[W8MWA] W8MWA

[Bob West]

Bill & All,

For the club officers etc. who do not want to 
expose their private information, I strongly suggest  they establish a "sterile" Email
address either on gmail, hotmail or similar.

Either callsign at gmail.com or callsign at hotmail.com 
is free and will be completely separate from any
personal or family email.

Of course, you'll have to check it once in a while.




Cheers,
...Bob West WA8YCD
Think outside of the box? Dude! I've been outside so long I have forgotten what was actually IN the box in the first place!


Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:41:11 -0400
Subject: Re: W8MWA
From: wr8s.wv at gmail.com
To: wa8ycd at arrl.net
CC: ditzian at windstream.net; ken.finley at gmail.com; thorgard12 at gmail.com; spencer.graham at mail.wvu.edu

All
I agree with Jan that we need to have a contact email link on every page, I will do that tonight (right side menu), but it will be an email address for the club in general (monongalia.wireless at gmail.com) As far as posting officers individual emails, I feel this is up to the officer. If we demand that they publish their email address they need to be made aware of this prior to taking the office. In this day and age we have to respect how much a person is willing expose their information. I personally don't like to have my info on the web or shared with others and honestly I should have been told what was going to be done with the information I gave last night. I don't wish to have it added to a list that will be disseminated to all the club members or given to ARES for a call down list, I will choose who has that. Until you have had a email address that is highly visible on the internet and have had to deal with the spam and anonymous nasty emails that bombard you, it's hard to understand the reasoning.
I just took over the website 3 weeks ago and have already made several changes, I work on it every other night usually and my last project was to make the Emergency Comms page more mobile friendly and clean up the content to be more coherent. I will add the MWA machines to the repeater page either tonight or tomorrow as I have time. If you have any suggestions for the website please let me know. I can also add anyone as an author so they can add information directly to the site. For the last 4 years I have sent out numerous requests for articles or pictures from many in the club and to date have only received one. The club news page has a static request to send in pictures of your station, project, antenna, new radio etc, but have only received one, but this is just reaffirming what we all here already know, members just don't want to participate.
I am not good at analyzing things like identifying what exactly is happening within the club, but we are at a juncture where we need to make a change and move in a different direction to keep the membership involved. With elections coming up it is a prime time for people to step up and see what they can do to help put MWA back on the tracks.
I think it's great to shoot these emails and ideas around but this laundry needs to be aired at a meeting soon so others can throw in their 2 cents.
73
Bill WR8S
On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Bob West <wa8ycd at arrl.net> wrote:



Thanks Jan.

Your observations are pretty much on the mark.

This is, in part why, I think. there is now a second club.
Maybe it's just different facets of the same problem.

I don't know if it's reluctance to take action without a direct
mandate from the group, or if it's just a lack of overall gumption.

It may be as simple as "Oh, I didn't think of that!"

I must admit to a certain degree of blame. I have not been 
actively pushing folks to do stuff like that. Motivating others
is difficult and tiring.

I think Mig kind of tried to promote club enthusiasm and participation
but after a while it seems like talking to a wall. She got all the cards,
banners, posters, and logo items, patches, etc. ... but those only go so far. 

Her data collection (the forms she was doing last night) is a good start, but
that should have been done YEARS ago. Actually, the database should be updated
every year. Other information might be what activities each member participate
in -- what other clubs, AMSAT, WV-DX Assoc, FISTS, things like that. 

Who are the CW operators in the club? I don't consider myself a CW Op but I can
hold my own at about 15-18 WPM.

A review of the website and what we think ought to be there might be in order.
Looking at other club websites, we can get all kinds of ideas.

Officer contact information, Local repeater listings, information about the
resources available, all would be appropriate. Bill doesn't always have time
to do this stuff, and getting someone to do it ... well... there's the old
80/20 rule -- 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people.

Several folks have stepped up over the past few years to try and maintain 
the website, but before long, it seems to slip between the cracks.

Right now, I think the only authorized to maintain the website are 
Bill WR8S and Randy N8OZY.  

QRZ.COM - A lot of people don't realize they can edit their biography, or know how to do it. Probably, a "workshop" on how to update QRZ would help.

All of this is very much what Michael and I have been brainstorming.
His program for the September meeting is intended to 
address a lot of this.

BTW did you remember that in addition to the 2m, supposed 70cm repeaters at W8CUL
that there was at one time a 6m repeater? It's been off the air for a while now,
but I don't know what the status is.

I don't have any association with WVU any more. I haven't been up to the club station since the 70s.

We're supposed to have the 440 machine on and it was linked to the 2m repeater.

I am surprised someone hasn't grabbed the 70cm frequency pairs for both W8MWA 
and W8CUL.



Just some random thoughts. Let's see if we can get someone to move on some of these issues.

Cheers,
...Bob West WA8YCD
Think outside of the box? Dude! I've been outside so long I have forgotten what was actually IN the box in the first place!


> To: wa8ycd at arrl.net
> From: ditzian at windstream.net
> Subject: W8MWA
> Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:50:55 -0400
> 
> Bob,
> 
> I thought I would bring some things to your attention, and perhaps your 
> contact with the club might get something done.
> 
> I decided to put the W8MWA 440 repeater into my UV5R, so I went to the 
> club web site, W8MWA.org, and then to the repeater page.  Lots of 
> information about area repeaters, and the list was updated only ten days 
> ago, wonderful.  Only one set of repeaters is missing-- W8MWA.  Funny, 
> isn't it?
> 
> So I thought I would bring it to the attention of the outstanding 
> communicators of W8MWA--the club officers.  I found their names and 
> callsigns on the W8MWA website, but there is no way to contact them!  
> Huh! Well, they are all hams, so QRZ is the natural standby. Check for 
> yourself: President, Vice-president, Secretary/treasurer--no contact 
> e-mail or other contact information on QRZ.  You are the highest ranking 
> club officer who has any contact information.
> 
> I think that my message is pretty clear, and I have delivered it before, 
> so I have little hope that it will go anywhere, but here it is again:
> 
> Put the frequency information about W8MWA repeaters (both of them) on 
> the W8MWA website.  Put contact information for the club or the officers 
> on the W8MWA website.  I guess that these communication concepts are 
> just too advanced for our club to understand.
> 
> You are welcome to copy this e-mail to any club officer or person who 
> can change any or all of the problems noted above.  I am unconcerned if 
> they detect a note of sarcasm in this note; in fact, I don't give a s--t.
> 
> 73 and I hope to see you Thursday,
> 
> Jan , KX2A
> 
 		 	   		  

 		 	   		  
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