Good
questions that lead to the following
questions that the Board may want to consider in preparation for reviewing in
the 2013/2014 Budget/Plan:
- What level of Web, eStore and LoTW capacity should ARRL
provide?
- Should that capacity and processing speed be geared to the
seamless, immediate processing at the highest and most intensive
usage?
2a. If
yes, what level of “excess capacity” should the system add to meet occasions of
extraordinary usage?
2b.
How much will such “excess capacity” cost?
- How would ARRL pay for the additional capacity?
3a.
Raising Membership Dues:
If dues are to be raised are there other member services that have
equal or higher priority than increased additional capacity?
How much would ARRL need to increase dues to meet these needs?
Do we really want to raise dues now??
3b. Reducing existing member
benefits or services:
If services must be reduced to provide for additional capacity which
member services are of lesser priority than increased additional capacity?
How many ARRL member services will we need to decrease or eliminate
to provide for this additional capacity?
Those are just a
few questions that come to mind.
ARRL isn’t a
perfect world and despite all our efforts it isn’t ever likely to reach that
level. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
We expect and the members expect constant improvement.
Expectations
among ARRL members are high, very high. Why; because in large measure because
the Board has authorized and to a much greater extent the ARRL Staff has
implemented a ton of new benefits. We as ARRL members have had a “free lunch”
for the past 10 or 11 years and now expect to keep getting more and more
freebies.
Ten or so years
ago was the last time ARRL dues were raised. At that point there was no full
color QST; QST was only a paper magazine; there was no ARRL web page we relied
on bulletins and the ARRL News; there was no LoTW, remember when we waited for
years for QSL’s or had to shell out postage and a green stamp or two for the
QSL? Those are just a few of the benefits added in the past 10 years and that
doesn’t even touch on the frequency defense and additional spectrum at home and
around the world
Yes we need to
listen to members when things are slower than we have come to expect. And yes, I
was as impatient as the next person because my uploaded LoTW logs took more than
a few hours to proces, but it is equally
important to provide some perspective.
Perhaps ARRL is
the victim of its success as the most successful, stable, innovative amateur
radio society in the world. While we don’t see that because it is our norm, I
can assure you we are the envy of most every society in the world.
Perfect we
aren’t, but nobody gets better value for their amateur dollar. If we want more
something has to give, either more dues or loss of some services. At least that
is how I see it.
Jay,
KØQB
Barry,
Should "we" not have expected a very heavy response
to our Cyber Monday promotion and anticipated the temporary need for added
capacity . . . and at least monitored the situation closely? If one
was to walk through a swamp known to be filled with water moccasins wouldn't
they put on protective high-waders to avoid the possibility of
being bitten before entering the water rather than to wait until seeing a
bunch of snakes?
Jim Weaver,
K8JE
Director, Great Lakes
Division
5065 Bethany
Rd.
Mason, OH
45040
ARRL: The reason
Amateur Radio Is
Members: The
reason ARRL is
To follow up on David’s note,
the increase in traffic was seemingly the result of our own Cyber Monday sales
promotion. We’re still looking into it. One of the design features with the
Rackspace configuration was the ability to add server capacity relatively
quickly, once identified, but not automatically. This was part of the reason
that Jon Bloom created the configuration after the initial performance issues
with the new web site several years ago.
Might we have responded more
quickly, possibly, and we will look into how best to do this short of running
a 24/7 IT operation.
73,
Barry J. Shelley,
N1VXY
Chief Financial
Officer
ARRL,
Inc.
The National Association for
Amateur Radio
(860)
594-0212
www.arrl.org
From:
arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org
[mailto:arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org] On Behalf Of Sumner, Dave,
K1ZZ
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 2:03 PM
To: Weaver,
James K8JE (Dir, GL); arrl-odv
Subject: [arrl-odv:21259] Re: Company
Store Site
Jim,
the website at Rackspace was running slowly at times since yesterday
afternoon. Additional server capacity has been added and it appears to be
functioning normally now.
Dave
K1ZZ
I received a note
from a rather irate friend who complained he was gave up trying to place an
order through the ARRL online store because the system was running so very
slowly. Being a good DXer, he tied this experience in with recent (as
well as earlier) difficulty with LOTW.
My Question:
Was the store running slowly within the past 48 hours or so? If so,
why? If there was a problem is it fixed
permanently?
This experience to
me reminds me of an admonition my mother gave me many years ago -- i.e. "It
takes a long time to develop a good reputation after a bad impression has
been made. Between the bad impression made through the then-new web
site and the repeated bad impressions made with LOTW, it seems imperative to
me that we pull out all the stops to avoid putting the League in a bad light
with the amateur radio public for at least many years to come. How many
times must we shoot ourselves in the foot before we learn the
lesson?
Jim Weaver,
K8JE
Director, Great Lakes
Division
5065 Bethany
Rd.
Mason, OH
45040
Tel. 513-459-1661;
e-mail K8JE@arrl.org
ARRL: The
reason Amateur Radio Is
Members: The
reason ARRL is