June 2025 – Strategic priorities update

Strategy update – what are others doing?

Back at the end of January I attended FOSDEM 2025; primarily to gain an insight into what other societies/countries were doing to promote amateur radio to the younger generation and also to a growing potential audience in the software development community.

FOSDEM is marketed as follows: “FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open-source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. You don’t need to register. Just turn up and join in!”

On my way to my first day at the show, I randomly bumped into two young people in FOSDEM T-shirts at the hotel on the Saturday morning. They kindly helped me travel to the event and, coincidentally, one was a German licence holder. In conversation it became clear that he saw his radio licence as a means to enhance his electronics/software experimentation and was not a traditional radio ham by any means.

FOSDEM itself was attended by several thousand individuals with the M/F split at perhaps 60% male and 40% female. Most people I spoke to at the event were there to meet people they knew online, and a common theme was the expectation that most lectures would be full to overflowing. Everyone seemed to suggest they would catch up with the lecture stream online later and concentrate on meeting people and attending those lectures that were not being recorded.

The event is spread over several buildings on the Brussels university campus and finding your way around was challenging; there was very little signage and many people were lost! All catering is provided by outside event catering vehicles in the campus walkways. It would be very miserable if it was raining, but luckily it was dry. Junk food was available in enormous quantities – I’ve never before seen a pile of french fries that big.

The event comprises a series of parallel-running themed rooms (one being “Radio Devroom: Electric Boogaloo”) where a set of relevant lectures take place during the day. There are also several buildings given over to “infostands” with the most relevant being amateur radio, MeshTastic and GNU Radio. There were also organisations such as KiKAD there, which was the software platform featured at the RSGB 2024 Convention talk on PCB development by John Linford, G3WGV.

Quite a few Linux distributions were represented as well as the gnome desktop environment, Mozilla and many other familiar names.

The lectures in the Radio Devroom all repeatedly encouraged attendees to visit the infostands which were physically situated in a different building. I would estimate approximately 100 individuals in attendance at the radio stream at any one time during the day. There were more people than seats most of the time with individuals sitting on stairs and any other perch they could find most of the day. The lectures in the radio stream were all extremely technical in nature and very software focused.

The infostands could be better visually, in my view, because they had no real backdrop or branding – just a white tablecloth over a table. Certainly, it was more than suitable for the university/student audience at FOSDEM, but not sufficient for more public-facing events. On the amateur radio infostand were copies of RadCom and other European Societies’ publications along with QR codes to other material – one was the special edition of RadCom we compiled specifically for the event. There were also some radios, homebrew equipment (QO-100 TX based on Pluto SDR), and a VHF repeater. There was a white stick antenna on a small mast outside feeding a VHF transceiver on the table. They were also running a WSPR transmitter with PSKReporter mapping the reception reports.

There were a lot of enthusiastic youngsters visiting the stand and the hobby was presented as a technical one with potential for experimentation and learning. One example was a discussion over WSPR. It was explained that home Wi-Fi uses about 100mW and often “doesn’t work in the kitchen”, whereas 100mW of WSPR can get you reports globally under the right conditions. The explanation was likening the technology to astronomy photography techniques where you layer multiple images to clarify details; WSPR is the same but with radio.

If the RSGB is to take amateur radio to a similar audience in the UK through attendance at Maker Fayres or similar public events, we will need to develop suitable collateral to support exhibition stands and also appropriate technical presentations.

I came away from FOSDEM with a lot of questions in my mind, all around how we should represent amateur radio at this kind of event then take an individual with an interest in our hobby through to being licensed. The traditional route via a local amateur radio club is unlikely to fit the bill for this audience.

I was reminded very much of the audience personas we used at a recent Volunteer Leadership Team (VLT) meeting – that discussion was very relevant to this potential audience. Ideally, we need to offer an online mechanism to a HAREC licence: online training material and then the online exam. This requirement fits well within the strategic workstream “Getting started”.

Maker Champion

You may have seen my recent advertisements for a new volunteer role of “RSGB Maker Champion” and I am delighted to announce that Tom Wardill, 2E0JJI has taken on this position.

In his role Tom will assist the RSGB to take amateur radio to new audiences in the hackspace and makerspace communities. Tom will also investigate opportunities to encourage crossover in both directions offering new areas of experimentation to more traditional licence holders.

Tackling how we go about generating a viable presence at events like FOSDEM in the UK and bringing on interested parties is very much within the new role remit.

Please join me in wishing Tom every success in his new role.

Mark Jones, G0MGX

Board Director

strategy@rsgb.org.uk

• You can also find this update in the June 2025 RadCom

Category: RSGB Notices, RSGB Strategic Priorities