N5FDL Amateur Radio

In doing this site, I’ve come to recognize the need for advanced EMCOMM training to be available in the field. As someone who runs a club, I understand the need for meeting programs. As a conference organizer I know how hard it is to get speakers—especially when the really interesting person lives across the country.

In response, I am proposing a regular series of national webinars, which I am calling EMCOMM U Extension. The idea is to take what we did at the first EMCOMM University and extend its reach to everyone who is interested.

EMCOMM U extension would be a one or two hour online program presented every three months initially, eventually becoming an every other month event. If someone wants to take these monthly at some point, God bless ‘em.

The programs would be national-quality speakers—people you’d like to get to your local events but cannot. The programs would be interactive, with time for questions and answers and panel discussions. I think this would be valuable content that people would want to participate in and reuse locally. I suspect most views of this content would be people who later downloaded it, which will far surpass the “live” audience.

The challenge I face is that though not expensive and not even usage sensitive, a platform suitable for this sort of event costs money. GoToWebinar, for example, costs $79 to $99 a month for unlimited usage. I’d like to find someone who has an account or a group of hams or clubs who are willing to contribute. I don’t believe we can charge people to attend, but once we are going we can probably ask for donations.

There was a time when I could just write a check for this, but you may have noticed a downturn in the economy. Until my business improves, I can’t make this happen without help.

I’d like to do the first of these in July or August and have a regular schedule after that. I am open to commercial sponsorship of the event or just about anything else.

Of course, the events will all be recorded and available for later use. I think that gives us the opportunity to build a valuable training library for emergency communicators.

I’d appreciate your thoughts, ideas, and encouragement.