every expenditure, set a yearly budget (like for
project or capital expenditures), don't allow money to be spent outside of
those budgets without voting.

Nothing you can do will stop people of trust from violating that trust of
the group - in short, locks keep honest people honest, all you can do is
make sure you have good records to ensure that if they do violate that
trust, you can nail them to a wall. We can perform good governance without
making this all feel like work.

I would also suggest staggering the terms for the board in the future, so we
don't run into a situation where we have no acting board because everyone
termed out, there should always be enough of a board to have some quorum.

Lastly, an inline reply:

On 2/18/2014 10:22 AM, Nigel Vander Houwen wrote:
> Lastly, this is certainly a personal opinion, and I cannot speak for 
> others, but we are in amateur radio as a hobby. We do it because it is 
> enjoyable. It is not a job, and while we strive hard to provide the 
> best service possible, it's too easily forgotten that we are ALL
volunteers.
> Our time, our money, our expertise is freely given to the project 
> because we enjoy doing so. Let's continue to do that, and not make it 
> another job that we will never get paid for.

Exactly, make the hobby feel too much like work, and it becomes work.

EMCOMM is important, but it should work hand in hand with us doing this
stuff for fun - meaning for me at least, if we can do EMCOMM and have fun,
all the better, but doing either one at the exclusion of the other, is in my
mind, wrong.

EMCOMM is merely one facet of Ham Radio as a hobby and again, in my opinion
shouldn't be the be all, end all of anything we as radio amateurs do.

I'd argue the knowledge gained in building these networks is actually more
useful in emergencies than the preexisting networks themselves, in a real
emergency where commercial communication infrastructure goes down, in my
mind there is very very little guaranty that high sites we use to build
networks like HamWAN would stay up, that said, a group like this, with the
knowledge and experience (and equipment) could set up an ad-hoc network in
that situation that could prove much more fruitful to the situation at that
time.

Commercial infrastructure is not built for anything resembling worst case,
most cell sites do not have a generator, microwave links can do strange
things in earthquakes, and in any case, call attempts would spike greatly
for both the wireline and wireless networks - causing both to temporarily at
least have massive blocking problems - just look at the overload issues on
the cellular networks during the Seahawks parade.

Just some thoughts from newbie.

Robert Johnson
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