I have been President of the IR-DX Group for two months now.

I am doing everything I can to improve the group and now is the time to announce the changes I plan to introduce.

There are several problems I want to solve.

Our group is 25 years old and we have almost 2500 members!
Unfortunately, in 25 years we have not been able to keep in touch with all the members.

The various methods of communication we use do not allow us to achieve the objective of reconnecting with all members to keep our database up to date and have a complete list.

Indeed, many of the email addresses we have in the group’s database are no longer valid and it is very difficult to reach the members who used these email addresses.

This is why the information we collect for membership and renewal must change and for this reason I have developed two new online forms.

From now on, the renewal must be done by everyone! 
(including members, division directors, QSL-Manager, vice-presidents and president).

Qsl managers must inform the members they manage of this change and give them the procedure to follow so that they can renew themselves.

You remain a member for life but if you do not renew you will no longer be able to appear on the directory.

The next IR-DX Directory will be available in January 2020 so you have until the end of 2019 to fill out the new form.

In 2020 the renewal form will remain available all year round.

The website https://www.irdx.org is our official website, it is our home page and it is the best place to join the IRDX group and also where members can find the form to renew.

The membership application form has also changed and I ask each Division Director to give this new form to potential members to complete this form in place of the old one.

These two forms will also be accessible via the Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/InternationalRadioDxGroup
Facebook pages and groups are an extraordinary tool to present activities and inform 11m operators about future activities.

It is a social network widely used by many amateur radio operators and also by many 11m operators.

I created several pages a few years ago and some of them are very poorly followed and I intend to delete some of them.

To better diffuse our information, sharing groups should allow registrants who do not have English as their mother tongue to be able to express themselves in their language to comment or to share videos or information themselves.

Most IR group members and 11m operators are not comfortable understanding and speaking English and even less comfortable writing and reading group information in this language, the language barrier is one of the most important issues and probably we can solve this problem by cooperating to translate and facilitate the diffusion of HQ information and communiqués.

I need active and reactive members who are comfortable with English to help me please contact me if you are a volunteer.

I expect administrators of existing Facebook groups to contact me to discuss the subject together in order to find a solution.

We must also do something to organise the group’s activities and I would like a calendar for the year to be set up and kept up to date in the near future.

Thanks to the mobilization of many members of the IR group, we have managed to cross several solar cycles and we are well on our way to the next one, but I count on the participation of as many members as possible.

To help me I need coordinators for countries with more than 5 members in order to integrate new members.

If you are interested in a position as division manager, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long message and feel free to forward it.
73 Didier 14IR001.