Last night (May 13,2009), the SBARC board voted to cancel/postpone the 2009 SW Division Convention and downsize it. Considering the 100’s of hours that had been put into it, the decision was disappointing.

Rather than dwell on that situation, I’ll be posting in the future about the many ideas we came up with to make this into an event rather than JAHF (Just Another HamFest.) In this post, I’ll talk about some of the things we were looking to do.

For anyone who has gone to these events for a while, one observation is that we will meet many of the same people year after year. These people usually have years of experience just waiting to be tapped. So the question is how to involve these people (who obviously very much enjoy amateur radio) in helping newcomers. Since many of these hams are hands-on type people preferring to do rather than listen, here are seven ideas for your consideration to start things off:

Hands-on Workshops

• Antenna Building
• Setup ATV hardware/software
• Making an APRS setup
• Transmitter hunting equipment
• Special event station w/signups and elmering
• Red Cross simulated shelter
• How to solder correctly

These are a few of the ideas we came up with. In putting together the event, keep in mind two things:

1. The more people that get involved, the more successful the event
2. Involvement leads to commitment

After FINALLY figuring out how to access this blog (after a lost password and other delays), things will start being a bit more regular now.

The local SBARC hamfest has turned into the 2009 ARRL SW Division Convention, and this is exciting! The dates have been finalized for Saturday and Sunday, August 15-16, 2009 at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara, CA in Warren Hall. Warren Hall will be open on Friday for indoor vendors to setup with the hours to be determined.

Over the past several months, a lot of good ideas have been brought up, and this next week will be one of confirming what will be taking place.

One important change will be a way for division ARRL clubs to make some money by having people register in advance online through their club. Participating clubs will earn 10% of whatever monies are generated through these online registrations.

We are going to try for an ARRL record for people taking the license exam at the VE Session. The current ARRL record is 319 people at the 1987 Dayton Hamvention VE Session. This will be a challenge (!), but working together, we can do it. The basic idea will be for clubs to hold classes for the license exams, and then people will converge at the Convention VE Session to take the exam. If we break the record, everyone taking the exam and those involved with putting it on will receive a patch showing that a new record has been set.

Stay tuned for more things that will be happening!

Marvin, KE6HTS

Convention Chair

Technorati Tags: 2009 ARRL SW Division Convention, Add new tag

One of the things I’ve been doing as the 2009 Santa Barbara Section Hamfest chair is holding weekly meetings to both organize and develop ideas that will make this an awesome Hamfest. The primary pre-promotion that is taking place is through:

• 2009 Santa Barbara Section Hamfest website
• Swapmeets that I attend
• Talking it up on club nets

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be giving talks at two section clubs, the Simi-Valley Settlers and the Conejo Valley Amateur Radio Club. Besides trying to get volunteers and leaders for the various activities, these will be excellent opportunities to get ideas and methods for building word-of-mount excitement.

As most bloggers are well aware, podcasts are an effective way of gaining reader interest. So another way of helping to promote our hamfest will be by having podcasts with interviews. Since the people I intend to interview are not aware they will be interviewed … yet :), I can’t really talk to much about it. But for anyone promoting a hamfest, it is essential to get people involved enough to want to attend. My intention is to have podcast interviews with various vendors, speakers, and people putting on activities.

As always, if you have any comments, please leave them on the 2009 Santa Barbara Hamfest forum.

This morning, I was reading Seth Godin’s Blog and his first paragraph is absolutely great:

“The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they’ll forgive a lot. They’ll talk about it. They’ll promote it. They’ll come back. They’ll be less price sensitive. They’ll bring their friends. They’ll work with you to make it better.”

This is one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read describing what I’d like to see happen with our hamfest. Building our hamfest so people love the concepts and are willing to tell their friends (and everyone they meet) about it is what we should all be working towards. And if this concept of product love is expanded throughout the ham community, people new to our hobby will be far more likely to get involved.

What would make product love a part of our Hamfest for you? Please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments on the Santa Barbara Section Hamfest forum!

This years Hamfest is planned to be considerably larger than past hamfests, and of course that will take a lot of help! We have a Forum website where questions and suggestions can be posted, and more information will be available as well. As things progress, the URL will bring up a standard website instead of the forum, and there will be a link to both the forum and this blog.

Our first goals were to set the projected attendance, the number of vendors/exhibitors, and to hold a record breaking ARRL VE Session. Everything else is just another detail :). Additional goals include attracting more people, especially younger people, to our hobby.

Our projected attendance will be up from last years approximately 400, and we are shooting for a minimum of 1,500 people. My current understanding is that the Santa Barbara Home Show will be held at the same time, and I’m working to get in contact with them in the hopes that we can work together on increasing attendance.

Last year (2008), we had about 20 vendors so the jump to 100 will be a push. Since vendors and the flea market is such a big part of our hamfest, we will be putting out a special effort to make it worth the time and effort for vendors to be here!

The current ARRL VE Session record is 319 people, and was done at the 1987 Dayton Hamvention. Since this will be a section wide hamfest, if each of the approximately 15 active section clubs can hold license classes and bring 17 people to the exam session, we will break that record!

The Forum website is a brand new addition, and should bring some additional involvement with the hamfest, and of course, that will help to bring additional traffic. Our current Forums are:

• Announcements
• Hamfest Discussion Board
• Buyers/Sellers Board
• Hamfest VE Session/Classes being offered
• Suggestion Board
• Organizers Forum (Private for the organizers)

Registration is a double opt-in process; register, wait for a confirming email, and click on the email link to complete the process. This prevents people from getting registered unknown to them.

In the coming days and weeks, I’ll post more about who is getting involved and what we are doing. If you have any suggestions on making hamfests better, please feel free to post them on the hamfest forum!

Technorati Tags: hamfest, hamfest organization, santa barbara section hamfest

This is my very first blog posting, and I am looking forward to an exciting time being able to share some of my thoughts about organizing a hamfest and how to use the internet to promote the hamfest. I am firmly convinced that online marketing is the growing wave of the future, and my hope is that the information and thought processes presented here will be useful to help others build and publicize their own events.

A couple of weeks ago, I took on the responsibility for being the chair for the 2009 Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club (SBARC) hamfest. For those of you unfamiliar with a hamfest, it is basically a social event where amateur radio operators and others get together. Activities can include a BBQ, speakers, workshops, fleamarket, commercial vendors, demonstrations, and almost anything else the organizing club wants to do. These first blog posts will cover my thoughts and philosophies about the event, the prep work of what I am doing to build a team, and the planning we are doing to make the event a success.

The main incentive for using a blog to present my thoughts is the information I’ve gotten from the FREE Thirty Day Challenge (30DC) online Internet Marketing (IM) course. For newcomers to IM, I can’t say enough good things about the 30DC as it has opened my eyes to ways of reaching an Internet audience that were previously unknown to me. For those of you who would like get a preview of the course material, do a youtube search for “eddale” where most of the 30DC videos can be found. The youtube videos are how I first found out about the 30DC, and I joined because it offers an organized approach to learning as well as additional information not available on youtube. You can sign up for this free course at The Challenge website.

Disclaimer: I get nothing out of promoting the 30DC except the satisfaction of helping others.