Interesting points brought up in this discussion.
Thanks to John and Ben and others for providing perhaps the clearest and most
concise history I've ever read about what happened in and around 1963, and what
has resulted since then. It's helpful to know...
I also appreciated Jim Renfrew's comments about mergers, and his analogy to
churches. I particularly like his strategic way of seeing things. It made me
think hard about my pro-merger view.
Ultimately, at the end of the day I still think merging IRCA and NRC might be
the best thing for AM DXing in North America. That's given the rapidly changing
nature of broadcasting and our reduced numbers in the clubs, if not the hobby
itself (Scott Fybush mentioned thousands on a Facebook DX site, something
that's previously unknown to me and absolutely fascinating).
Still, in terms of a merger, it seems to me we may not be there right now, and
we may never be there, for lots of reasons - good, bad or otherwise - that many
have stated here.
Jim's analogy to churches got me thinking about my own opposition to the
amalgamation more than a decade ago of a number of boroughs in the Toronto area
to form a new, much larger City of Toronto. I thought it a terrible move for
many reasons - it killed a lot of 'local' that made each of those smaller
boroughs unique, it allowed politicians from some outlying areas of the new
city to pit their areas of the city against those more downtown; and
vice-versa. Our current mayor, whom all of you likely know of, is a product of
a lot of this. I could go on.
At the time, as opposed as I was to amalgamating the boroughs, I thought it
would have been sensible to amalgamate certain services, and/or to create
cooperative service agreements or something of the sort. Firefighting, for
instance. Police. Public transportation. Perhaps some aspects of municipal
services such as water and sewage. But it was definitely unwise, for example,
to have people 30 miles away from the waterfront deciding on development
decisions there. Amalgamation hasn't proven so good for municipal planning and
zoning, though I do think the different boroughs, as they were, would have
benefitted from degrees of coordination.
So as Jim alluded to with churches, I would agree there's lessons out there for
DX clubs and the larger DX community / communities. Many of which we've touched
on, like the different forms of governance.
Perhaps the way forward is to take some stock of what's out there, and of who
is out there. And take a project-oriented approach to preserving the hobby and
its infrastructure.
The kind of cooperation that saw a twinned IRCA-NRC convention last year, and
twinned NRC-WTFDA conventions in years past, is proof that a sufficient number
of people from the various clubs are eager and able to work together.
IRCA-NRC has also had a joint DX Test committee. (I'm guilty of falling by the
wayside on that one but there's several others who still collaborate in that
regard).
Some other suggestions here have make eminent sense, such as joint columns
where the content or preparation is labour or data-intensive, for instance.
I love the NRC paper log, and I also loved Lee Freshwater's web-based
directory, which I at least thought of as an IRCA effort though I'm not
entirely sure if that's correct. It's too bad the latter has ended - I would
love to see the NRC log also available online, for a fee to non-members or free
to members of either club or some variation of that. I am fully aware there
were issues awhile back involving the paper log's proprietariness, but maybe
there's a way to figure this one out so the integrity of the log and its
publisher(s) can be maintained and respected. Would it not be amazing to have a
joint online NRC-IRCA AM station log that's fully searchable and up to date?
(Currently I'm using the NRC log and Barry McLarnon's amazingly good and highly
searchable online list).
No doubt there's the valid perspective that competition can push volunteer
efforts up a notch or two, and to some degree I can understand that argument.
There may be times that's true, though we're largely talking volunteers, not
businesses.
But Lee needed to step down and his perfectly good site - his years of
excellent, dedicated work - went kaplooey. I'm at a loss as to why it could not
have been merged with some other volunteer effort, even an online one. If our
numbers are dropping, at least in the clubs, there may be actual tangible
projects to do in tandem.
Perhaps by taking a project-oriented approach we'd nurture the actual services
and such that we depend on, and sooner or later we might have some larger sense
of what's best for our future.
I'm also intrigued by the apparent success of the Facebook group, though I'm
somewhat wary of the transitory nature of things online. Today Facebook,
tomorrow something else, the day after etc. But if that's where a substantial
number of the younger generation are congregating - interesting.
Saul Chernos
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