QNews for June 23rd 2024

Q-News AR News from Queensland

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking. One of the basics of marketing is getting to know your customer base and being able to promote a not-for-profit activity surely falls into that category. Whether we look at our local club level or at a hierarchy which includes state and federal structures, it is being able to relate to our members that can make or break a marketing campaign. Amateur radio is something that has grown around the world for over 100 years and it is something that we adherents want to see continue for an infinite time in the future. We have two things to do and the first is to retain our existing members by replacing those that are no longer involved through various means and secondly to attract new people to continue the growth and preserve the legacy in times ahead. I suppose that is very elementary for many but what do we see in reality? There appears to be many areas where people seem to be in despair of experiencing a sustained membership let alone getting new blood. How should we set about finding the answers is a good place to start. Without knowing what glues our activities into a coherent formulation that we can identify as ham or amateur radio. It is almost cliche-ed to repeat the formal definition from the ITU and the definition doesn’t give us the information that we need anyway. I have heard of suggestions for short survey questions in each edition of Amateur Radio magazine which would collect opinions which could be collated and used to define a clearer picture. I don’t know how many clubs still have a regular magazine but social media pages and web pages could also do this same function providing there was someone to make sure the results were collected. Really when we consider it, a programmer/coder should be able to write or construct some routines or algorithms which would collect the raw data and compile a result sheet. Then there is the validation of the inputs to such a survey. As anyone that has studied basic statistics was taught, when the respondents are self selected there is automatically a skewing or bias in the sample. This is why results from facilities such as Survey Monkey must be considered unreliable a they have that inherent bias to start with. I feel we need to be more responsive to our membership and we need to learn what floats our boats, so to speak. Then we need a formula to gather the insight that newly created amateurs bring. In the two decades of having the Foundation level entry point, there have been many people who have qualified, operated for a while and then dropped out. From experience, I can surmise that study and career are powerful interventions in life. Establishing a family and funding the various things that make for a good home life often leaves little money and even less time to devote to a recreation. However, we really are flying blind with no hard evidence to support our opinions.

I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think….how about you?