18 Mar 2016

An aging mainly male hobby?

My comment on ours being a hobby mainly of older men has received quite a few comments on amateurradio.com. Not sure of your view, but our hobby will have to change in the coming years or it will fade away. What interested us may not be the same for young people in the 21st century.

There are some ideas here which we should think about.
See http://www.amateurradio.com/hobby-30-years/#comments .

One example from CN8VY:

Roger,
I agree with you 100%.
Ham is missing one after the other all the game-changing opportunities: the wifi-wireless revolution, Drones becoming general consumer goods, solar and alternative energy, the need of a fitter lifestyle (trecking and extreme sports), the global outcry for Solidarity, etc
All the items I have mentioned here are of concern to men, women, kids all over the world. We ham are unable to contribute seriously to them and “surf” the wave and get newbies. Let me make myself clear with one example. If you go to a public park anywhere in North America or Europe, set up a small solar panel or a wind generator, start using a small radio to send GPS data or weather bulletrins, you will get a lot a lot a lot of attention and interest. You will see teens and young active adults come and ask you about the set up. Initially, they don’t care at all about RF. They are attracted by the solar stuff and the resilience to power shortage. This is the good starting point to convert may be 10% of them to ham.

No comments: