Amateur Radio no longer at Rose Parade

Amateur Radio operators no longer part of Tournament of Roses Parade. The
world famous parade is held every New Year's Day in Pasadena, CA. For more
than 30 years, an amateur radio group provided support communications for
the event. But beginning this year, the amateur radio operators will no
longer be part of the event. Parade organizers have an ample supply of
alternative communications and are comfortable no longer using the amateur
radio group. They would have liked to use the hams, but it appears the hams
began to tell parade officials how to handle parts of the communications.
(Tnx to Steve Stroh, N8GNJ for the link.)

A general observation based on the article and on recent experience in my
part of the world - Many hams still view their communications support as an
essential service and have not appreciated that communications is now a
commodity availlable through many alternatives. I have personally seen
situations where amateurs adopted an attitude that clearly lost sight of
themselves delivering a service to someone else. As a service provider, the
served agency (or in this case, the parade officials) are the customer. You
do what the customer requires. Too many ham groups get confused on this
point and try to run the show themselves.

In my state, we have a lot of hams volunteering to help the Red Cross in
times of emergency. A decade ago, hams were called a lot to provide
communications at many disaster situations. Today, locally, they are called,
perhaps, once per year or less, because the Red Cross has many communication
options available today. Many hams still view communications problems as
"ham radio problems". They do not think outside the box. From the Red Cross
perspective, I have an emergency problem and I will solve that problem using
all possible solutions available to me, with hams being one of those tools
(I am a ham radio operator too). My job (as a volunteer) is not to create
communication opportunities for hams, but to render disaster relief in the
most effective way I can. Some hams believed it was my job to define all
communications problems in terms of them. Hams have a lot to offer, but not
all groups are stepping up to the modern era and offering the right blend of
services that meet served agency needs. And their groups are dying.