[Ham-Mac] Re: ARRL discrimination

[Steve Muncy]

I am the CEO (chief paid staff)  for a national trade organization with 
a similar structure to ARRL (i.e. paid staff, and  volunteer elected  
officers and Board), and I serve on the Board of Directors of a 
national membership organization with 75,000 members. Given my 
experience, I know that the volunteer Board of Directors is extremely 
important to an organization. Typically the Board sets the policies of 
the organization. However, the Board is usually 'hands-off' when it 
comes to implementing the day-to-day stuff--or at least they should be!

  In this case, LOTW would have been approved as  a project of the Board 
of Directors, and Dave Sumner would have been given the direction to 
implement it.....that means that the actual development of LOTW would 
have been a staff function. I  seriously doubt that a discussion was 
held on the Board level that indicated this software would be developed 
only for Linux and Windows.....the ARRL staff made that decision.

This  is  confirmed by the response  I received from my own ARRL 
Director who was very aware of LOTW, but professed  no knowledge  as to 
why only Linux and Windows were selected and not Macinotsh. He offered  
some guesses as to why it progressed  this way, but admitted they were 
only guesses.  He promised to 'check into it.'

I believe it  is important to let the ARRL Board of Directors know of 
our frustration with policies that discriminate against Mac owners. If 
they receive enough complaints they will probably indicate to Dave 
Sumner their displeasure with having to listen to complaints of this 
nature, and urge him to not to discriminate against a segment of ARRL 
members. However, Dave  Sumner and other members of the ARRL staff also 
serve as advisors to the Board -- and they need to feel the heat also.  
As president of a national organization, I darn sure wish the members 
would come to me with their complaints before going to the Board of 
Directors. I'd like a chance to fix a problem before it gets to the 
Board level. I  do not believe that writing to Sumner and Haynie is a 
waste of time....both men exert considerable leadership in the 
organization.

By the way....just an aside. The national organization that I head is 
an all-Mac shop. We develop all publications and web sites on the Mac, 
but we go to considerable effort to make sure that our efforts can be 
used by Windows and Mac OS alike. We make every effort not to 
discriminate against our members.


On Sunday, May 18, 2003, at 21:21 US/Central, Stan Horzepa wrote:

> I worked at ARRL Headquarters and I know how things work in Newington. 
> The
> Directors decide what is what and the ARRL Headquarters staff from Dave
> Sumner on down make sure that what the Directors want is what gets 
> done. So,
> write your Director and complain. Writing to Dave Sumner and/or Jim 
> Haynie
> is a waste of time because they must follow the directions of the 
> Directors
> no matter what their personal opinion on any matter may be.
>
> 73,
> Stan, WA1LOU
____________________________________________________
Steve Muncy, NI5V    < mailto:ni5v@arrl.net >
Dallas, TX USA         < http://homepage.mac.com/smuncy/hamradio/ >
QRP-ARCI #10330  FISTS #7412  QCWA #30705  AMSAT #33939
ARRL Life Member