Rosebud RadioFest

I had an opportunity to go to an east coast ham event in early November (2023) – namely the Rosebud Radiofest near Melbourne.

Having been involved in assisting or leading the organisation of a few events, namely NCRG Hamfest and lighter involvement in Perth Tech and attending all the other Perth events as well as other shows around Australia and this year one major show in the US, it was interesting to see how SPARC (Southern Peninsular Amateur Radio Club) approached their’s.

On the surface, Rosebud had a very similar look to all our events here in Perth. Raffle, big hall with lots of people selling stuff, Rotary had a caravan selling food and presentations (I gave one).

A few interesting points though;

• Rosebud may well be the best publicised hamfest in Australia or at least up there. They start their marketing process about the time the last show has completed, and it is reasonably constant up to the next event. Their website for the event is already up with next year’s promotions.
• They approach potential presenters with plenty of notice and they put a lot of effort into finding interesting subjects and presenters.
• Rosebud RadioFest was held in a primary school and they were given access to the assembly hall (which has a stage), amenities and a classroom for presentations. The classroom size was good for the quantity of attendees (typically 20-30). The classroom was OK. The presentation gear could do with a refresh but it was largely fit for purpose.
• They put some effort into returning some value to presenters in terms of advertising and publicly thanking presenters at the same time as the raffle presentation as well as leading up to the event. This was important for me as I was travelling to Victoria from Perth at my own expense and I was showcasing some core products. This was my second time as a presenter and I would do it again.
• Interesting that they got Rotary to park a caravan outside the hall for catering. Normally this is a big fundraiser for an event and often run by the club instead. Handing that to an organisation like Rotary was good for the community (Rotary does a lot for our local communities) and also allowed the organisers to focus on the rest of the day’s tasks. Definitely food for thought (pun intended! ? )
• There was an above average amount of displays on around the hall. They even had a helicopter land from one of the Public Safety organisations.
• Cost of entry was $6.00. Must have been hell for the ticket takers (or maybe they just bought in lots of $2 coins for change).
• Note that the event wasn’t on the same weekend as Bathurst, AFL/NRL Grand Finals, Oceania DX contest or any of the major DX contests.
• There were a lot of tables occupied. Very similar to our hamfests in Perth and surrounds. A few vendors and lots of others selling “stuff”. There were a lot of CBs for sale so I suspect that the event also attracts a share of the recreational CB market.
• I cant seem to find a head count for the day publicly described but looking around the hall compared to our efforts, I suspect about twice as many attendees than our events. It should be noted though that we have a lot less than half the population of hams in Perth as Melbourne, so we aren’t doing bad in that arena.
• I left the hall around 1.30 to head to the airport but the event was still going strong as I left.

So big takeaways for me were;

• Rosebud is a good example of a local Australian ham event which has managed to combine all the crowd drawers (Raffle, flee market and forums) into one day.
• They seem to continue to look for things that will stand it out ( for instance 2024 will have a solar observations demonstration provided by an astronomical group).
• Having the forum in a different building was good and allowed the forum to work with no other distractions.
• Each of our great events in Perth have strengths and Rosebud managed to combine all those into the one day.
• Looking at attendance of our days compared to Rosebud, as well as how it was run, I don’t think we do too bad in the West. I’m sure if any of us dug deep we could improve on what we have (and we should) but we also hold up well to them “tuther-siders”.