Pacificon Merges With EMCOMM West: Yuck!

This post is not meant to be critical of anyone, just to raise some concerns and maybe offer sone ideas. Everyone involved in this are good folks doing their best. I just wish things worked out a little differently. This post was meant to go up on 2/23 and I found it, unposted, today.

I am in receipt, today, of an email from the Bob Vallio,W6RGG, Pacific Division ARRL Director, announcing that the Mt. Diablo ARC has decided to no longer host Pacificon, effective immediately. Hosting such a conference is a HUGE undertaking and MDARC has done an excellent job. It could have been hoped, however, that we could have offered a year’s notice so more options would be open to us. But, that wasn’t possible.

EMCOMM West is a two-day specialty emergency communications conference held in Reno on what seems to be the first weekend in May. EMCOMM West is a good event and I liked the 2008 EMCOMM West more than I liked the 2008 Pacificon.

Having said that, I don’t think it will be easily possible to scale EMCOMM West to become Pacificon on such short notice—the next EMCOMM West/Pacificon will be held May 1-3. Of course, scalability may not be such a big thing since the conference is held in Reno and it’s hard to imagine most former Pacificon attendees will make the trip, especially since for many it will add an overnight stay.

The EMCOMM West crew have a lot of guts taking on the challenge of adding a Pacificon program to their event. If the two remain together, I think the EMCOMM aspects of the event will suffer. Maybe next year’s EMCOMM U will move to Sacramento or the Bay Area and pick up some slack.

Priority #1 should be creating a new hamvention for the SF Bay Area, to directly replace Pacificon. That’s not something I can do, but if Pacificon really filled a need, I bet some group or set of groups will step forward. The key to success may be finding a non-hotel venue where the event can take place.

It is easier to find a free location for emcomm training, but perhaps something is possible in a publicly-owned facility, such as a college campus or convention center. I hope so.

Here’s Bob’s email:

Pacificon 2009 to be hosted by EMCOMMWEST, May 1, 2, and 3, at the Circus Circus Hotel, Reno, NV

On February 15, I learned that the Mt. Diablo Amateur Radio Club had decided not to sponsor the Pacificon Convention this year. They have done an outstanding job of running Pacificon every year since 1992, and this decision was made by their Pacificon Committee, based on the current economic downturn, and unsuccessful negotiations with the host hotel. Realizing the difficulty of finding a replacement for the Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club, that with an experienced committee spends nearly a year planning this successful event, I decided to contact EMMCOMWEST, the second largest Amateur Radio Convention in the Pacific Division. They very kindly accepted, knowing the marriage of the two events would require an expansion of program matter, and the addition of Friday presentations. I am truly grateful to the entire EMCOMMWEST team for their decision. The Mt. Diablo Amateur Radio Club has been very supportive of this effort, and is making all of their speaker, vendor, and organizational information available to the EMCOMMWEST team. The keynote speaker will be Steve Ewald, WV1X, Field Organization Supervisor from ARRL HQ; and the banquet speaker will be Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, who was in charge of Amateur Radio rules enforcement at the FCC when he retired. I hope many of you will be able to attend this year’s Pacificon. More information is available at <pacificon.org>.

A special note to all club newsletter editors: Please feature this information in your monthly publications. I will be sending additional mailings as more news becomes available.

See you at EMCOMMWEST/Pacificon!


Thanks and 73,

Bob Vallio, W6RGG
Director, Pacific Division
ARRL The national association for AMATEUR RADIO