In article , Bill Horne wrote:
On 10/24/2011 11:35 PM, Patty Winter wrote:

From what I heard at the convention, the best hope for helping amateur
radio thrive is getting back to its roots of innovation--in particular,
by getting hams involved with the Maker movement (and vice versa). In
fact, I think the League has something up its sleeve about that. If it
works, it could help keep us in the good graces of those who dish out
frequencies and make rules about antennas.

I know little about the "Maker movement": according to Wikipedia, it's a
Do-It-Yourself paradigm that has a magazine at its center.

I think there is a magazine, but the heart of the movement is the
independent workshops across the country. My friend Wayne, KH6WZ,
had an interesting article about the Maker community and its
implications for amateur radio in last May's _CQ_.


As much as I might like to fantasize about being the ham who saves the
day by making a homebrew rig work with homemade batteries,

I was changing subjects there. I wasn't talking about the Maker
community in regards to emergency communications, but rather to
technical innovation. As I noted, we're needed less and less in
the former, but I think we still have a lot to offer for the latter.


I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I think our hobby is still in the "Denial"
phase of dealing with this crisis. We need to accept that the
communications world has changed, and adapt ourselves to the current
technologies and the current methods before we'll be taken seriously again.

It's happening. We've got people in the amateur radio community who
are professionals in developing networking protocols, weak-signal
detection software, etc. etc. They're developing software for amateur
radio as well as commercial and research applications. Other hams can
get involved with projects like those.


Patty