Would I Trust This Person with a Nail Gun? Or, How to Manage a Team

In the Burning Man Community (drink!) we do a lot of big, often bad, experimental installations of art. Often, we burn these pieces down in the desert and then laboriously clean it all up. The lifespan of these pieces is about a week. The art is fully experienced only by the people that come to Burning Man. Photos and videos are often posted, so some aspects of the work live on after the burn. However, it's hard to be inside of a photograph, or to climb on a video. 

Construction with wood is what we generally do to make these pieces happen. In order to put it together, we need nails or other fasteners.

Enter the nail gun. 

A nail gun is a handheld power tool that shoots nails into materials like wood. It does so with enough force to take the place of someone with a hammer pounding away over and over until the nail is driven. It's a huge time-saving device.

Burner art is made with volunteers. These are people from all sorts of backgrounds that are donating their time. These people may have never picked up a nail gun before, and may or may not have good judgment in either the general or specific sense of the word. They are, after all, Burners. 

So, when assembling a team to get something ambitious done, the question comes up. Would you trust this person with a nail gun?

If the answer is yes, then you proceed.

If the answer is no, then what type of no?

Are they only a danger to themselves? Is this the sort of person that would shoot themselves in the foot within the first hour? Well, at least you get an hour's worth of work out of them. This is a team member that you should probably avoid, if only because you as an organizer or team lead is going to be the one sitting in urgent care or the ER with them waiting on someone to attend to the new hole in their foot and googling "how to get blood out of car floorboard". 

That's not the team member that you should be most worried about, though. The one you should be more worried about is the team member that would turn the nail gun on other people.

Those folks you need to get rid of, as soon as they show their true colors. Better yet, you need to avoid having them worm their way onto your team in the first place. 

Team members that harass, abuse, attack, sabotage, goldbrick, lie, trick, prank, or otherwise make life hard for others, *no matter their claimed or demonstrated technical competence*, must be separated as quickly as possible. 

They are showing you that they cannot be trusted with a nail gun, and they aren't just a danger to themselves, but to others. 

The danger, when it's in power mongering, bullying, racism, sexism, bigotry is just as damaging as it if was a metal shard aimed at someone's head or eye or hand. 

Believe people when they show you who they are, and show them only the door. 

The Great Scott Gadgets Story: More ARDC Interference

Below is a first-person account of how ARDC corrupted some promising amateur radio work. It does have a happy ending, but isn't a fun read if you're a fan of Michael Ossmann or Great Scott Gadgets. 

After converting a community asset into a privately controlled fund without notice or discussion, it seems that a large majority of the happy new owners of $100+ million at ARDC decided that whatever they wanted to happen should happen, regardless of the reality on the ground or who people wanted to work with.

Grants at ARDC have done some good, but there's been a lot of silly power mongering, control freak behavior, and interference. This negative stuff has seriously impacted the potential good. 

Below is just one example. 

This is a conversation between the CEO and founder of Great Scott Gadgets, and the CEO of Open Research Institute, about a project that GSG wanted ORI to partner with. 

Emails referred to in the conversation has been inserted into the record.

The documents referred to in the conversation are available on request.

No reply from Michael Ossmann since this exchange. I can understand. If I had done what he had done, I would avoid the person he took advantage of, too. I'd be deeply ashamed and would want to hide it or get away from it as soon as I possibly could. 

ORI, in anticipation of a successful outcome for the GSG grant, had invited Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) to collaborate on the work. Multiple coordination phone calls with Scotty Cowling, TAPR's President at the time, had happened, keeping him in the loop and starting the planning process for producing hardware for the community.

TAPR returned this open, honest, and inclusive effort by... taking the secret backroom deal that ARDC offered GSG, which required ORI to be excluded. There was no explanation for the exclusion to anyone, and no one involved asked about it or objected to it, despite it coming out of nowhere and making no sense.

TAPR wanted the overhead percentage from the grant more than they wanted the ongoing and productive relationship with ORI, so they accepted the terms. TAPR hid this backroom deal from ORI, with the TAPR President literally having phone conversations where he was was informed, invited, and TAPR included, *after* the backroom deal had been struck. 

Maybe TAPR hoped that ORI wouldn't notice? 

What comes around goes around. TAPR has fewer paid members than are on the #fpga channel of ORI's Slack account. TAPR is no longer able to field their annual event (DCC) and struggles to fill their newsletter. ORI continues to grow, has an active calendar, hosts their own events, and has a newsletter with a lot of content. At nearly 100 repositories on GitHub between the terrestrial and space projects, it's clear where the momentum and activity is happening. 

We think the SERDES project mentioned only in this conversation, and appearing nowhere else, was something that Michael Ossmann made up on the spot. This proposal was never serious. If it had been, then he would have provided at least some level of detail and wouldn't have resisted publicizing it in order to recruit volunteers. It just smelled bad, as if it was a way to distract attention from a raw deal. Moving on quickly was the best solution. 

Our advice based on this experience? 

Follow an ethical path. Never lie to or hide things from your partners, especially when they show up and deliver solid work for you. Don't accept weird, sexist, gross behavior from people with money. That is indeed what happened here. Do not trust the enablers and excusers of weird, sexist, and gross behavior. Those people will only do you harm in the long run. 

It may feel temporarily that you're alone or harmed if you refuse to accept corruption, but that feeling fades very fast when you find a cleaner and more successful environment. 

And, you will find those environments. 

Thank you to the many people that have supported ORI's mission and efforts. Experiences like this, coming out of non-technical and unprofessional motives, can definitely harm folks that aren't ready for them or don't have support. Others have not be as fortunate as ORI in avoiding harm. 

Merit, ethics, and consistently good results can win in the end. Stay true to doing the right thing regardless of temporary setbacks. 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

mossmann — 4/22/22, 07:11

Might ORI be interested in partnering with Great Scott Gadgets for an open source hardware development project? It's something we'd like to do, and I think ARDC may like to fund it, but we are a for-profit company. I was wondering if we could do the work as a subcontractor via ORI

abraxas3d — 4/22/22, 07:48

We'd be happy to help. Please feel free to use us.

EIN 82-3945232

Current address

#1873 3525 Del Mar Heights Road, San Diego, CA 92130-2199 USA

Let me know if you need anything else.

mossmann — 4/22/22, 08:42

Cool! So do we submit the application ourselves but name ORI as primary? Does ORI want to review our application before submission?

abraxas3d — 4/22/22, 08:49

Yes you would submit, name ORI as the primary, and the ORI board would enjoy the opportunity to review the application,  but consensus is that it would meet or exceed the standards we have. You understand open source, design, manufacturing, and finance. 

We can do as little as simply provide a formal structure and stay out of the way, or we can help with anything that we might be good at. 

We bank at Wells Fargo as a default,  but if that is inconvenient or impossible for any reason I am sure we can figure something out. 

Ready to help however we can.

mossmann — 4/22/22, 08:56

I think we're well equipped to run the project on our own. Assuming minimal ORI involvement, how much should we budget for ORI's cut

abraxas3d — 4/22/22, 09:02

Whatever ARDC allows as customary overhead would be gratefully appreciated. Default from ORI has been 0.

mossmann — 4/25/22, 12:22

We're looking at the application and finding ourselves a bit confused by the statement "Individuals may be eligible if you work with a fiscal sponsor. US-based and international for-profit businesses are currently not eligible for ARDC grants." It seems to suggest that GSG (a for-profit company) would not be eligible even with a fiscal sponsor. Has ORI been the fiscal sponsor for a for-profit company applying for an ARDC grant? Should we list GSG as the Organization and ORI as the Fiscal Sponsor, or should we list ORI as the Organization and just mention GSG as a sub-contractor elsewhere in the application text? (as Affiliation under Authors?) 

abraxas3d — 4/25/22, 13:08

Good questions. I am not an expert, but non-profits can work with for-profits, if it's in line with the mission statement of the non-profit. That part is clear under IRS regulatory framework. Yes, we've worked with for-profits twice, both successfully.

If you list ORI as applying and GSG as a sub-contractor, it would fit the best way possible, given my understanding of how private foundations work.

If there's any trouble then we can also try ARRL Foundation. There's three others after that that are open-source friendly.

Like anything else worth doing, patience and persistence can and does pay off.

mossmann — 4/25/22, 13:17

Thank you!

mossmann — 4/27/22, 14:56

Here is our draft application for your review:

Attachment file type: acrobat

ARDCGrantApplication-270422-2154.pdf

20.96 KB

We plan to improve the formatting a bit. This is a direct export from our collaboration tool.

(and/or we'll just paste things into their form)

We propose that ORI retain the $25k "Other indirect costs" and pass the rest through to GSG.

abraxas3d — 4/27/22, 15:14

Thank you, and looking forward to helping out however we can.

mossmann — 4/27/22, 15:33

We didn't notice until after we started working on it that there is a 1 May deadline that we hope to meet. If you are able to review it this week, we would greatly appreciate it!

abraxas3d — 4/27/22, 15:33

Will do.

abraxas3d — 4/28/22, 17:08

First round of review received and here it is.

At Michelle’s request I’ve reviewed the proposal from Michael Ossman, “A Low-Cost Open-Source Universal Radio Test Instrument” as emailed to the ORI Board mailing list on 27 April. Here are my comments.

The first thing that jumps out is that the proposal is about 85% salaries and benefits. That alone may be grounds for rejection by ARDC. There isn’t much to be done about that, on this type of proposal: that’s where the big costs are.

The proposal is apparently for all the work to be done by paid employees at Great Scott Gadgets. This isn’t the best possible look for a grant proposal. If there’s any volunteer help involved at all, it would be advantageous to call that out. Try to put a value on it. The more volunteer hours can be leveraged, the better those salary expenses look. I’d go so far as to say that some extra salary expense to cover a community relations person might be well justified.

A lawyer or somebody more familiar than I with the public support test for non-profits should review the wisdom of including “Great Scott Gadget contribution” as a line item on the budget spreadsheet. It might be better to omit it, reduce the salary amounts by the same total amount, and then have a text paragraph emphasizing how GSG will be paying about half of the salary cost of the project.

The phasing plan has a good level of detail, and makes sense to me. I suspect the schedule of being aggressive.

The phasing plan doesn’t include any work items for documenting and publishing design details and APIs, or for reviewing and accepting any feedback that might result. These steps are essential to creating a viable open-source user community. The earlier in the process these documents can appear, the better.

I have solicited more and am standing by, gently nagging people.

mossmann — 4/28/22, 19:31

Thank you! This is excellent feedback. I think the suggestions for further commitments to open processes, patents, etc. are excellent

mossmann — 4/28/22, 19:38

We struggled with how to present the budget and with the "could be funded by hardware sales" paragraph (which we considered cutting entirely, but I wanted to see what feedback we would get). We thought of presenting the budget in three ways: 1) Only listing budget items that we're seeking help for (as the reviewer suggested), 2) Listing all budget items for the full scope of development and deducting the amount that we're prepared to invest (which we did), or 3) Listing all budget items and asking for the full amount (which seems greedy since we are prepared to self-fund part of the project).

Another thing we might mention is that the reason we are seeking external funding is to hire more help for the project. While we do have talent on staff that could perform the work, they are quite busy with other important things. We can ask them to spend only a small portion of their time on this project, so we are looking for outside funding that would allow us to grow the team in order to complete this project. 

Also we do have a community manager on staff whom we do anticipate helping with this project. We maybe should have included that in the budget.

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 07:26

Understand. I'd definitely include the community manager. Hiring people to do open source work should be exactly the sort of thing this fund spends money on. We proposed that ARDC should hire people and loan them out to projects on a proposal basis. Sort of like a clearinghouse for extra horsepower. We've heard nothing back from this. We've proposed hiring people directly to do this. We've heard nothing back. Seeing more proposals might tip the balance over. We know for a fact they reversed their "no salaries! volunteers only!" rule. It's just a matter of matching up excellent work with what they can say yes to. This goes for any fund, not just this one.

Emphasis on growing the team to do open source work from a totally proven and active supporter of open source work (GSC) seems like it would be a high-probability-of-success proposal to me.

mossmann — 4/29/22, 07:41

Thank you for the insight into ARDC and for your efforts to influence them! It’s pretty shocking that they had to be convinced to spend money on labor.

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 07:54

They did. They had to be convinced that a CoC was a good idea as well. So far, they've posted a survey about CoCs on Twitter.

mossmann — 4/29/22, 07:54

I would be happy to mention that we will have a CoC for our project (as we do for our other projects and Discord server). 

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 07:56

Yes. ORI requires a CoC from projects, and uses one for the "thin client" organizational structure that we have.

Am familiar with yours, having read over it at least twice.

It's essentially industry standard.

Yes, orgs can paste up a CoC and never enforce it. It ends up being something on a website and not "really real". But, it's clear GSC inhabits the policies.

It's just not something that can be faked.

mossmann — 4/29/22, 09:12

Just went for a run and couldn't stop thinking about this. Literally the only significant barriers to open source development are outreach and folks being able to spend time on open source development. 🤦

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 09:25

Yes. I could not agree more.

We constantly get people asking if they could possibly work for ORI.

Sustainability in Open Source (which is now a significant part of truly important infrastructure, and responsible for trillion dollar companies being successful) is not where it needs to be.

outreach is punishingly hard.

Repetition is the cornerstone of propaganda. Maybe it just needs to be repeated more. We even named it: "Engineers General". Like Attorneys General, but with technical people. 

At some point you have to pay people to do this work. It's really and truly important. It really and truly exists. It really and truly is profitable. It really and truly is already a completely irreplaceable part of the economy.

I'm not sure why it's been so hard. There seems to be a large fraction that expects people to volunteer and be passionate and also produce the sort of complex designs that modern open source absolutely has to have.

This means the volunteer corps is extremely limited to independently wealthy people.

It cannot happen if that's the contact patch.

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 09:34

Trying to go in through schools has been interesting. The thinking here was "we have professionals donating their time. Maybe students are easier."

And the answer there was "no, not really, but not because of the students"

It was because of the way Universities work

Universities wanted a lot of money.

And then, and only then, would the project be put in front of students.

And maybe they would choose it. And maybe they wouldn't.

Either way, the money was gone.

Sometimes you can get a professor that "keelhauls the kids in". But that's retail politics right there, and not scale-able or sustainable either.

So, we have done both.

You are on the right track.

We will help however we can.

mossmann — 4/29/22, 09:56

Can you tell me more about exactly what you mean by "Engineers General"?

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 09:5

Yes, it was our name for "let's try and hire people to tackle the work that open source never seems to have enough time to do". Mainly sustaining engineering and "making it work well" issues.

Not blank paper "fun" design work.

Engineers General would be salaried people that could be assigned to projects that needed more reliable seat-time human resources.

To accomplish specific goals.

Like a Peace Corps for open source amateur radio work.

Multiple conference calls, long email threads, interviews with 40+ people that wanted to do this.

So far crickets from ARDC.

We found that women engineers would simply not take a single-year contract. We found that the right number for everyone was somewhere around 3 years for anything substantial.

We got IEEE salary data and made a salary model and presented it to ARDC.

There is definitely a need for an organized response to open source employment.

Maybe the Ford Foundation or something like that would give some feedback.

Another path is the COSS or commercial open source software world. Need hardware to run software, and COSS funding is surprisingly large.

It's quite the landscape out there.

mossmann — 4/29/22, 11:59

Have you approached any universities outside the US?

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 12:18

Yes - University of Wurtzberg. They do UWE-Sats. Polite answer; no traction on collaboration.

abraxas3d — 4/29/22, 15:40

Second reviewer: 

Concurrence with previous comments, and would also add to the comments about open process that I'd like to see releases of code, information and related documentation by phase, as described in the schedule.

Especially agree with wanting more details about what the plans are for sales after completion of the design - otherwise this reads a lot like "Hey, pay for our product development. We'll open source it!"

Third Reviewer

I'm not sure of whether there will be widespread adoption at a price point close to $1K. There's a large gap between the nanoVNA, HackRF One, PortaPack, and the proposed product. On the other hand, it might be really useful for the classroom. Also, I'm not sure whether this sort of analysis is even relevant to the grant request.

I do think that the device might be useful for a lot of the sorts of things that ORI volunteers are working on.

I think that their description of how the project fulfills ARDC's goals is about as good as can be.

Third reviewer:

I would emphasize that the grant will result in 50 units being in the hands of community contributors and experimenters.

Second reviewer:

I think that if anyone can deliver on this it's Michael and GSG

mossmann — 4/29/22, 15:49

Awesome! Thanks! I'm almost done with the (hopefully) final draft.

mossmann — 4/29/22, 18:24

Here's our second (possibly final) draft:

Attachment file type: acrobat

a-low-cost-open-source-universal-radio-test-instrument-proposal.pdf

131.60 KB

mossmann — 4/29/22, 18:35

We greatly appreciate the feedback from ORI. I'm sure it has helped us make the proposal much stronger.

mossmann — 4/30/22, 10:18

This was submitted with some very minor changes from last night's draft. You should have received an email (probably two because Elizabeth experienced an error with the form) with a link to the submission. Thank you so much for all your help!

abraxas3d — 4/30/22, 10:20

Happy to help! Yes, I see the email confirmation. Looking forward to hearing back.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

ardc@ampr.org

Sat, Apr 30, 2022, 9:28 AM

to me, Elizabeth, Michael

Thank you for submitting your grant application to ARDC!

       Title: A Low-Cost Open-Source Universal Radio Test Instrument

     Authors: Michelle Thompson (Open Research Institute)

              Michael Ossmann (Great Scott Gadgets)

              Elizabeth Hendrex (Great Scott Gadgets)

        Site: https://mailman.ampr.org/hotcrp/paper/272?cap=0272a2whDZRztHx8

Thank you for submitting your proposal! We will contact you with any

questions we have.

<ul>

<li>For proposals submitted before February 15, 2022 we will let you know

if it was accepted by April 22, 2022</li>

<li>For proposals submitted before May 1, 2022 we will let you know if it

was accepted by July 8, 2022</li>

<li>For proposals submitted before July 15, 2022 we will let you know if it

was accepted by September 15, 2022</li

<li>For proposals submitted before October 1, 2022 we will let you know if

it was accepted by December 16, 2022</li>

<li>For proposals submitted after October 1, 2022 we will let you know if

it was accepted in early spring 2023</li>

</ul>

We encourage you to reach out with questions of your own: giving@ampr.org

- ARDC Grants Submissions

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Chelsea Parraga <giving@ardc.net>

Tue, May 17, 2022, 2:01 PM

to me, Michael, Elizabeth, board

Dear Great Scott Gadgets and Open Research Institute,

We regret to inform you that we are declining your grant proposal to ARDC for “#272 A Low-Cost Open-Source Universal Radio Test Instrument."

We'd like to encourage Great Scott Gadgets to reapply with a different project partner and fiscal sponsor. If you have any questions you may contact our staff.

Thank you for the time you invested in your applications, we know this news is disappointing.

Sincerely,

Chelsea

Grants Manager

chelsea@ardc.net

520-471-6903

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

No technical or capability objection was made. In fact, the exact same grant application from GSG was accepted in a back room deal and assigned to TAPR as fiscal sponsor. TAPR is a legacy organization in amateur radio. ARDC decided to simply choose TAPR as the "winner", even after ORI had contributed materially to the quality of the technical content, and even after ORI proved to have a very successful track record on all prior projects including all grants with all funders. 

So why the weird rejection and backroom deal?

ARDC simply didn't want ORI to be part of the grant because the CEO of ORI had repeatedly turned down romantic and sexual overtures from the then President of ARDC, Phil Karn. Phil had proposed better grant access if the CEO of ORI attended a sex party with him, to "discuss possible work in a more comfortable venue".

Comfortable for him. 

He repeatedly asked the female CEO of ORI out for dinner, alone.

Politely declining all of these invitations resulted in "tension" and retribution from ARDC.

Michael Ossmann knew about this history. The sexual proposition happened in 2019. Michael was told about it in person at the 2019 GNU Radio Conference in Huntsville, AL.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how sympathetic many people seem to be to unfair or disgusting behavior. When it comes down to their self interest, they will choose themselves. Not everyone is like this, and ORI probably made a bad bet in spending time and energy with Great Scott Gadgets. It did seem like a good bet based on previous positive interactions. However, the amount of cash created from selling off a valuable community asset proved to be irresistible. 

ORI volunteers immediately started working on alternative funding sources for the test equipment project, with established funding sources that would be much more positive to work with. We offered our own fundraising portal for an in-house effort. This was a big step, but we believed in the project and were confident of its success. 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

abraxas3d — 5/17/22, 14:03

I have it in writing from earlier today where the ARDC board admits to rejecting any ORI proposal. I've never seen anything like it, but based on the personalities of the board members, I'm not surprised. 

I think it might be a good fit for NSF SBIR/STTR, if you wanted to try there. We're registered and have participated in the past. We made the final round with Open Lunar Foundation for a radio project last year.

abraxas3d — 5/17/22, 16:38

IEEE Foundation is another one to consider, but I haven't read through their application guidelines yet.

From the overview page "EPICS in IEEE (Engineering Projects in Community Service) supports community based projects. The project must involve a non-profit organization partner, and must provide a technical solution in IEEE fields of interests to problems in one or more of the EPICS in IEEE categories. Learn more."

abraxas3d — 5/20/22, 08:03

Would you like me to talk to NSF and IEEE?

We also have our own fundraising portal. We use Commit Change.

mossmann — 5/21/22, 08:32

Hey, thank you, Michelle! I'm just starting to catch up after being offline while busy moving out of my house and lab in Colorado. I'm now en route to my new home in Ontario, Canada. I'll follow up with you next werk.

abraxas3d — 5/21/22, 08:43

Ontario! It's beautiful there!

Safe journies and talk to you soon.

abraxas3d — 6/3/22, 10:14

Checking in.

mossmann — 6/10/22, 13:01

Hey!  Sorry I've been distracted, but we are definitely interested in following up with you regarding the funding opportunities you suggested, particularly NSF.

Is this the solicitation you had in mind? https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22551/nsf22551.htm?org=NSF

abraxas3d — 6/10/22, 13:25

Yes - that's the general class of grant that I think this work could get funding for. You wouldn't need us as a fiscal sponsor, I don't think - it's designed for small business, directly.

The societal benefit of what you do in general, and what this particular thing would do specifically, does light up the program goals.

You are, to me, exactly what it should be helping.

we'd be happy to be a partner research institution (required)

it's a parallel thing, not a fiscal sponsor thing.

or you could choose any other research institution you like.

The primary investigator "must have a legal right to work for the proposing company in the United States, as evidenced by citizenship, permanent residency, or an appropriate visa." so if you have that, and are the PI, then it's good.

I know you mentioned moving to Canada and I am not up to date on that or what it means or implies with respect to GSC, but there is a lot of latitude in NSF grants because people willing to do the work you have been doing are kind of thin on the ground, to be honest.

This is just one option - there are others.

mossmann — 6/10/22, 13:51

I'm a US citizen and certainly eligible to work for GSG. So far I am a temporary resident of Canada and still maintain my primary residence in the US (Michigan).

abraxas3d — 6/10/22, 13:52

I see zero impediment.

abraxas3d — 6/11/22, 07:08

IEEE EPICS too - let me dig in and try and figure out what's still needed to apply there. Locally, SDSU is putting in an application through IEEE SD Section (I'm currently the section chair) and I can use what I learn in the process of that, for an application for GSC.

Test equipment for ham radio could get an ARRL club grant (up to $24,999) but we're not a club, so we'd have to find someone to apply. I don't think that would be very hard at all.

abraxas3d — 6/11/22, 07:57

I can ask SBMS, if that would be ok with you?

mossmann — 6/11/22, 07:58

sure!

abraxas3d — 6/11/22, 08:00

It might rule out commercial work in the rules. I'll check and then ask if it can go ahead. And, I'm looking out for more sources too.

abraxas3d — 6/12/22, 13:29

No commercial awards for ARRL - not surprising.

abraxas3d — 9/9/22, 12:02

Hello from webinar!

Sent you email about sam.gov registration.

We had to do the 2022 ID check the old-fashioned way - with a paper letter sent to us with a code. Sort of like LoTW 😄

mossmann — 9/9/22, 12:03

Thanks for letting me know about the webinar.

abraxas3d — 9/9/22, 12:03

of course

very curious about the details.

ESA has something very similar, that is quite excellent, but isn't as general purpose as this one seems to be.

abraxas3d — 9/9/22, 12:12

This is very promising so far.

abraxas3d — 9/9/22, 13:27

TIP division might be something to look at too

And CCSI. I think that's where the 4 grants I was working on with Dr. Moberley came from.

abraxas3d — 9/9/22, 13:59

ok we're going to talk about it at the board level and see what we can come up with.

abraxas3d — 9/12/22, 08:12

Derek Kozel says they're going to apply for GNU Radio. I thought that was interesting, since I view GNU Radio as having an established ecosystem already. Derek doesn't feel that way. He views GNU Radio as in crisis and burning out volunteer leaders. POSE seems to be something he believes can fix the problems that he perceives.

mossmann — 9/12/22, 08:30

That seems reasonable to me. Even if the ecosystem appears healthy, it's worth applying for funding if you could make the ecosystem even better with that funding.

abraxas3d — 9/12/22, 08:30

I view GNU Radio as trapped in a local maximum.

mossmann — 9/12/22, 08:31

fair

abraxas3d — 9/12/22, 08:32

Given what Derek described, it sounds like some stagnation and stress is going on. I'm not clear on how money can kick it clear of that trap. My gut instinct is that it needs a lot more engaged people enforcing some processes that might not be working as good as they should.

I sent Derek the link to the webinar page and told him the slides had a LOT of stuff about the life cycle of the grant and what tests were going to be applied. I think that will help them a lot.

If funding can get engagement (doesn't always happen) then the things Derek is talking about could get fixed pretty fast. It's a mature product (in my opinion) but the number of PRs and stuff seems to be piling up.

I found a really good book about open source software (Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software) and it talks about this sort of thing.

You can get to a state where the "upper part" like the PRs and issues and swirling about in the github repos starts to dominate, and the original product vision starts to get pulled off track. I guess it's because people assume the product is "done".

This isn't necessarily bad, I don't think. You have to have some sort of base to modify. You have to say something is done enough to be made or sold or withstand scrutiny or review.

Derek sees the core dev team of GNU Radio as not letting the software be "done" but also not touching the runtime, which to him is pretty creaky and needs attention.

Hence wholesale changes that nuke all older flowgraphs, or blocks being written out from under people, things like that.

abraxas3d — 9/12/22, 08:39

He wanted a code freeze back in 2020 just to catch up with what he thought were necessary maintenance and documentation issues. This didn't happen.

I didn't ask him if SETI was helping write the grant. The application to POSE is pretty daunting. Steve Conklin, our CFO, is reading through all that stuff they linked to in the webinar.

mossmann — 9/12/22, 08:41

Yeah, It is quite daunting. I'm going to discuss some possibilities with Elizabeth this week, but I suspect we will not pursue an application because it's so difficult and costly to apply.

abraxas3d — 9/12/22, 08:43

If there's anything I can do to help out let me know. We might try with Opulent Voice, especially if it can be an alternative to VARA.

I wish I'd known about the Phase 1 before it happened - I read over that page and it was simpler.

Someone in Q&A asked if they were going to do another full round (starting at Phase 1) but I don't remember that question being answered.

abraxas3d — 11/7/22, 12:06

Checking in - ready to apply for anything that might help GSG.

mossmann — 11/7/22, 15:28

Hey, Michelle! We ended up getting our project funded by ARDC after reapplying with TAPR in the late spring. We haven’t announced it yet as there are a few loose ends we’re dealing with in our arrangement with TAPR.

We decided that POSE isn’t for us.

We were considering the NSF SBIR/STTR solicitation for a longer-term project, but we weren’t able to act in time and now are very busy trying to ramp up the project with TAPR. We may be interested in exploring similar opportunities in 2023.

abraxas3d — 11/7/22, 21:01

You went with ARDC even though you knew about the sexual harassment from ARDC's president? I shared this with you at Huntsville GRCon.

I declined Phil Karn's repeated advances. He tied dating him to future grant requests. I complained to their board in private. They have done all they can to cover it up. The retribution has been deeply unfair and damaging.

abraxas3d — 11/7/22, 21:10

It has ranged from simply bribing projects at ORI to leave, to lies about our qualifications and status.

abraxas3d — 11/7/22, 21:17

I feel sad that we were not included as volunteers or collaborators, after we made a commitment to support this. Was there a reason?

It would be reassuring to hear about this longer term project you have in mind. 

Schedules for SBIRs can be long. They do not tend to have rolling deadlines.

abraxas3d — 11/8/22, 07:51

I'm copying your reply above to the ORI board, so I don't get anything wrong. They were very enthusiastic about working with GSG.

mossmann — 11/10/22, 04:36

I was troubled by your report of Phil's behavior. It is one of the reasons I came to you first when we began to consider ARDC as a funding source.

I would not donate to ARDC, but I will take their money and put it toward something that I believe is a positive contribution to the community. We felt that the universal radio test instrument project was a better fit for ARDC's program than for any of the other funding sources we had identified.

We plan to gift prototype hardware to volunteers but have not yet made the project public. GSG will be running the project, not TAPR or ARDC. You are welcome to be involved if you would like.

The longer term project we have in mind is a research project exploring hardware designs and DSP techniques for SDR using high speed digital transceivers as 1-bit ADCs or DACs. This would, at least initially, use the 5+ GHz SERDES available in many FPGAs.

abraxas3d — 11/10/22, 07:09

Thank you. It's been incredibly painful.

abraxas3d — 11/10/22, 07:22

I have stories about TAPR, but maybe some other time.

abraxas3d — 11/10/22, 07:32

ARDC doesn't solicit or take donations. They don't need money in any way. Four men decided that they personally owned a huge block of IPv4 addresses. These addresses were given to the amateur radio community and were supposed to be managed for the benefit of all. They woke up one day, decided to sell them to amazon without any community involvement, discussion, notice, or feedback, and have asserted ever since that they personally and privately own this money. They've asserted other even more out there things, but that's the original sin of this money and that's one of the reasons they act the way they do.

Yes, you should use it for the good. We do.

According to ARDC, ORI "tricked" them into any money we've received from them.

Those applications were written by NSF grant managers, so it's not like they were bad applications.

abraxas3d — 11/10/22, 07:41

I'll do what I can do to lay groundwork for highspeed SERDES. We have a lot of this sort of thing working already in Remote Labs. Get back to me when there's opportunity to move forward.

abraxas3d — 11/11/22, 08:20

How much can I say about the research project? Today's our weekly report.

mossmann — 11/11/22, 08:49

I’d rather not have it mentioned in public yet.

abraxas3d — 11/11/22, 11:29

Ok.

abraxas3d — 11/27/22, 09:47

I think that you are assuming we'll survive wealthy organizations like ARDC poaching project after project, lying about our volunteers and work, and telling amateur radio organizations to ignore us "or else".

It's not clear that anyone, not even me and the wonderful people that work with me at ORI, can survive this.

Do you have a timeline for the SERDES project, so we can line things up for it to be a success? 

abraxas3d — 1/14/23, 09:22

I'd like an answer.

mossmann — 1/16/23, 04:29

I'm sorry, but I haven't had time to think about future projects lately. We do not have a timeline.

abraxas3d — 4/5/23, 08:55

The experience with the GSC ARDC grant turned out to be the final attempt from ORI to serve the amateur radio community. We were all stunned that you waited months to reveal you'd dumped us for quick cash. If you'd been honest about it at the time, it would have been appreciated. TAPR never had any intention of including ORI, since they'd already been "instructed" to blacklist and exclude ORI volunteers, on penalty of losing their TangerineSDR grant. We got this in writing because Scotty Cowling forgets who is included on TAPR Slack, and they freely discussed how best to cut us out of the things in order to ensure grant money. None of the years of service and public promotion of TAPR, collaboration with that organization, and effort mattered, at all. 

I'm now 50, and I have had a hard life full of starting over. I've been able to tackle each of these transitions with quiet optimism and a fair amount of competence, and succeed. I'm honestly just too old to completely start over after being wiped out again by a hobby-consuming SuperPAC that apes venture capital firms.

abraxas3d — 5/23/23, 09:49

Still very disappointed in a sex pest interfering with grants and activity in amateur radio. I expected so much more from you, and many others in the community.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

-mdt

XZ

 I'm sure many of you reading this have heard about the xz vulnerability. To be very brief, a backdoor was discovered in the xz Linux utility. This is a big deal. First, the fact that it was discovered and reported proves that open source "works". But, the cost was very high. This incident exposes severe cultural problems in open source that Open Research Institute (ORI) has sought to address, with some success. ORI is a non-profit R&D firm that specializes in open source digital radio. Amateur radio is the primary beneficiary of this work. ORI practices a behind-the-scenes supportive and inclusive approach, and has had objective, clear, and continuing success. It creates a vibrant reality. Unfortunately, even ORI projects that directly benefit amateur radio have fallen prey to bullying, powermongering, and targeted harassment from time to time. 

An accurate summary article about the xz hack can be found here.

https://theintercept.com/2024/04/03/linux-hack-xz-utils-backdoor/

There are many very important things covered in this article and others written about this hack. Open source work powers virtually all of the internet and a large swath of critical communications infrastructure. The unquestioned importance of open source work in our modern life is one of the reasons why this incident is important. Nearly 100% of internet infrastructure runs on Linux. If you like the internet or use it, you care about xz. Linux is absolutely essential to modern amateur radio. If you care about amateur radio, then you care about Linux. 

Secondly, people, out of altruism and volunteerism, motivation and agency, donate their time and talent to make all sorts of open source things. The costly squandering of goodwill and good effort, which was how this hack happened, is another reason why this incident is important. The reason it almost worked is because, like we see with traditional amateur radio organizations, individual people with small amounts of power will actively exploit the good will of many volunteers in order to promote selfish and harmful aims and purposes. These aims and purposes are corrupt. When they are found in our hobby they harm amateur radio. These views are unfortunately very real and they are widely held. These views hurt amateur radio because people take actions based on their unexamined and unconfronted views and prejudices. The way that bad culture harms individuals in amateur radio is similar to the way that the xz hack has hurt the Linux community. 

We, as a society, have benefited enormously from open source work. Yet, open source volunteers have tolerated a huge amount of abuse and "yanking the rug out from underneath" for decades. This contemptuous treatment of the goose that laid the golden egg has had predictable results, multiple times. The xz hack is not an unexpected or unusual result. There are important parallels to the way women's unpaid work is treated. We can find a way out of this mess by confronting the root causes of these related symptoms. 

The technical is social before it is technical. If the social framework for technical work is broken for many, and I am here to assert that it definitely is, then technical work is stuck at a local maximum *at best*. Sure, it might work quite well for some. Now, if you only care about how you're doing and your personal projects, then this might be enough for you. But, something that is broken and manipulated in your favor yet leaves out others means that a lot of your peers will not have an easy time of it, and they won't be able to help you in the long run. If they haven't already quit a long time ago, they may in the near future, or will simply not have the energy or margin to support you and your work even if they do hang around. This fact of life will harshly limit how far *you* can expect to proceed. After all, you need a lot of peers and a big audience for the project you care about to be recognized or appreciated. 

Have you stood by and watched while a bunch of your most enthusiastic and capable peers get run off? We've lost 20% of US women licensees over the past decade alone. Are you even aware of this exodus? If not then please consider why it might negatively affect the adoption of your personal pet project or tech. Women are in control of spending in 70-80% of US households. If your project is ham radio related, and there are statistically significantly fewer women licensees, you have far fewer people that may be inclined to green light either a purchase or be ok with a bunch of time spent away from the family for a hobby that is increasingly unwelcoming to women. 

In the writing business, we're told (top to bottom) to "Buy other author's work. Just do it. Every chance you get. Promote their work. Show up for them. We are all in this together." Do you wonder why this is the case? Do you find this to be weird? You shouldn't. Producers and creators tell each other, and have been telling each other for decades, to stand together and support each other, because a rising tide lifts all boats. Otherwise, the entire writing economy fails. Why exactly this (imperfectly) successful method is largely absent in open source, I don't know. 

The xz maintainer was targeted and manipulated in a way that's totally acceptable in open source work. The shitty way they were treated is normalized. Those of us at ORI have spoken up against this sort of thing in the past and will continue to speak up against it as long as it is a problem. In some circles, and by some people (several specific people in amateur radio come to mind), the mentality that led to the xz hack has a positive connotation. Attacking anyone that might be a "threat", no matter how twisted the logic, and isolating and targeting the people that want to be collaborative and productive? Actions taken out of jealousy and spite are widely acceptable behavior in amateur radio. This is a behavior that is distinct and deeply inferior to peer review, which can also be painful but follows a different, and in my view, a more productive social contract. 

Ethics matter in tech. It's deeply unethical to simultaneously define "critical internet infrastructure" as also "just a hobby done in your free time". Disappointingly, this works - because people can, and absolutely do, amazing things under bad circumstances when they clearly see an unmet need. Society gets *something for nothing*, by burning people out. We burn people out by letting them publicly stick their necks out, work hard, and publish extremely useful results of all sorts, while failing to back them up, protect them, compensate them, credit them, or include them in the eventual profits or success. 

What's the difference between the people society lets burn out and the people society insists on rewarding? Quite often it's their race and gender. In the case of open source maintainers, the people most often taken advantage of are the people that *act* supportive and nurturing (in other words, they "act like a woman"). Blowhard bullies get more of a pass, no matter how absent or infrequent their work. People that altruistically care are frequently a target, or are ditched or ghosted or made to feel inferior in whatever way is convenient to keep them "silently productive".

Eventually corrupt code is published in the supply chain as a result of this cultural dichotomy of value. The missing ingredient? Just like the work of unpaid housewives, donated open source work is not properly valued and can be socially exploited, just as it was in this particular case. Money can't save the day, even though funding does help - but it helps only if it is properly administered. We've seen that when it is not properly administered, money really ruins things. There is a reason we say that the love of money is the root of all evil. Money doesn't help if the social parts are still broken. 

What we are talking about beneath the surface is the repeated insistence by larger society to relegate open source work as something very much like "women's work", or unpaid labor that is "owed" because "that's your job so shut up and do it really well" because "we honestly can't get by without it but as long as we can trick you into doing it by humiliation or force then we'll continue to get away with it". Bullies are allowed to show up and produce mediocre work. Male bullies and blowhards especially get rewards that the altruistic people of any gender simply do not ever receive. 

The internet is super important. The internet should "just work" and "those nerds don't have much of a life anyway, so why can't they just get this right". It's the exact same situation as "dumb housewife just effing do all this scut work without bothering me so I can get back to focusing on my real job". The long term effects on society of devaluing the work, while expecting it to be done for free, have been studied and are negative. I think we can see the same story in open source. You can literally see the contempt for open source maintainers - with the exact same language directed towards housewives - in github comment after github pull request after github comment. 

Treating people badly is a security risk. Failing to value hard and meaningful work gifted to the general public (or a household) is equivalent to treating people badly. This isn't very hard to figure out. It has been incredibly hard to fix, even when the costs are painfully clear.

The bad actors in the case of the xz hack (and yes, this was a long con hack) were able to do this with impunity because they used the same nasty tactics that *work* in many open source projects. Shame and doubt and insinuations that the maintainter is a failure that needs to atone to "the community/household" forever, without real support? This is common. 

This has been written about before. It is promulgated by the current open source culture and echoes strongly in amateur radio. Amateur radio is a culture that is extremely homogenous and VERY resistant to change. You all have seen how harshly punished our modest efforts at ORI to be competent, selfless, collaborative, and supportive have been treated. I can assure you, working well and hard, and watching incredibly talented technical volunteers getting kicked in the teeth as a ''reward", is not fun at all. 

Bad amateur radio politics are so well known at this point, that amateur radio has been largely written out of emergency communications plans and actively avoided by the professionals in public service communications. Universities are extremely cautious about including us. It's a disaster for an international radio service to have the bottom fall out like this. But, it's happening. It's happening because of the same problems that lead to the xz hack work so well in ham radio technical culture. 

These issues really do affect our frequency allocations. We'd have far more frequencies and be much more deeply involved in the regulatory process if we were socially healthy and inclusive.

Being honest about addressing the social problems of ham radio is the key to solving nearly every other problem in the radio service. We can continue to deny this fact and barely survive with flat or negative growth in the US while watching other countries experience steep licensee declines, or we can change course and take full advantage of the best it's ever been for the radio arts. 

What are we waiting for? 

-Michelle Thompson

The Technical Part is Never the Hardest Part

Adapted from a presentation at the University of California San Diego for IEEE in November 2023. 

Video of the talk can be found here: https://youtu.be/BhxrxITHB_o

When we think about technology and society, and how our technology should serve people, we often think of efficiency, entertainment, and productivity increases. We tend to believe that technological advancement is inherently good, and we set things up to where not much stands in the way of claimed technical progress. Many engineers produce highly technical work, throw it over a wall, and expect it to be used as intended and for positive purposes.

However, the technical part is never the hardest part. The people part is always the hardest part. And if you do not design with this in mind, what you work on can fail to achieve your goals, or even worse, do much more harm than good. 

I’m Michelle Thompson and I’m an engineer, executive, and entrepreneur. 

Let’s address something right away. The technical part is actually very hard. People spend years in training and many more years more employed doing difficult technical work before achieving even modest success in science or engineering. There is very little worth doing that is easy. The technical challenges we tackle are highly complex. Failures, setbacks, and roadblocks are ahead of you, all the time. It’s easy to think that’s the whole story. But, it isn’t. 

This is a talk about advice on how to be a better engineer or scientist. And the first and most important bit of advice I have for you is Do Not Give Advice. Unless it is asked for. And unless you can give it as a gift. Listen carefully to the person you want to help by giving them advice. Are you being asked for a Solution or are you being asked for Sympathy? If it’s not clear, then ask. If it’s sympathy, and in a professional context, then provide it. Ask them to keep explaining until they have complained themselves out. And then keep this confidence to yourself. There are exceptions to this, such as mandated reporting of abuse, illegal behavior, or self harm. 

Are you being asked for a solution? Do you have something productive to say? Then offer your solution as a gift. Gifts have no strings. Advice given with an expectation of control or compliance is not advice, it’s management. 

The purpose of a system is what it does. Not what it was designed to do. Not what you want it to do. Not what you need it to do. Not what it is expected to do. Not what you hope it does. The purpose of a system is what it actually does. That is the purpose.

It can be very difficult to listen to people that are telling you that your system or procedure or rule or code or product hurts them, or others. You may believe that it’s their own fault, that they are using it wrong, don’t deserve to have access to the product or design in the first place, or do not understand what you have created or enforced. That’s fine, and there’s space for disagreement. Not every system serves everyone. 

However, the purpose of a system is what it does. When people bring proof to you that your system is doing something harmful to them, it is much more likely that they are right, than you are wrong. A good engineer prioritizes fixing the system instead of attacking the messengers, users, members, or customers. There are times to defend the status quo from unnecessary changes. Be very sure you are defending a status quo for solid reasons. Be willing to do an honest review. Document what you see, even if changes are not possible. The next design will be much better informed. Science publication often ignores negative results. However, these results are incredibly valuable. Do the thankless work of recording what you see. You will benefit yourself and others.

The purpose of a system is always emergent. The effects and consequences and repercussions of a system really do not care about your intentions or assumptions that drove the design. Don’t argue with ground truth. Learn from it. 

And, there are always unintended consequences. A good engineer looks for these, anticipates these, and welcomes these. They will teach you what you should be looking at to fix the current design, and what you should be starting off with on the next design. 

Things worth doing are rarely easy. Exceptions are things like brushing your teeth. If it’s worth doing, other people probably haven’t already done it to death. And, not all hard work is worth you doing it. 

A system is defined not by the rules but how they are enforced. Rules that are enforced capriciously or only against one particular group indicate corruption or a police state. 

There’s a big difference between rules and boundaries. Rules are things we expect others to do or not do. We expect rules to result in changes or modifications to other people’s behaviors. There are penalties for disobeying rules that are usually enforced by some sort of external authority. 

Boundaries are conditions that are enforced by ourselves. We notify others that we have a boundary condition, like if you yell at me again, I will leave the room. Or, if you don’t pay me on time again, I will quit. Boundaries provide a clear description of what an individual will do if certain behaviors continue, but do not attempt to control or coerce changes in behavior in others. The choice to change the behavior is entirely up to them. The repercussions are enforced by the individual affected on what they can control, which is themselves.

In situations where rules are not enforced or do not help you at all, boundaries give you control and agency. Boundaries reduce harm and provide a framework for surviving difficult situations. What boundaries do  you have? What would you do if you saw something illegal, immoral, or unethical? What would you do if you found out you were being treated differently than others? What if that difference caused harm to you or others? Is there a situation in your life where you really wished someone had behaved differently? Is there something you wished that you could have done differently in the past? These are opportunities for developing boundaries that will make your future self happier and more capable as a designer and problem solver. We can’t make our best designs when we are afraid or stressed out. 

The technical is social before it is technical. Nothing technical exists in a vacuum or apart from people. 

Do not trivialize use cases. Poor use cases lead to poor implementations of otherwise excellent technology. Use cases need to involve actual humans. Use cases need to involve a variety of humans. If you do not do this, if you do not have or listen carefully to feedback, your design may end up hurting people. 

Your intentions and expectations of how the design is going to be used is not a replacement for what you get from listening to current and future users. You get to decide what’s worth listening to, but in order to get good feedback, you have to put in the work to make it possible for people to give it to you in the first place. 

You will be constantly confronted with unethical behavior. There may be no repercussions for unethical or illegal behavior. You will have to decide what you are going to do about it. Choose carefully.

This can be very hard. Your job or funding or relationships or reputation may be on the line. Everyone else might be doing it. People will make fun of regulatory processes, safety requirements, end users, management, and so on. Stick up for the right way to do things, especially when no one is watching. 

Money or power doesn’t change people.

An influx of money or power simply reveals who they really are.

Good governance is the entire game. Be part of good governance, even when it’s hard, or when  people in charge fail to follow their own rules. 

Do you recognize this image?

This is from a very famous and effective 1940s advertising campaign. How did it come about? Most of the US fire fighters went off to fight in World War II. Research revealed that 9 of 10 forest fires could be prevented, if people made small behavioral changes. An advertising campaign was designed and deployed to get people to make small changes. 

It worked. The resulting fire prevention saved a lot of lives and property. 

There were, of course, unintended consequences. Fires serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Decades of fire suppression lead to fuels imbalance and wildfires that were difficult to control and fight. 

Similar to this ad campaign, only you can prevent toxic behavior that wrecks technical work. It’s you. You’re it. 

You will have human resources. You will have great managers. You will have wonderful co-workers. If you want a clean and healthy job site, it’s something you must actively maintain. Suppressing toxic behavior also has unintended consequences. Those consequences will have to be recognized and adapted to in order to make further progress. 

It’s not always about who you are talking to. It is about who is listening. Bystanders are in the long run more important than targets. Especially when the target is invincibly ignorant, or you can’t win. 

Do not forget your indirect audience. Seeing someone stand up to a bully, or stick up for ethical funding procedures, or speak out against falsifying test data, is crucial to future health and success, even if you are attacked or punished for speaking up. 

Assholes will win. If you find yourself in a situation where repercussions are not enforced for bad behavior, quit. Do not be afraid to quit. Even if it doesn’t directly affect you. Even if the bad behavior benefits you. Why? It eventually will. You just haven’t been affected yet. 

Get used to thinking, “Not on my watch”. Encourage others that are also ethical engineers. Add them to your network. Take them to lunch. Develop strong ties with them. This will pay off. 

What do you do when you have the situation where you have to confront that “This wasn’t what I was hired for”? 

Likely you will do wildly different things than what is in your degree. You will have to adapt, learn, and come up to speed on new things all the time.

If you are hired for (or to develop) specific expertise, and you are not being listened to, are routinely overruled, or your work erased, deleted, or trivialized, find another job and quit. 

Kindness is contagious. However, the incubation period is indeterminately long. 

Ambush meetings? Just say no. 

What is an ambush meeting? It’s when the true topic of discussion is kept hidden until you show up. The organizer may also hide who will actually be at the meeting.

Call it what it is and consider not participating. This may have repercussions, but going along with it will result in worse treatment. 

Ambush meetings clearly communicate that you are not valued as a colleague, employee, or collaborator. 

A related topic is pull-asides. If you are approached in the hallway and asked to commit to something, no matter how innocent it sounds, thank the person and tell them you will go think about it and get back to them later. Do not agree to anything when caught off guard in a pull-aside. These have no written agenda, no paper trail, no acknowledgement of extra duties or responsibilities. Do not let your helpful and generous nature be taken advantage of, whether it’s intentional or not. Be courteous but clear. Meetings need to be transparent, have agendas, and happen on equal terms. 

Listen first. You will never make a catastrophic mistake by listening.

Eavesdropping is not listening.

Remember whatever you happen to hear.

It’s ok to say “That is none of my business”, and keep an opinion to yourself. 

All of this advice comes from hard-earned experience, and has served me and others very well. Your experiences and your stories are just as valid. If you find what I have said useful, please share it. If you would like to talk more about what I have shared, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

 

ARIP Inclusivity Pledge

Proudly Making the Amateur Radio Inclusivity Pledge

Looking forward to positive change in the amateur radio services. 

It's easy for me to affirm and promote the participation of ALL licensed amateurs in our hobby and service. I happily celebrate the diversity of race, color, sex, range of abilities, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, fursona, age, national origin, marital status, socioeconomic status, and physical characteristics represented in amateur communities. 

This is normal, common sense, and results in a better experience in amateur radio for everyone. 

Activity Report as ARRL Technical Advisor 2020-2022

Here's what was submitted to ARRL in December 2022. 

Michelle Thompson W5NYV

TA Since: 2020

Based on my activities over the past two years, detailed below, and my continuing interest in the ARRL technical program, I apply for reappointment as an ARRL Technical Advisor. 

In addition to the below activities, I am employed as an executive at a commercial voice and data telecommunications firm serving rural northeastern Mississippi. I am responsible for identifying and executing our technology roadmap while maintaining very high levels of service in challenging geographic and economic conditions. 

I plan to retire from commercial work no earlier than 2038.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

January 2022 to present

Chair San Diego Section of IEEE

Complete and ongoing

Being the chair of one of the largest IEEE sections in the United States means running a section with a very large number of IEEE chapters. This has given me an opportunity to promote and defend amateur radio to both academia and industry.

One of the most high profile achievements is that the San Diego Section is now the home of the second IEEE MOVE Truck, an emergency communications support vehicle with amateur radio equipment included. This project happened with my full support. I lobbied for the funding and helped to spearhead the effort to get this resource for the Western United States located in San Diego. 

You can read more about this project at: 

https://move.ieeeusa.org

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

March 2021 to present

Chair San Diego Chapter of Information Theory Society

Complete and ongoing

The Information Theory Society Chapter of San Diego has presented the following amateur radio oriented meetings over the past two years. I made sure these meetings happened, were accessible to both in person and online participants, and that the content was up to IEEE standards. 

https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/280773

https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/307302

https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/299307

https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/308539

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 

February 2020 to March 2021

Vice Chair San Diego Chapter of Information Theory

Completed

Laid the groundwork for the chapter to include open source amateur radio work from San Diego members. This was very successful, with an open forum attended by 20 people at ITA2020 producing a lengthy list of amateur radio aspects that members wanted to see IEEE address and support. The perceived lack of technical innovation from amateur radio, and the effect on education in the years to come, was a top concern. 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

January 2020 to present

Chair Amateur Radio Activities for IMS2023

Ongoing

I’m the chair of the amateur radio activities for the IEEE 2023 International Microwave Society conference. This conference had a strong tradition of ARRL involvement, with ARRL occupying a free booth in the vendor area, a Ham Radio Social on the Tuesday evening of the conference, and more. Participation got highly positive reviews from the 7,000 attendees. Attendees are heavily involved in engineering education and RF industry positions.

A free booth in the vendor area and space at the Ham Social were offered at no cost. ARRL declined to participate for 2023, but maybe they’ll return in 2024. 

However, I’ve made it possible for ARRL to be represented at the social with materials about the education program at ARRL, local ARRL representatives have been invited to the Ham Social, and a solid technical demonstration lineup will be seen throughout the event. 

Amateur radio has been invited to be part of the central pavilion in the vendor area.  

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

November 2020 to present

Member of Board of Space Industry Advisors at Virginia Tech 

Ongoing

https://www.space.vt.edu/advisoryboard.html

Out of the 31 board members, John Klingelhoeffer and I  are the only ones representing amateur radio interests. 

Virginia Tech has a prominent position in the engineering education landscape in the United States. Keeping amateur radio as focus at this school is an ongoing and challenging effort.

 

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March 2021 to present

Member Planning Committee RATPAC

Ongoing

https://sites.google.com/view/ratpac

RATPAC develops and presents two talks a week on amateur radio activity. The Wednesday evening presentation is of general interest. The Thursday evening presentation is focused on Emergency Communications. 

The catalog of all previous talks can be found at 

https://www.youtube.com/c/RATPAC

The catalog currently contains over 150 original videos from community leaders in amateur radio. RATPAC has nearly 2000 subscribers and the programs are widely used as amateur radio club programs.

My job includes attending weekly planning meetings where programs suggestions are reviewed and action items assigned. Development of a presentation may be very involved or as simple as inviting an experienced speaker on the subject. 

At 100 presentations a year, this is almost three times the number of presentations offered by any US hamfest. Unlike some hamfest forums, there is extensive Q&A which is captured as part of the recording and available on YouTube for free. 

The RATPAC committee is an excellent example of community participation in amateur radio. It has built a wonderful network of people and a growing archive of video recordings of immediate and enduring interest to amateur radio. 

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February 2020 to present

CEO of Open Research Institute, Inc.

Ongoing

I’m the current CEO and founder of the only research institute dedicated to amateur radio. 

We now have over 42 repositories of open source design work for amateur radio, sponsor a wide variety of projects, and are starting to bring ones begun in the 2019 timeframe to completion.

We have received funding from four different foundations and a large number of private donors. We have applications in to GitHub and IEEE.

We completed landmark regulatory work that frees open source communications satellite work from both ITAR and EAR. This is unprecedented, underappreciated, and underreported despite our best efforts.

We completed landmark regulatory work for Debris Mitigation and Orbits for Amateur Radio. This is also unprecedented and underreported.

We have successfully obtained an STA for sounding rocket work from the US Government. 

We have successfully won another sounding rocket mission from NASA, in collaboration with a private company. This mission features open source satellite circuits on 70cm. 

We have proposed the world’s first Open Source HEO project to JAMSAT. This project is ongoing work that includes open source propulsion, current technology digital communications, and FPGA development. 

We have the world’s first fully functional remote access FPGA stations for 7000 series Xilinx FPGAs. We include the Ultrascale+ as a bonus. We also have PLUTOs, MATLAB with all toolboxes, and a full floating license for Vivado. Attempts to publicize these opportunities for hams through ARRL, as all of this is available for free for any open source amateur radio work, have not been successful yet. It would be wonderful to get more attention on these advanced resources. 

My role is daily executive service to a highly accomplished and inspiring board of directors at ORI. It’s a privilege to serve this organization. 

 

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March 2020 to present

Secretary San Bernardino Microwave Society

Ongoing

I have been the the recording secretary for the San Bernardino Microwave Society since March 2020. 

I have presented twice to the club in the past two years. The first was about open source 10 GHz multimedia beacon designs. The second was how computing has been used in amateur radio from the 1980s through the future, which includes AI/ML.

I write expanded meeting minutes at each monthly meeting that include a summary of all technical reports from all members at the monthly meeting round table. This content is sent to the newsletter chair. 

I edited and submitted the ARRL Club Grant for SBMS, to fund modern digital beacons for spectrum defense. Microwave bands are under direct assault from the cellular industry, and occupancy is believed to be a factor in retaining the use of our bands throughout the next decade.

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January 2022 to December 2023

Member Technological Advisory Council of the United States Federal Communications Commission

Completed

I represented Open Source and Amateur Radio interests through Open Research Institute at the FCC TAC for 2022. I was a member of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Working Group. 

My job required weekly meetings where we either had a guest speaker, or deliberations on what regulations to recommend to the FCC. 

Our work products were a set of recommendations, a codex of articles, and a slide deck of 250 slides documenting all of the technical background for the three sets of recommendations. 

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January 2022 to December 2023

Chair of “Safe Uses of AI/ML” Sub Working Group of the Technological Advisory Council of the United States Federal Communications Commission

Completed

I was the co-chair of the “Safe Uses of AI/ML” Sub Working Group of the FCC TAC for 2022. I served alongside Paul Steinberg of Motorola. I represented Open Source and Amateur Radio interests. 

My job required scheduling meetings, recording, editing, and publishing the meetings to the TAC, recruiting guest expert witness speakers, and producing, editing, and presenting the recommendations from the Sub Working Group to the full TAC. 

All of the recommendations from the Sub Working Group were unanimously adopted by the FCC TAC on 8 December 2022. 

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September 2019 to September 2021

Member Board of Directors of AMSAT

Completed

I was prevented from serving AMSAT in this position by incumbent board members who were very angry I won a position and publicly stated that they were going to retaliate by any means necessary.

Legal action was taken after six months of polite requests to be seated on the board. AMSAT was found to be in the wrong in two out of two actions, both involving defamation.

This disappointing experience has been publicly documented here:

 https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/9085758q=label%3A%22AMSAT%20Board%20of%20Directors%22

AMSAT leadership did not behave honorably or well during these two years, with multiple examples of unprofessional and extremist speech at the two required annual meetings they were forced to hold according to the by-laws.

Incumbents wrote and passed (as they held an insurmountable majority) several by-laws changes specifically designed to remove candidates that current board members do not approve of. These by-laws were designed to prevent people like me or Patrick from being able to run for the board. 

I have multiple circuits in space through AMSAT, volunteered tirelessly for many years across many projects, staffed their booths, gave talks, recruited members, and was deeply disappointed to be treated so badly by people that never even bothered to introduce themselves to me. 

I appreciate all the people that voted for me in a landslide victory in a crowded field, and was resolutely dedicated to serving those members’ interests for the entire two years. 

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August 2022

Exposed Corruption at ARDC

Completed

https://w5nyv.blogspot.com/2022/08/update-on-troubling-situation.html

ARDC is corrupt. This is not an isolated example.  

ORI is not the only organization to be treated this way. Other organizations and individuals have also not been treated unfairly by ARDC. This is an extremely important thing to speak up about given the massive amount of money suddenly available in amateur radio.

I do not believe in sacrificing ethics in exchange for any amount of money. I do not believe that a foundation in amateur radio should behave in a consistently unethical manner. 

All objections to unethical behavior at ARDC were made privately multiple times before they were published. 

Deliberately harming a successful non-profit in amateur radio is inexcusable. 

ARDC behavior has resulted in reduced activity in amateur radio and highly negative sentiments about ARDC from a diverse set of people. 

ORI’s CFO documented the bad behavior specific to ORI. The factual narrative is available to anyone that wishes to read it. 

ORI’s CFO is Steve Conklin and he can be contacted at steve@conklinhouse.com

 

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December 2022

STA granted

Complete

STA file number 1654-EX-ST-2022 was granted for work that I managed. 

Here are some of the details:

“An STA is necessary to address the special case of an amateur radio space station operating on a sub-orbital rocket. The rocket/space station will reach an altitude of approximately 125km at apogee and return immediately to Earth. The flight path will be entirely within the borders of the United States (Spaceport America New Mexico for launch, White Sands Missile Range New Mexico for recovery). The rocket flight is regulated through the FAA and coordinated with Spaceport America/White Sands Missile Range. Total flight time is less than 20 minutes. A waiver of 47 CFR 97.207(c)(2) is requested to allow transmission between 430MHz and 435MHz. This will avoid interference with existing orbital space stations. A waiver of 47 CFR 97.207(b) is requested. The transmitter control system is designed such that transmissions will automatically cease 30 minutes after detection of launch. A waiver of 47 CFR 97.207(g) is requested since operation is being conducted solely within the United States, on a requested frequency outside of international coordination, and the sub-orbital mission poses no orbital debris or collision hazards. Additionally, the space station remains an integral part of the rocket. The rocket will meet all safety criteria required to obtain appropriate waivers from the FAA.”

This work supports experiments with amateur radio LoRa mode communications and features an open source board that is suitable for pico-satellite integration.

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December 2020 to present

Review Articles for QEX

Ongoing

I review articles in my area of expertise for QEX magazine. I provide feedback on whether or not the article would excite, enlighten, and inspire amateur experimenters. 

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December 2021 and December 2022

Letters of Recommendation

Completed

I wrote letters of recommendation for amateur radio operators applying to graduate schools in the United States. Most of these students were from outside the United States and were from underrepresented backgrounds. 

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October 2020, March 2021, October 2021, March 2022, September 2022

Ham Expo Organizer

Completed and ongoing

I’ve been an active and involved QSO Today Ham Expo organizer and presenter since October 2020. 

I’ve helped many individual hams complete their video recordings, supported hams requiring special accessibility accommodations, served as a moderator, presented talks, organized entire tracks, organized workshops, recruited sponsors, recruited vendors, staffed booths, presented posters, run virtual social events, and publicized the event. 

I experienced harassment from both AMSAT and an ARDC officer at this event. 

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HamCation 2020

Exhibitor, Forum Organizer

Completed

Organized a booth, recruited and scheduled volunteers, managed a technical demonstration, and ran one of the forum tracks. Organized and hosted a fundraising workshop for ORI that was well attended by academic, amateur, and industry representatives. 

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HamCation 2021

Exhibitor, Forum Organizer

Completed

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSfJ4B57S8DlyCfHtz3pbJ_4gcFCS9iwM

All talks from the forum track that I organized can be found in the link above. 

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HamCation 2022

Exhibitor, Forum Organizer

Completed

Organized three booths, recruited and scheduled 10 volunteers, managed a technical demonstration, and ran a full forum track.

Presented as the anchor speaker at the ARRL technical track “The Magic of Digital Communications” at the ARRL Forum held immediately before HamCation. 

In-person harassment from AMSAT and officers of ARDC influenced by AMSAT occurred at this event.

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August 2022 to present

Support University of Puerto Rico RockSat-X Sounding Rocket Flight

Ongoing

I am an educational support advisor to the students at University of Puerto in their RockSat-X sounding rocket launch. This launch uses an open source high bitrate amateur radio mode designed by Open Research Institute to communicate data from the scientific payload onboard to the ground. 

The sounding rocket opportunity was awarded after a competitive process. Amateur radio is being used here to help the students learn about modern digital communications techniques. The Opulent Voice protocol uses modern open protocols, Golay Codes, Convolutional Codes, 4-ary coherent FSK modulation, and is easy to implement on any SDR. 

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October 2022

Co-wrote an open source COBS decoder in VHDL for amateur radio baseband applications

Completed

https://www.openresearch.institute/2022/12/05/open-source-cobs-protocol-design-document/

This is the first published open source COBS protocol decoder in VHDL. 

See more about COBS at 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_Overhead_Byte_Stuffing

My co-author and I anticipate submitting an article to QEX about COBS once end-to-end RF tests are complete.

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September 2022

Wrote an article for QEX “Forward Error Correction in Opulent Voice”

Completed

Publication date expected to be April 2023. 

This is a novel open source high bitrate voice and data communications protocol. It is a vast improvement over existing digital ham voice protocols and can be used at 70 cm and above. 

Here’s a presentation Paul Williamson KB5MU made about it from Ham Expo:

https://youtu.be/9W63MJvxE10

Here’s a video demonstration of this protocol at ORI’s large installation at DEFCON 2022:

https://youtu.be/KjObrlSpGp0

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August 2022

DEFCON 2022 RF Village Open Source Showcase

Completed

I organized, scheduled, and executed a large Open Source Showcase at DEFCON 2022. 

DEFCON is a hacker convention in Las Vegas, NV USA. 

More information about this large ham-friendly event that attracts over 25,000 people a year can be found here: 

https://defcon.org/

Our installation, which featured amateur radio technical, regulatory, and competitive content was featured on DEFCON TV. 

A video of our demonstrations can be found here: 

https://youtu.be/KjObrlSpGp0

Dozens of amateur radio volunteers contributed to this installation and the set of hands-on technical and regulatory demonstrations. 

The content from this exhibit in RF Village equaled or exceeded all of the exhibit space in Ham Radio Village, where we’ve had exhibits in the past. 

We outgrew our Ham Radio Village floorspace allocation, so we moved to RF Village, where the floor space was large enough for all our work.

We anticipate returning in 2023 with more. 

No harassment occurred at this event. 

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December 2021 to present

Original Research on United States Amateur Radio Licensee Demographics

Completed

I wrote and published open source Python code to analyze the Amateur Radio ULS files and determine race and sex distribution over the past 10 years.

Race was determined by zip code, using statistics from US census results of 2020. 

Sex was determined using a machine language model that makes a probabilistic guess on sex based on the first name of the licensee.

The number of women licensees is in steady decline, from over %15 percent in 2012 to %12 percent today.  

Estimates of race, including sorting and peer effect, are 90%+ white. 

A companion article was written with a code walk-through, a literature review, and practical advice on improving diversity. This article was submitted to QST and declined. 

A presentation was made through RATPAC about an early version of the work in January 2022, and can be found here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrGsTKFp_HU

Article will be published in 2023. 

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October 2021

Meeting with FCC to discuss Debris Mitigation and Orbits for the Amateur Radio Satellite Service

Completed

Organized, managed, edited, and presented at a meeting with the FCC concerning Debris Mitigation and Orbits in the Amateur Radio Satellite Service. 

This successful meeting determined two orbits available to the Amateur Radio Satellite Service, and addressed Debris Mitigation rules and their effect on amateur radio. 

Ex parte filing can be found here: 

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/110291445225/1

Special thanks to ARRL for their support of this effort.  

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October 2020

Comments on Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

Completed

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/1006363725630/1

Comments filed with the FCC on Debris Mitigation and Amateur Radio Satellite Service. 

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February 2020

Comments on Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

Completed

Wrote and filed a comment with the FCC concerning changes to the 3 GHz band. 

Allow the Amateur Satellite Service to keep their current allocation at 3.40 to 3.41 GHz for space-to-space communications and expand this allocation to 50MHz within the existing amateur 3.30 to 3.50 GHz allocation...

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October 2021

Space and Satellite Symposium

Completed

Organized, managed, and executed an IEEE Symposium featuring open source amateur radio work in Space and Satellites. 

All recordings can be found here: 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSfJ4B57S8DnhlrRya50IxGP90_uGpiho

Special thanks to the IEEE Information Theory Society for sponsoring this successful event. 

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April 2022 to present

Ribbit Project

Ongoing

The Ribbit Project is an ORI project that allows any cell phone to turn any HT into a digital communications device. 

Using Polar codes and audio tones, SMS style messages can be sent over the air. The primary application is Emergency Communications. 

My job has been to remove roadblocks and provide resources to the project team, recruit members, enable publicity, and provide technical advice when needed. 

This is one of only two amateur radio projects in the world using Polar Codes, which are the most advanced forward error correction known. These codes are used in 5G cellular. We see no reason that amateur radio shouldn’t be using them as well, and have done the work required to bring those codes to common amateur radio use cases. 

See a video presentation about Ribbit here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGzgIjEt9wA

And another more technical video about this work here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubPP48ojJ3E

Home page:

https://www.ribbitradio.org/

Note: Rattlegram is the name of the mobile app. Ribbit is the name of the project, which includes the protocol and infrastructure to include it in repeater systems. 

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January 2020 to January 2021

Merit Badge Counselor for Boy Scouts

Completed

I was a merit badge counselor for many technical merit badges, including Radio, Codes, and Programming.

I was one of the STEM counselors for a day-long merit badge fair at UCSD in February 2020. 

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August 2019 to August 2020

Chaired 2020 GNU Radio Conference

Completed

All of the duties of conference organizing for a large virtual (due to COVID-19) event. I implemented an Amateur Radio track, recruited amateur radio speakers, organized amateur radio friendly workshops, and featured amateur radio content in an online CTF competition that attracted over 60 competitors. 

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January 2020 to August 2020

Hack-a-Sat 2020

Completed

Recruited, organized, and supported amateur radio members for the competitive and well-regarded ADDVulcan CTF Team for the Hack-a-Sat competition. 

See details at: 

https://hackasat.com/has/

Our team made the finals and finished 8th. 

News item was submitted to QST about the achievement. 

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January 2021 to August 2021

Hack-a-Sat 2021

Completed

Recruited, organized, and supported amateur radio members for the competitive and well-regarded ADDVulcan CTF Team for the Hack-a-Sat competition. 

See details at: 

https://hackasat.com/has2/

We did not make the finals, but finished in the top few percent in qualifications. 

The event attracts many thousands of teams. 

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December 2022 to present

Hack-a-Sat 2023

Ongoing

Started the process of recruiting amateur radio members for this competition. The advantages in the past have been that the team gets practical radio knowledge from amateur members, and the amateurs join a competition computing team with highly competent software experts.

The crossover and interdisciplinary rewards have been large for everyone involved. In some cases, involvement has lead to new opportunities for the amateur participants and new licensees from the competition team members. 

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November 2022

Kraken SDR Repository and ITAR

Ongoing

The principal of Kraken SDR reached out to me for help with an ITAR problem. The Kraken SDR Passive Radar repository had been taken down due to ITAR. This was a proactive step due to concerns about violating rules on passive radar applications. Kraken SDR is of great interest to amateur radio operators and open source enthusiasts.

I provided advice and offered support. 

For more information on this ongoing issue, please read 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/passive-radar-with-sdr

And 

https://hackaday.com/2022/11/19/open-source-passive-radar-taken-down-for-regulatory-reasons/

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January 2006 to present

Trustee W6NWG

Ongoing

Trustee for the Palomar Amateur Radio Club call.

 

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January 2021

Established Remote Labs

Ongoing

An enormous technical effort, ORI’s Remote Labs were put into operation in January 2021. 

There are now four labs with a variety of equipment. These are remote lab benches that allow anyone, anywhere in the world, to do open source digital communications design work, for free, 24/7. 

My job was to specify, purchase, install, commission, and fully test the equipment. I turned over maintenance and improvement to Lab Leads. I now support the Lab Leads in Remote Lab West, Remote Lab South, Remote Lab UK, and Remote Lab DC. 

My support role is to remove roadblocks and provide resources, solve any technical problem that the Lab Leads have, and recruit users.

The equipment was funded by ARDC shortly before they issued threats against Remote Labs and began a campaign of targeted harassment against ORI leadership. Despite this treatment, the original grant was executed on time and on budget and continues to produce a very high ROI. 

For more information about Remote Labs, please read: 

https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/tree/master/Remote_Labs

All of the software that allows Remote Labs to work is open source. 

I have assisted several organizations in duplicating this amateur radio innovation. 

Most of the users of Remote Labs come from Europe. Fewer US hams are advantage of it than Europeans. 

This may be mostly due to the declining number of US people specializing in hardware design. The labs are focused on FPGA design work for digital communications, and this is a field that has a  severe shortage of human resources in the US. 

We’ve been able to get a number of people from “no experience at all” up to “being able to get hired for FPGA work”. I view successful professional development like this as part of the amateur radio mission. 

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October 2022 to present

AI/ML Handbook for Amateur Radio

Ongoing

Organize a team to design and write AI/ML Designs for Amateur Radio. This is to bridge the substantial gap from theory and hype to practice and competence. 

Current stage is recruitment. See:

https://forms.gle/XwXx3HpHG6k686xr6

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January 2020 to present

ITAR/EAR Regulatory work

Complete and ongoing

Please see the summary of the work I lead here:

https://github.com/phase4ground/documents/blob/master/Papers_Articles_Presentations/Posters/ITAR-EAR-poster-2022.pdf