Members who have burning issues communicate in some way - e-mail, phone calls, letters or in person. I think I've received just a few, maybe ten, letters or phone calls from members on ANY issue this year. None were from members who thought they were losing something in the proposed changes to Section News and detailed contest scores. The only communications I've had (all electronic, and not many) on that issue are from people who worry about the "silent" minority. If there are people out there who don't have web access that we will be POing, they don't seem to be organized or even concerned. They are silent. I think we've made modest progress in getting SMs into the 20th century, and a modest start on expanded and improved contest results on-line. Both require more work though. I don't see it as a big issue to go forward with the original plans. I do see it as a big issue that the process of getting there had problems. I'm disappointed that though this was originally a management proposal, the management has been pretty silent about it on ODV... Too bad the driving reason for the changes appeared to be primarily a lack of advertising revenue, not an improvement in how we deliver information to members (though that was part of the justification). I think we should have spent all this time and energy worrying about the two QST->web changes on something else - what we can do to get more advertising revenue... And to me, that is driven by the number of new hams - in the last year that number was about 19,000, just keeping our totals even when deaths and drop-outs are included. There has been essentially no growth since 1995 (35,000 new hams). What are we doing about it? -- 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