[Ground-station] MUD 2024 - call for speaker support and advice

[Michelle Thompson]

Thank you to everyone giving feedback about this. It's very helpful.

Waiting on confirmation we can get into a demonstration area. That will
male things work out very well.

-Michelle

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 09:53 Michelle Thompson <mountain.michelle at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Greetings all,
>
> I was approached by several folks to submit something about ORI work to
> MUD 2024, which will be in Vancouver, Canada in early October. They were
> all very convincing and very complimentary about what we do and they all
> wanted us to get more visibility.
>
> *Thank you* to those that encouraged this! It would be so nice to come
> back to MUD, where ORI demonstrated working 122 GHz circuits very early on,
> and this had a large positive effect on band kits. I have presented about
> 3d printing in general, 3d printed 10 GHz horns, and 122 GHz metallized
> antennas in the past. I had a follow up article just last year on PLA model
> 3d printed prototypes, and how they deteriorate.
>
> We followed through for 2024, and submitted a technical program summary of
> all our microwave band projects.
>
> After some back and forth, we have a slot.
>
> However, the feedback was "I would hope that it is not just a "sales
> pitch" for the ORI" and "That Neptune YouTube presentation is NOT something
> I would want you to present at MUD ! Hopefully much higher level" with a
> laughing emoji, and "Haifuraiya sounds interesting....Ribbet not really"
> (They meant Ribbit).
>
> I was confused by this, and a bit disappointed. Our recent Neptune videos
> include a high level summary of the project from Leonard Dieguez, and a
> slow walk-through of the Simulink model and HDL creation from the technical
> team. I'm not sure how much slower or simplified we can make this stuff. It
> isn't easy work, but it is explainable. Our YouTube videos wouldn't be
> duplicated as a presentation in person, but the work captured in those
> videos would be referenced and highlighted in a technical overview.
>
> Ribbit has *demonstrated* success on VHF/UHF/microwave bands with
> significant humanitarian and emergency communications applications on three
> continents. It is one of the first amateur radio applications using Polar
> Codes. It won the 2023 ARRL Technical Innovation Award.
>
> And it's "Not really" interesting?
>
> The rest of 2024 MUD lineup better be more impressive than Ribbit, in
> order to justify this three-word toss-off of a submission review.
>
> The "sales pitch" question really stood out to me.
>
> At MUDs dating back to 2010, I've sat through what can only be
> described "sales pitches" for DSES, AREDN, microwave contesting clubs,
> SBMS, 50MHz and Up, North Texas Microwave Group, and many other projects
> and groups, some of which are no longer active.
>
> I did not mind this *at all* because these projects and organizations are
> part of the community and doing good stuff. How else are they going to get
> the word out? (How else would we?)
>
> Our submission was technical in nature. It did not include an
> organizational promotion "sales pitch" component. I mean, we have to
> explain who we are when we give a presentation, but we're not "sales
> pitching" anyone when we do this.
>
> Even if it was some sort of "sales pitch" (which I interpreted to be "bad"
> and not "good" from the email), a "sales pitch" would actually fit in with
> many other MUD talks in the past.
>
> Maybe this is a recent change at MUD, where promoting clubs and
> organizations is discouraged, I don't know? Can anyone give some advice
> here, who is more of a "member" of MUD?
>
> I replied to the questions about the submission that we don't do "sales",
> don't have paid memberships, and we give away everything we do for free.
> This got an acknowledgement, but took more communications to get a rather
> tepid go-ahead.
>
> Given the unexpected extra scrutiny and emoji giggle about our work, I
> think that those of us drawing up presentations could use some help here
> with reviewing potential presentations for this community. Laughing is
> really not what I want to get in response to a (volunteer, self funded)
> talk submission. When we present, we want it to be really good.
>
> So, please be ready to help impedance match what we do to Microwave
> Update. I know a lot of people on this list have been in the past and are
> familiar with the type of work that is presented at MUD. Just tell us how
> it really is.
>
> Also, we don't have to continue with the talk/presentation. There's also
> the proceedings, where we can submit a paper and slides and not have to
> work so hard to tailor a live presentation. If we don't fit into the talk
> line-up, then we don't fit in.
>
> I trust our community members to help figure this out. For example, if we
> are talking to a community that literally does not know what OFDM is (is
> that the case?), then I think we have to start from there?
>
> Can we make this a fun event for us by carefully tailoring the
> presentation? I really do not want it to end up as a slog or chore, where
> after a bunch of work and expensive travel we're ridiculed for being "too
> technical" for amateur radio or get weird or abusive interactions at our
> booth, like what happened at Hamvention and Hamcation from AMSAT, ARDC, and
> ATV.
>
> Talking about how totally cool OFDM is, is most of a speaking slot alone,
> and that doesn't even get to the good stuff that is brought to bear in
> Neptune. Let alone the polyphase filter and DVB-S2 encoder work in
> Haifuraiya, which we also wanted to bring. Should we simply do a talk on
> the basics of OFDM and multirate?
>
> The event isn't until early October 2024, but it will be here before we
> know it.
>
> I asked about a demonstration room and have not heard back about that yet.
> Over the air public demonstrations are our (very strong) preference, for a
> variety of reasons. The most important of which is that no one can really
> argue with a recorded demo of working code or circuits, and working links
> delight everyone that loves radio. Maybe we just ask for a bunch of tables
> in the demo room and that's where we share our work?
>
> If we need to simply wait until we have something that can be bought by
> non-technical people commercially off the shelf, then we should consider
> halting participation in all these ham events on all these continents all
> together. Is it really the case that the "average ham" only cares about
> what they can buy and put on the air as an appliance? If this "average ham"
> is the true constituency of ham radio technical conferences, then we're
> showing up with our work too early and caring too much about what is a huge
> mismatch in expectations.
>
> We do not have any of these issues with DEFCON RF/Aerospace Village
> participation. We have speaking slots available to us, and a generous
> amount of free floor space for demonstrations. The 5,000 or so folks that
> come through the RF Village are technical, receptive to our technical work,
> and provide a lot of feedback and constructive criticism. The review
> process for talks is rigorous and the detailed feedback from the organizers
> is specific to the submission. I've never felt like we don't belong there.
> I'd really like to feel like we can belong at a conference like MUD as
> well.
>
> I look forward to your opinions and advice, either on this thread or
> privately expressed to me or any other ORI board member.
>
> https://www.openresearch.institute/board-of-directors/
>
> -Michelle Thompson
>
>
>
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