PIO Network Newsletter Addendum: Show and Tell
One of the PIO areas often left untouched is what you, as your club's public information officer, can do to encourage your board to promote your club's members to participate in Field Day.
If they've been doing it rote, year after year, they may have forgotten the significance and enthusiasm they first brought to that effort.
And if they are new to ham radio, they may not know the history of Field Day and how it plays into the history of our nation then and now.
My "home" club, the Sangamon Valley Radio Club, has been around for 76 years, 75 of them as an ARRL affiliate. Like most, it has seen its membership grow and shrink...and grow and shrink through the decades. That has an impact on understanding what and why Field Day is about.
To that end, SVRC has always made its May or June programs focus on Field Day, usually the just-the-facts stuff but ever-so-often throwing in a full-fledged Powerpoint that not only covers all the elements of the club's Field Day activity (maps, equipment, time, food, etc.) but also its overall history. As PIOs, it's important we know that history too, as we promote the event to media and the community as an important part of what ham radio is all about.
This year's SVRC powerpoint runs about 25 slides, but its initial eight slides can be used by any club and to that end, are being shared here for your club's use should you want to use them. In a future PIO Network Newsletter, I'd like to include some of the things your club did, either internally or in reaching out to the community, to encourage participation or understanding of the significance of Field Day.
And, by the way, for our Section's Field Day photo contest, I left the dot com off my address. It's vwhitaker@gmail.com.
