On Saturday, March 7, we hosted our 2026 Community Meeting. Participants joined us to hear updates on our work from 2025 and what lies ahead for the foundation in the coming year. These meetings provide an opportunity to share progress, discuss current initiatives, and connect with the broader ARDC community.

Executive Director Rosy Schechter KJ7RYV opened the meeting by welcoming attendees and introducing ARDC staff, new board members, and the latest group of volunteers.

The discussion then moved into program updates. 44Net Program Manager John Burwell KI5QKX and Director of Grantmaking Chelsea Párraga KF0FVJ shared highlights from the past year and provided updates within 44Net and the Grants Program, respectively. These updates expand on topics outlined in our recently published 2025 Annual Report.

The meeting concluded with remarks from Rosy, who discussed priorities for the year ahead and recognized ARDC’s first donors for their support of our mission.

Meeting Resources

If you were unable to attend the meeting and / or would like to revisit the discussion, please check out the following resources we’ve made available:

• Meeting recording: https://vimeo.com/1171826196
• Presentation slides: https://www.ardc.net/wp-content/uploads/2026-03-07-ARDC-Community-Meeting-Slides-small-file-size.pdf
• 2025 Annual Report: https://www.ardc.net/wp-content/uploads/2025-Annual-Report.pdf
• 2025 Annual Report blog post: https://www.ardc.net/a-look-back-at-2025-ardcs-annual-report-is-now-available/

Meeting participants also shared a number of resources during the meeting, and these are shared below. They touch on 44Net, networking, and about projects our grantees are working on.

44Net and Networking

• Networking tutorial: https://networklessons.com/
• Lawrence Systems YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LAWRENCESYSTEMS
• Dan’s WI7FI Ethernet over LoRA experiments: https://social.treehouse.systems/@meph/115365077448221139

Grantee Projects

• Deep Space Exploration Society’s (DSES) Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) 2025 Report: https://dses.science/earth-venus-earth-2025-report
• Teachers in Space (TIS) CubeSat training opportunities: https://www.tis.org/in-person-2
• Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence’s (SETI) ARISE Project: https://agiseti.com/
• BuzzSat, an AMSAT service: https://buzzsat.com/

Give us your thoughts!

If you attended the meeting or watched the recording afterward, please take a moment to share your feedback: https://airtable.com/appQY5E1yYm0Pujqg/shrdyVks02XIN81VB. Your input helps us improve our output (in this case, future Community Meetings).

As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us at contact@ardc.net. Thank you to everyone who joined us, and we look forward to connecting again next time!