RadCom April 2024, Vol. 100, No. 4

April 2024 65 Feature hobby, breathing life into clubs, contests and activations? These barriers to entry are not unique to us. They apply to sporting clubs, dance troupes, book clubs, artist hubs etc. With all hobbies, costs and basic instruction are needed, and often an emotion- or intelligence-based test are required to progress to the next level. For example, my daughter is a swimmer. When she started her journey, she needed a swimming costume (priced no more than a Baofeng handheld radio), the technical ability to float (like the basics of operating, tested by a qualified instructor/ examinator) and the means to pay for the training session. As she progressed, the costume became more expensive, the amount of travelling and training increased, and with it so did the costs. Doesn’t this sound like when you desired that new rig for contesting, or the conversation had when chasing or activating DX? I give this example to prove a valid point. The amateur radio ‘problem’ is not unique – it’s similiar to issues that are faced by society in general. The second societal problem we need to understand is the desire for money and fame. Being a radio operator will never make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, like a Premier League footballer – but, in fairness, how many children who kicked a ball as a toddler make it to the superstar status that has them pictured on billboards and being followed by hundreds of millions of social media followers? For every Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo, Robert De Niro and Taylor Swift, amateur radio has its own stars. These are inspirational, clever and engaging people who can light up the room as they passionately tell us a great story or report on an inspiring adventure. These are the individuals who will capture the hearts and minds of the next generation. To the general public, these people may not be superstars, but they are the stars of our hobby, and everyone, no matter their age, only needs to be inspired by one person for the bug to capture them. In today’s world, the barrier to entry for a celebrity is lower than before. In years gone by, a celebrity was someone who was famous for their musical, entertainment or sporting skills. Today, fame and notoriety are given to anyone who is well known. Market towards a pool of waiting radio operators In the same way that children playing ball in the playground are an open pool of players for a sports club, unlicensed low-power radio operators are still radio operators. Be it a handheld PMR446 contact between friends or CB operators looking to chat and make friends, all these operations are, at the simplest level, what every licensed amateur radio operator starts with to build up their confidence. Embracing this pool of operators as equals (all be it at a lower power level), instead of as a sub- class of operators, would provide us with a pool of people who have already got past the important confidence issue of talking on the radio. With this in mind, how many members have we lost before we even knew they were interested because our clubs include the words ‘amateur’ or ‘ham’, instead of being known simply as radio clubs? Branding is important – let’s be inclusive to all who wish to transmit and/or listen. Rinse, repeat marketing Let’s stop the tribalism of working in the silos we created decades ago. The commercial argument is understandable: it’s my content costing lots of hours of research and development that has been sunk into creating a new product or software application. However, to promote our hobby, it’s time to ‘open source’ our marketing efforts. We could have in our midst the greatest marketing expert, copyrighting the most wonderful slogans and designing the most eye-catching graphics making people line up outside one door in the country. Without the other elements, this marketing person may create the horrible condition of overpromising and underdelivering, because the rest of the elements in their club are not in place. Now, let’s remove the territorial protection. If, as a hobby, we had embraced the mentality of ‘hubs not clubs’ suggested before the pandemic, a hub would have a pool of people in the right place. A smaller number of the hub’s marketing/communication officers would have the opportunity to hold an open forum between each hub, exchange ideas and share content that worked. Not only that, our national associations and special interest groups could work with a more manageable pool of people to support the efforts of promoting and educating people about the hobby. For the last fifteen years, the ICQ Amateur/Ham Radio Podcast has given away 99% of the content we have created from our own experiences and by attending international events. The result of this has been an open, respected community that has been built sharing ideas – the same is possible for the wider hobby. So, the answer is… This is not someone else’s problem. It is the responsibility of everyone who cares about this hobby and wants it to continue. Whilst many of the issues facing the hobby are general societal issues, what we can do is make the changes to our own house and work our way through this mini crisis. We can listen and learn from other minority hobbies and interest groups and we can accept that amateur radio will not be as popular as football. Let’s take a moment to look inward. Do our clubs, organisations and groups have the right people in the right positions? How brave will you be in making the necessary changes to restructure your committee and move forward in the right direction? Will you take a metaphorical sledgehammer to barriers and boundaries, smash them down and work across groups and with national organisations to promote our hobby in the best light possible, sharing ideas and pooling collective resources together for a bigger impact? More about ICQ Podcast Martin Butler, M1MRB and Colin Butler, M6BOY co-founded the ICQ Amateur/Ham Radio Podcast 15 years ago. They have also been involved in many training projects and promotional activities to highlight the benefits of amateur radio. They have also launched a digital talk group, connecting and communicating across all aspects of digital voice radio. You can find out more at icqpodcast.com PHOTO 3: ICQPodcast interviewing Emil Bergmann, DL8JJ about the Rockall DXpedition in 2023. Colin Butler, M6BOY info@icqpodcast.com PHOTO 2: ICQPodcast interviewing Eric from Elecraft.