2014 to Present

VECTOR is an amateur radio organization founded in 1998 to serve the City of Vancouver. The Vancouver Emergency Community Telecommunications Organization builds, maintains and operates a mobile radio platform, repeaters, a radio room, and many remote site radio kits.

Bringing together the power of citizens and amateur radio to enhance community resilience for times of emergency and disaster.

Every hardware component is set up so that VECTOR members can serve the city and its Emergency Social Services volunteers when a major disaster occurs that disrupts the entire city.

As one of our ways to practise for such an event, we support city volunteers during scheduled events, including:

• Celebration of Light
• Santa Claus Parade
• Canada Day Parade
• New Years Eve Celebration

I have been able to serve VECTOR to:

• Initiated casual peer learning sessions for amateur radio volunteers to improve skill confidence
• Applied lean-startup principles to raise team to create and develop mini-exercise program
• Created space for leader-leader thinking: teams emerged to care for key site assets around city

Beyond our service as telegraphers forming the backbone of communications between the Emergency Operations Centre and operational Zones, I have come to think about VECTOR this way:

To build what Vancouver needs so that its communities can use radio to coordinate the work of responding to a major disaster

VECTOR:

• builds hardware assets people can use at key locations
• nurtures prepared, confident, competent operators
• connects with neighbourhood groups to make sure people and equipment are ready to go
• promotes involvement in emergency preparation and radio
• maintains hardware assets regularly