BCARES Board meeting September 25th, 2003

The meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM in a Ball corporation meeting room by Jim Kubitschek.

Persons present:

Others: JD Burke

Minutes:

The August meeting minutes were reviewed and approved as written.

Opening discussion

Jim Kubitschek opened the meeting with four questions:

•How can we get more people involved – do we have enough?

•How can we better coordinate things?

•What can we do to improve net participation?

•Do we need more training exercises?

Jack Ciacca talked about making things work with a dedicated core and a population of members with training but rusty skills. Dale Scott talked about people who don't have the training who are willing, and can we bring them up to speed quickly (perhaps 1/2 an hour). The discussion compared volunteer fire departmetns with ARES organizations.  BCARES has a lot of trouble getting any voluneets to do tasks, even among the officers.  Steve said that if we had more activities like public service activities people would be more involved with the organization and each other.  Jack thinks we don't need more activiites, we need to do things better  Dale said we should define the roles, expectations, and time required for BCARES involvment, and then analyze that to see what we can expect to do.

Pete Goldmain said he would like more involvement in equipment maintenance. He also said  we should emphasize recruiting at BARCFEST.

BCARES has the classroom at BARCFEST from 10 to 12 for the APRS presentation and a meeting.  

Jim asked all board members to send him written answers to the questions.

Jim asked Steve to

1) take leadership on announcing board meetings per the bylaws.

2) Get the minutes done promply because the minutes include items for follow-up.

3) Address BCARES documentation and filing--plan how to make a better filing system.

Letter and Check to QSL.net

Jim read a letter and requested authorization to send it with a $100 donation. Agreed

Membership

Membership Coordinator

Len Koppl's time out of town has restricted his ability to promptly do his duties. Dale has agreed to get the job defined, and run it until it's working well and then hand it off.

New Members

There are new applications,  Jim will get them to the Sherriff's department.

Introduction and training

Participation in the ARRL SET was discussed with no plan made.

Car ID posters

 Jim has a check to Andy Przedpelski to reimburse his expense in getting them made

ISS

Jim has a video of the recent BARC ISS contact and is making a few copies.

Repeater update

The 146.76 repeater main receiver has a problem and is turned off, but the system is still working well.

BARCFEST

Jim Kubitschek will bring a projector and will show the ISS video and the BCARES screen show..  We have the meeting room from 10 to 12 for a BCARES meeting and an APRS presentation and demo. Steve will do the  presenation and demo  We'll plan on using Kretke's a screen.  Steve Price will follow up.  The bcares meeting was intended as a get-together and an SET planning session.    We should mention the Longmont drill, the October SET, and CU Football.  Dale will bring the BCARES poster.

Longmont SET

Doshia is coordinating.  She could use some more people.

National SET

Dale will look up the ARRL rules/procedures and see how we can participate without a big organizational effort.

CU Football

Nima is coordinator but will bed out o fthe country, so Jim is organizing the next two games.

Bylaws

The correct address to use as was called into question. Jim K will check.  A few minor changes were made.  Dale Scott moved that the bylaws be approved as modified with the changes and the correct address included. Carried.  Jim and Steve will confirm/correct the address and submit the bylaws to the state.

Other:

Jack read an email he received.  It was from Mike Derr, W3DIF.  Mike suggested having an elder care facility liasion position.   Jack said he answerd back inviting Mike to a board meeting and thanking him for his suggestion.  Jack pointed out that we did send peole to such places for Y2K. The board agreed that adding this to our planning would be good. The subject was tabled.

Next meeting.

Nov 13 Thursday 7:00 at Ball.

Adjournment:

Moved by Pete Goldman at 9:15.

Minutes by Steve Price

Written comments by Steve Price

Hi all,

Here’s my take:

1.         How can we get more people involved? - Do we have enough?

I think the perception is that BCARES isn’t very relevant.  With the served agencies getting better gear over time, and the prevalence of cell phones, BCARES seldom gets involved in emergency response because emergencies big enough to need BCARES are rare.  I see two ways to change the perception in a big way, neither of which would be easy:

A)   expand the mission to support of more agencies/organizations.  For instance, I saw an article on the web about a California ham group whose only mission was supporting hospitals.  They get several callouts a year in response to comms failures internal to hospitals in the LA area.  While internal comms failure in hospitals is within the scope of BCARES, it’s not something we think about or have a plan for.  Same goes for nursing homes.  The problem here is it will take a lot of leadership effort to bring this about.

B)   Merge BCARES with the other county ham organizations with the aim of creating an organization that is more dynamic than any of the separate organizations are now, and that provides a single place for all active hams in the county.  Then everyone knows everyone better and hears more about the ARES aspects of the organization.  The first problem here is the number of people who would have to change the organizations they have nurtured over the years.

2.         How can we better coordinate things?

We need to be crisper when someone agrees to do something: What they will do by when.  Everyone with outstanding items should give their own reports on progress monthly, either in person at the board meeting or by written report for non-board members who don’t care to be at the meeting.

3.         What can we do to improve NET participation?

Turn the net into a ragchew.

4.         Do we need more training exercises?

The best training is doing.  We do a lot of TV at the football games, so some people are well rehearsed on that.  For packet, though, there just doesn’t seem to be much occasion to do it.  Some people do use APRS,  so there’s some experience being kept up in a way.

Steve WB8VQI