I have to admit that I went to bed last night thinking I was hallucinating after reading recent ODV messages. It seemed like members of the PSC were unaware that the PSC had a subcommittee studying Emcomm issues. Now I understand a little better, Director Cox is trying to get the rest of the Board involved in that discussion. Looking back at the PSC minutes from January 15th and April 4th meetings, I see that Mickey is on that PSC subcommittee, and the PSC expects a final report to be delivered at their meeting on July 16th, just before the Board meeting, and he appears to have a different view of what should be in their report.. My recommendation to Mickey is that he should contribute to that report, and if he is not in sync with the others on the subcommittee, he should write a section with his dissenting position. That said, I think the general topic of ARRL and Emcomm should be an important part of our upcoming meeting. President Harrison has already indicated that the Thursday night informal discussion (actually he called it a formal presentation by Mr. Imlay) will cover it - at least related to the commercialization of Amateur Radio. That's a very timely topic from my view. I'm encouraged that PSC members have been trying to deal with the growing Emcomm issues in their last few meetings - though it looks to me that Emcomm itself is enough to keep them busy. I think we're getting to the "soul of the machine" (or "soul of the hobby") point with Emcomm and many of the issues are beginning to become strategic questions about where we want to go and what we want to become in the next few years. The New England Division had a cabinet meeting last Saturday, with five of the six Section Managers on hand, a couple of SECs, and about thirty club presidents and officers from around the Division. As a result of some discussions at our previous cabinet meeting in January, we have started to become involved in the FEMA Regional Emergency Communications Coordination Working Group (RECCWG) for Region 1 (New England states). I believe there is amateur radio involvement in two other FEMA regions (southeast/Atlanta and Texas areas). The RECCWG groups are directed to deal with communications inter-operability issues at all levels of government and the legislation establishing them specifically says they must coordinate with the amateur radio community. See http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/10/04/100/?nc=1 We spent more than half of the cabinet meeting talking about Emcomm issues, the experience with the first couple of RECCWG Region 1 meetings, and national Emcomm challenges. Dennis Dura/K2DCD was able to attend - one of the very few times he's been in front of a New England group. I was very impressed with Dennis, he held the group's attention when he spoke, he was very knowledgeable and filled in a lot of gaps in information about what ARRL has been doing regarding Emcomm issues. As I said when introducing Dennis at the meeting, he is often tough to reach and has a lot of bosses and constituents in Newington and across the country. During the nearly two years he has been with ARRL a lot has changed. Dennis has turned over a lot of stones and found a huge number of issues that need to be dealt with, helped to develop a lot of relationships for ARRL in government and NGO groups, and perhaps has managed to spread himself a bit too thin with everyone. After two years, it is time to assess how we're doing and what we're doing related to Emcomm. I get the feeling we're unable to decide whether to be happy with one, apparently overworked, person focusing upwards on government connections and downward on Field Organization Emcomm issues, or whether we need to expand our involvement so more HQ players are involved. From Dennis' comments about his interactions with DHS/FEMA, it sounds like they have changing views about how Amateur Radio should be involved - and that means they are more and more positive about it. As a result, we may need to do more to step up to the plate organizationally. That's long enough... I do think that we need to find adequate time at this upcoming meeting to talk about some of our policy questions regarding Emcomm - and not get bogged down in operational details too much. -- Tom ===== e-mail: k1ki@arrl.org ARRL New England Division Director http://www.arrl.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444