Modernisation & HAM Radio Web Sites

One of the great things about HAM radio is the number of websites available full of useful information about all manner of things.

One of the most unappealing things about HAM radio to anyone under retirement age is the feeling that this is an "old man's" hobby. They are well represented yes and it's just as well, given they've mostly forgotten more than the younger generation may ever learn.

In my quest for knowledge and something of a clue, I've spent a lot of time looking at ham run websites, looking for those little tidbits that help me along on my quest for understanding.

Now, I've been building websites since 1996. I'm still not good at it. But by the end of the 1990s I was hand coding my HTML to ensure that it loaded as fast as it could on slower modems. That also meant that my server could handle more traffic. 

When things started to change in the 2000s, we started to see technologies such as PHP and ASPX appear, on top of various other tech that has come, gone, and some well forgotten (thank the Ether!). I was never any good at it. I'd cut my teeth on HTML, and that was about where I got off the boat. 

I did though have to adapt.  I went from completely hand coded HTML websites to websites that we image rich then on to finding applications that used PHP that I could install, tweak within an inch of its life (and my capabilities) and turn that into websites. I'm by no means good at it. In fact, I suck at it. But I've done it for a long time.

If I hadn't adapted I would have lost readers. One of the sites I used to look after belonged to an American actress who has long since moved to doing other things with her life. To do things like that, you need to keep things reasonably fresh, or they go stale and people loose interest. 

In the past week that I've been looking for very specific pieces of information, I've found a lot of the HAM websites I was looking at had me in a time warp. Their design was acceptable in the 1990s. 

I mean no disrespect to any of these fine hams who still have this information online; I much appreciate the content and the effort that went into it.  The world is better off for it.

The problem is quite simply that it looks dated. When a site looks dated, it doesn't look relevant any more, and it doesn't look appealing.  I come from the first generation of kids that learned to write HTML in high school, and few people had the internet at home at the time (I certainly didn't), so I can appreciate the effort that went into it at the time it was created. 

Again, it's dated. Put the same website in front of someone half my age - a good good age for a new generation of ham.. they're used to flashy, image heavy, dynamic websites that are have ties into social media. They expect it to look more 2020 and less last millennium.  

Personally, I can't be bothered having my own blog be something I have to put so much effort to like I've done in websites of years past.. constantly ensuring the underlying application is updated and secure, constantly updating it and having all my customisations break and need fixing, and so on.  I'd prefer to focus on content.  This blog you're look at - it's on Blogger. I just made a few tweaks to an existing theme, added a couple of pictures, and bam! 

If you have a website, it's worth putting in a little effort to freshen it up. These days you don't need to learn entire languages to have a website. There are plenty of platforms - Blogger, Wordpress, etc., that you can use - they're generally free, and they have hosted options so you don't have to worry about keeping the platform secure - you can just worry about your content. A freshen up can be as simple as changing themes and making a few tweaks here and there. They're by no means perfect, but they're good options.

The generation that respects websites that haven't changed their look and feel for the past 20 years is getting older, and the generations following them won't have that respect because they're producing more modern content in primary school.  

HAM radio is a hobby that is well represented by older blokes (sounds great to me), but if the hobby needs to appeal to younger generations, then we need to find a way to make the hobby look appealing to them. 

It's going to require some effort, and will require an ongoing effort to maintain.

If General Motors can make sleek, shiny bodies with modern gadgetry inside, slapped around their bloody old over sized, under powered and inefficient combustion engines and actually still sell them to people, then perhaps the hobby could benefit from the same.

It's a tough sell to convince young people to be attracted to anything that looks like it was forgotten about 2 decades before they were born. It's hard enough to get them off their phones.

The education systems have started to change (at least in tertiary ed) to find ways to appeal to, and to engage with these new generations of young people. They've done that quite simply because the old ways don't work any more. They young people weren't interested - they would come because they were told it was the future, and they'd struggle to engage, and they wouldn't get the most out of it. 

Educators have to find ways to keep a generation of young people surrounded by a lot of stimuli engaged and focused. A lot of them require help to keep on track. Their lives are full of time critical things; endless social feeds that they're scared of missing something on, work, study, and so on. To the older generations that still seems a bit silly. In over a decade in tertiary education I've been somewhat horrified how tertiary education is becoming more like retail.. the expectation that we're here to service the students and we need to adapt to their needs rather than the smart educated professionals be the ones to deliver content that the students need to learn to absorb, study and learn from. 

Alas, this is how the world is moving. These new generations expect the world to adapt to them rather than them adapting to it. If we're going to have any hope of attracting them, perhaps we need to put in an effort to do the same?