Well. I must say, Ham Twits is on life support. Partially because I haven’t been pushing it hard enough, hoping that it would have a little bit of “if you build it, they will come” approach, and partially because of the regular downtime that Twitter has been experiencing lately.
The downtime has caused a bit of a chain reaction across the entire Twitter community, and the Hams are no exception. Some people have stopped tweeting altogether, others have severely curtailed their usage, and a couple of prominent people who have jumped ship to other services. The resultant landscape has left me scratching my head and pondering as to if there is any way to sucessfully leverage these services into Ham Radio.
The social web seems to be here to stay and it is starting cross the chasm into the mainstream. I looked at the Ham Twits list as a way of trying to get Hams onto Twitter and quickly find like-minded individuals. However, with the recent splintering of the landscape makes me wonder if trying to leverage such tools on the Ham Radio community is a foolhardy venture.
Ham Radio operators, for the most part, can be rather geeky, but are still a bit behind the curve on the computing side of things. While there are some bright people out there, just simply look at any Ham Radio club’s webpage and you’re treated to a trip back to the late 1990s/early 2000s. More often or not, the home page of your organization is your face on the web. Having it look like something straight out of the dot-com era does not help Ham Radio look “cutting edge”, which seems to be something that most Hams try to pass the hobby off as.
When I started to try to get Ham Twits off the ground, I pictured it as the first step in trying to get more Hams onto the social web. After I compiled a sizeable list, I was going to try to start talking up Twitter in various ham radio related venues. However, now that some of the more active community members have gone over to FriendFeed, Jaiku, or identica, it kind of torpedos the idea of trying to market a single service as a way to communicate with fellow hams. It’s easier to say “Hey! Twitter is easy to use! Look at some of the cool stuff we discuss!” rather then saying “There is some cool stuff on this social web thing! Sign up for Twitter. Oh, and Jaiku if you want to talk to these guys over here, oh, and FriendFeed if you want to talk to those guys over there.” It makes it less likely to sell people on the benefits.
Some people are taking a different tack and trying to make Ham Radio specific socail websites. Chris Matthieu has set up 73s.org and a group of Ham Radio operators in the UK is working on DXAnywhere. Both seem to be solid, good coded websites. However, I think the strongest plus of using existing social networks is that non-Hams use it as well. If we provide Ham Radio with good exposure, we can help shake off the stoddy image of Ham Radio being a dead technological area. I stirred up some interest when I posted my SEEDS Captures on Twitter and quite enjoyed explaining to people how simple it was. Stuff like that is great PR! We should be doing it more often!
In conclusion, I don’t know where Ham Twits is going. I also don’t know if trying to leverage non-Ham-Radio-specific social web services to Hams is a good idea at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if in six months we’ll see everyone on a new twittagsocialblogcloudweb2.0-thing anyway…
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Flickr
FriendFeed
….but their stability sucks as we all know.
In the end, Ben I have to give you a thumbs up for what you were trying to accomplish. I was totally supportive of the idea, and was hoping it would spawn into something useful and fun as well. Twitter has connected me to many like minded hams (incuding you!) however, so I can’t say it was a total failure.
You are correct when you say some of the ham radio community is lagging behind with computer technology today. I think some hams are just dead set in their way, and some get down right evil when you even mention the internet (so has been my experience anyhow)
Ham radio as a hobby still holds massive potential, and the technology we have today can only make it better. When I hear the old timers talk about the things I am doing and how “it’s not ham radio”, I simply remind them that is, and in it’s newest form!
73
Stephen
K1LNX
Posted by Stephen - K1LNX on July 10th, 2008.
I think there is a strong contrasting difference in the “old” and “new” generation of hams.. The new generation is doing their ragchewing online (like here) while the old generation setup those static club pages long ago and haven’t touched them since sending them off to pasture. Most ham clubs in general are left for the older generation in my opinion. Our local club here is very active with their monthly meetings but those meetings tend to consist of an hours worth of deliberation on how people aren’t operating properly during the latest skywarn net (instruction that is promptly forgotten as they leave the door), and then an hour of presentation that is a relapse of the same thing given a year earlier. My ham time is short and valuable as I have work, family, and church obligations that take my time, so I don’t see that club as valuable in attendance or membership.
Thankfully we are working hard at reviving the university club. Most of us involved right now are staff and faculty, but we tend to pick up a couple new students every fall (already grabbed one over field day!). A new web site with a focus on dynamic content and meetings that are fresh, relevant to what we want, and focus on inviting non-hams on campus who have cross-interests in the presentation are what we work on.
Whether it works or not, well, we’ll see. But you’re points are 100% valid. Let’s embrace the social nature of the internet, keep the rag chew alive here, and bring more people along for the ride!!
73 de KB9JHU
(club mentioned is http://www.indiana.edu/~k9iu)
Posted by Corey KB9JHU on July 11th, 2008.