As the AREDN Project software proliferates it is becoming important for users to share their experiences and establish guidelines for the tools, techniques, and technologies they employ in their Emcomm plan.
As a means of organizing these threads, we are pleased to offer a collection of forums we refer to as AREDN Centers of Excellence (ACE). ACE’s will consist of a moderator and a group of participants with the common goal of promoting collaboration as well as the establishment of best-practices around a specific focus area.
While ACE’s could be established around virtually any common goal, the focus will initially be centered on the following areas:
- Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT)
- Voice over IP Telephone (VoIP)
- Winlink
As this concept advances we would expect the list of ACE’s to expand to include, for example:
- Public disaster agencies: Red Cross and Salvation Army
- Department of Homeland Security (DHS) NIMS / ICS, Civil Emergency Operations Centers (EOC)
- Medical/Trauma and Transportation
- Regional Network Design, Implementation, Integration, and Management
These and other worthy centers will be established as the need arises and qualified moderators are found to organize them.
Note that while AREDN-hosted, ACE discussions need not be limited to AREDN-centric topics. However, it is expected that most discussion would be around collaborating, building, implementing, and training on IP-based applications / functions that utilize a ham-based RF network such as AREDN.
Andre, K6AH