Ham Twits and leveraging the Social Web into Amateur Radio Redux

I’ve received some nice feedback on yesterday’s post and it has caused me to renew my effort into Ham Twits. I’m going to start going after Hams on twitter to see if they’ll let me add them, and as a community as a whole, lets see if we can’t get more Hams to sign up for twitter.

Corey, KB9JHU (aka cshields) posted a great comment that linked to his University Club’s website. Now, *that* is what a Ham Radio club website should look like! CMS! RSS! Clean interface! Brilliant! Thanks Corey!

Posted by Ben Jackson at 12:25 pm on July 11th, 2008. 6 comments... »
Categories: Ham Radio, Social Web. Tags: , , , , .

6 comments.

  1. I found this through a Summize search for “ham radio” on Twitter. I was curious whether I’d get any results! I think Ham Twits is great and I’d love to be on the list! My Twitter handle is ScottElias and my call is WA4SE.

    Posted by Scott Elias on July 14th, 2008.

  2. Done and Done! Thanks for letting me add you!

    Posted by Ben on July 14th, 2008.

  3. Thanks for the plug!

    Now the next challenge for us is recruiting.. There are two issues at hand here that are worth some thought and future posts:

    1) Getting licensed hams active in the club.. Undoubtedly there are always a few of the incoming freshmen every year who are already licensed. How do we find them and get them involved? Do they not hear about the club? Maybe they are just too busy with college life to be involved…

    2) Getting non-hams involved and licensed. This is harder still because on top of the busy college life you are competing against, you have to convince someone of the worth of amateur radio compared to the technology that most college students arrive with today (internet EVERYWHERE, super phones that do it all, etc..). Why study and take a test, and have to buy new hardware for a communication method that seems archaic? My own personal favorite selling point: Contesting.. its a sport. it is a sport for geekish types. On the other hand, there seems to be a trickle of new hams coming in via the emcomm appeal, but unfortunately we already have our overly large population of whackers in the area.

    Anyway, I don’t have good answers.. A lot of us staff in the club are concerned with the dwindling membership year after year because the club and resources are all labeled as a “student organization”, which requires “students” to be involved. ;)

    Cheers!
    -C

    Posted by Corey KB9JHU on July 14th, 2008.

  4. I think ham twits is a great idea. Please add me. My handle on twitter is DustyF and my call is NR4N. I am a very new twitter user but have known about it via podcasts for some time. Just learning how to use it.
    DSF

    Posted by Dusty Findley on July 15th, 2008.

  5. Add me to the list too:
    twitter name: joerocklin
    call: KD8AQZ

    I’ll make a post on my blog about this too!

    Posted by Joe Rocklin on July 19th, 2008.

  6. I’ve got a new callsign.
    AI6PG was KB1CVH.

    I’m updating twitter accordingly.

    73

    Posted by Peter Grace on July 22nd, 2008.

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