The forums at this year’s Hamvention were pretty good—and I’m not just saying this because I was on the schedule. I spent most of Friday morning cruising the vendor booths and schmoozing with people I know. I stopped by the CWops booth, the Amateur Radio Digital Communication (ARDC) booth, and the Youth on the Air (YOTA) booth. In the afternoon, though, I spent most of my time attending the forums.
The first talk I attended was the Long Island CW Club (LICW) presentation, “Our CW Journeys.” I was interested in this talk because I’m in the process of updating my CW book and wanted to learn more about their process.
The presentation consisted of several “testimonials” from members how they learned Morse code by taking LICW classes and participating in LICW activities. The stories were very intriguing, and kudos to LICW for helping people have fun with Morse code.
Next, I stopped by the “Amateur Radio and the Law” forum to say a quick hello to Fred, K1VR, and Bob, K3RF. I didn’t stop to hear the talk, though, as my next stop was the “Hackers in Ham Radio” forum.
This forum was a panel discussion, led by Jeremy, KD8TUO. The discussion was a bit unorganized, but they did talk about how the hacker and ham radio communities intersect. I think that these two communities should intersect even more, and as part of Ham Radio Village, I’m helping to do that. Hackers are the kind of people that we want in ham radio.
The final forum of the day for me was “The Latest from ARDC: Grants and 44Net.” At this forum, folks from ARDC talked a great deal about their latest development, 44Net Connect. It’s taken ARDC a while to get to this point, but it looks to me like they’ve made connecting to 44Net a lot easier than it has been in the past, and I’m looking forward to see what use hams make of it.
There were also short presentations by a couple of their grantees, including the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC) and AMSAT. It’s always great to hear what other grantees are doing. ARDC has made a real difference in amateur radio, and I’m happy to say that it looks like they will continue to do so.
