[ssimpson]

I feel like I am lucky, my club has a bunch of old dudes, but they are still learning and growing. A few years ago, I proposed adding a digital repeater, and it caused all kinds of trouble, but most of those folks left and now its great. We have awesome presentations on how to leverage raspberry pis, building portable battery packs, opensource VNAs, etc. But this is true, a lot of the hobby is very curmudgeon-y. Which is sad because there is so much cool tech.

[ethbro]

Ham radio (the human component) seems to suffer from the DnD 3.5 problem.

A lot of people invested considerable effort into obtaining knowledge.

Once obtained, they were free to coast. I take it there's no true continuing ed requirement to maintain a license?

Now, protocol / technical change threatens to render all their existing knowledge outdated. And furthermore, require additional effort.

Unsurprisingly, they're resistant. Said without malice, because that's just human nature.

Continuing ed requirements are usually a gimmick or BS, but in this case it seems like they might be healthy for the hobby. Demonstrating growth / trying new things? A nice process to gently nudge those not still actively learning back into the lower classes.

[etrautmann]

I think this is generally true of many academic and scientific fields as well!

[ethbro]

Good lesson for organizational engineering. Longer tenures in a job tend to increase risk aversion and technical conservatism.

So unless there's a mechanism to blunt that (and select for lifelong learners), you end up with a tyranny of outdated architects, opposed to any and all changes.

[monksy]

> continuing ed requirement to maintain a license?

Why would you gatekeep on something that is mostly a hobby and for volunteers. Putting a continuing ed requirement on that is just going to piss off people. People who build these networks are mostly volunteers and they put a lot of effort into this. I think there should be a bit of respect given for that.