I've been a more then a little behind on different conference activities, but for the most part things are coming together.  I posted a nearly complete list of speakers and topics to the main website tonight. There is one slot not filled, but not because I don't have content.  Rather I have to much content and I'm trying to make the best things fit.

Current list of topics and speakers.

This evening I finished the last item, which I considered critical, before starting the big registration push. For the most part I have been taking care of little details, like writing up directions to the conference and getting the final pricing for the conference worked out. But enough of that is done, so I can move forward.

Our ARRL sanction approval should be completed this weekend, Director Fenstermaker approved it weeks ago, but we have been waiting for the Executive Committee's approval. I'm guessing with the ARRL board meeting this weekend, I'll be getting an e-mail sometime next week. It sucks that we missed the deadline for having the conference in the March issue of QST, but that was completely my fault for not getting the paperwork submitted earlier.

I've got about 2/3rd of the agenda mapped out and as I get the final confirmations from the various speakers, I'll start posting details here. But so far I'm very happy with the line up. 

More to come....

de KU7M  

So I spent a couple hours this long holiday weekend updating the MicroHAMS website and creating a new landing page for the MicroHAMS Digital Conference. I've wanted to pull everything together into a single place for a long time, but finally got it done tonight. There is a huge amount of content which is spread all over the place which would be great to centralize. Now that we have a landing page, glueing on the other stuff should be easy.

On the MHDC front, we have two big things happen recently.  The most important is that we have a date! Yep, we are back on our normal schedule and the 2012 conference will be March 31st. What isn't always obvious is how much help I get from people and one of the biggest things is getting the facilities for the conference. Big THANK YOU to Josh - K7JSH for getting that taken care off!

The second big thing is getting the first speaker lined up, which almost happen by accident. I won't announce who it is yet, but he is now a veteran for the MHDC and always gives an amazing talk.  If you know of anybody who'd be a good choice or you have a topic that you'd like to hear about, drop me a note.

de KU7M

Just a quick update to say the MicroHAMS Digital Conference 2012 is starting to get kicked off.  We should have a date confirmed within a couple weeks and I'm going to start putting together a list of speakers / topics list.  I'm taking off to Dayton in a couple weeks, so I'm sure lots of ideas will come up while wondering the halls.  

We'd like to try some new things this year, like having speakers who can't physically make it speak via Skype.  More and more conferences are starting to-do this and I think it would be interesting.

So if you have any ideas or want to help, send me a note!

de KU7M

I've been working on the one part of this conference which I truely hate, processing registrations.  I have put it off way longer then I should have and now am having to plow through about 80 of them all at once.  I have finally finished the first pass, which includes matching up payments via PayPal with registrations, this takes a while but isn't difficult.  Now I'm left with the stuff which doesn't match up, so I've got to send e-mails to about half a dozen people that registerested but I don't have any payment.  I only ended up with one payment that I can't match to a registration, which is nice.

So if you've registered and never heard anything, I'm sorry.  When you see me at the conference you can give me a bad time about it.  Otherwise you should be getting an e-mail from me in the next 12 hours.  If you registered and didn't manage to get PayPal to work, I'll be calling on you as well. 

On my to-do list for this winter is a new registration page, which will automate as much of this workflow as I can figure out howto make happen.  I've been looking for a project to try our Ruby on Rails and I think this is perfect.  If you are interested in helping out, drop me a note.

de KU7M

Just a couple random updates, since I don't really have enough for a full blow entry.

1) Registration is live and we are seeing a steady trickle of people signing up.  Its early with the conference being over six months away, but it really nice to see the one or two registration e-mails flow in during each day.

2) We have three REALLY great leads on speakers already.  Lyle Johnson-KK7P, Dan Smith-KK7DS and Jeremy McDermond-NH6Z are all serious maybe's right now. (meaning they want to come and as we get closer they will confirm their schedules)  This is REALLY great for this stage of the game, I know all three will be kick ass speakers.

3) Our ARRL sponsorship has been submitted, so hopefully this will get approved in the next 30 days.  Now we need to figure out who to ask from the league to come out and attend. (Steve Ford was great last year, but I know he has family committemnts which prevent him from traveling during the fall)  I'll poke around at the ARRL booth during Dayton next month....

de KU7M

We are finally ready to go live with registration.  I feel bad about this, since the registration page was ready almost a week ago and I've just been to busy to validate it.  Big thanks to Mark-N7WSU for getting the page updated and ready to go.  For those with a good memory, you might have noticed the cost of the conference has gone up $5 this year.  We were able to keep the cost flat last year, but the cost of the lunch/food has increased enough this year that we needed to raise the price.  I still think the we provide a great value for what we do.  I hope others feel the same.

Now that registration is ready to go, I can switch my focus to speakers.  I got a co-chair this year, so please reach out to either Steve-N8GNJ or Kenny-KU7M if you have an idea for a topic or want to speak.

Registration Link: http://www.microhams.com/registration

de KU7M

At the board meeting on Thursday night, we got a chance to review the results from the survey.  At that time, ~1/3 of the people who received the survey e-mail had responsed.  That is about the norm for these kinds of things in my experience, so we are all really happy.  I included the results below, except for the general comments people provided. (to difficult to try and capture and report)  

Here are my general analysis:

• The conference seems to be popular, over 90% said they would be returning this year. (even with the move in dates)
• Our general format seems to be liked, at least there weren't any strong opinions for the proposed changes.
• Everybody wants a demo area
• We hit the sweet spot last year with regard to the technical level of the talks
• People were split down the middle with regard to adding more D-Star content this year.  The strongest comments were actually about this topic, both for and against.

I really want to nail down the remaining detail for the conference next week, which is the cost. (Which basically means getting a handle on the food costs)  At that point all the critical pieces are known and we can publicly announce the event. (Which means the registration site can be enabled)   The board also spent some time brainstorming about speakers and topics, with some really good results.  Lots of really good ideas were thrown out, so I have a list to start working through now.  Having something like this list makes the process easier.  One thing I need to figure out is if there is a talk about my own personal pet interest.  I'd really like to have something on mesh networking this year, I think the topic has all sorts of possibilities.  Maybe I'll break down and give a talk this year if I can't find a speaker.

73, Kenny, KU7M

One of the things we have really fallen down on with the previous years conferences was collecting feedback.  The only real input we got were the random comments from attendies and the fact that more people attended then the previous year. (So I guess we didn't screw up to much. :-)

But we are now at the point where we really need some outside input, so we are going to try a online survey.  We are going to spam all the previous attendiess shortly with a online web survey.  I took a first past at the questions, I'm going to send them out to the organizing group for feedback.  What did I forget?

Which MicroHAMs Digital Conferences have you attended? (mark all that apply)
1. 2007
2. 2008
3. 2009
4. Every one of them!

Would you attend this years Digital Conference if it was held in late September?
1. Yes
2. No

If you attended previous years Digital Conferences, do you think:
1. there were to many sessions?
2. there were just the right amount of sessions?
3. there were not enough sessions?

Would you prefer fewer sessions overall, with longer breaks between sessions for socializing, viewing demo's or small workshop sessions?
1. Yes
2. No

Do you think last years sessions overall were:
1. to technical?
2. just at the right level for me?
3. not technical enough?
4. not sure, I wasn't able to attend last year?

Would you be interested in a half day group of talks focusing on Icom's D-Star technology?
1. Yes
2. No

If a half day of the Digital Conference was focused on Icom's D-Star technology, would you be interested in a 'beginner' session on D-Star?
1. Yes
2. No