Well said, Tom. Looks like a win-win arrangement. Bob Vallio, W6RGG On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 6:10 AM, Pereira, Carla <cpereira@arrl.org> wrote:
*Dear Officers, Directors and Vice Directors:*
*I am sending the below email (with attachments) on Tom’s behalf, as he is traveling this week. He will be back in the office on Friday. *
*Respectfully,*
*Carla Pereira*
November 7, 2016
To: ODV
Ladies & Gentlemen:
In advance of our announcement of changes in the production and content of the 2017 Repeater Directory, I wanted you to have the timeline and some of the documents associated with the conversion in advance. The changes we are making include:
1. Discontinuing the services of DHF to collect and assemble repeater information for publication. This service cost us $25,000 annually, and the history of why and how DHF was selected is murky. Accordingly, I cannot explain it, except to say that we’re done with DHF.
2. In its place, we have expanded our already profitable relationship with RFinder to included compiling the data and producing the print galleys. We plan to comingle any Coordinators data sent to RFinder with that publisher’s extensive, crowd-sourced listing of all repeaters, coordinated or not. We will advise the Coordinators that their comingled data will be flagged as coordinated and source credited to them. We will pay them their entitlement of $1.00 per machine provided they deliver the data to RFinder as instructed.
3. We plan to terminate our contract with the various coordination groups effective June 15th or sooner. The coordinators are free to provide the data in the future; however, we will no longer pay for the data since RFinder does that more effectively.
4. *The talking points for coordinators are as follows*:
a. The alternative to this set of changes is the elimination of the ARRL Repeater Directory: the upfront cost of producing it ($84,000) poses too great a risk for a declining product.
b. Our readers, i.e. the people who buy the directory, want * all* repeaters listed, not just coordinated repeaters; they tell us that they don’t care about coordination.
c. If coordination groups sincerely believe that coordinating repeaters is good policy, they should not be deterred from doing so, since the designation will be preserved in all future publishings and their good work recognized.
d. The new 2017 directory will indicate which repeaters are, and are not, coordinated. This will reveal the success, or not, of our coordinating activity and provide, as well, a prospect list for coordinators to ply their skills in implementing that policy.
5. There will invariably be whining and complaining from the Coordination Community. It might be helpful to point out that we have preserved a role—a recognized-in-the-publication role—for the community. For harder cases, the objective evidence of the success of coordination is informed by the large and growing number of non-coordinated repeaters. That report card is not flattering. But in all cases, the market is speaking to us: crowd-sourced information of the variety provided by RFinder is more valuable than a set speech.
6. In addition, ARRL co-brands the RFinder website and smartphone application, and we receive 30% of the revenues of that product line, budgeted $10,000 next year (but $8,600 in 2016.3 quarter). As repeater data migrates from paper to the digital world, this arrangement is hedging our bet. The interaction between the digital RFinder app and the ARRL directory is also symbiotic. We’ve exhausted the current inventory of desktop repeater directories (sold out) and ordered 1,000 additional copies. Inderbitzen points out that “hyper attention to the Repeater Directory product suite (app + books) has increased overall sales of the Directories.”
I have attached with this email four relevant documents:
· RFinder Repeater Directory Transition Timeline
· ODV Announcement
· Notice to Frequency Coordinators
· Press Release
Gallagher 11/07/16
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