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I have a
clear recollection of my first PC purchase. It was a 386 DX
something or other with a 40 Mb hard drive. The local computer store
where I bought it had not received delivery of the monitor so they
arranged it so that I could make the trip from Sarasota to the
distributor in Tampa (70 miles) and get it so that I could play with
my new toy over the weekend. Luckily for me, I came across an
announcement in our local paper about an organization where regular
folks learned and shared information about how to use their
computers. I became a member of the Sarasota PC Users Group in 1993,
soon after my family decided to relocate from Long Island, New York.
It wasn’t long before the Volunteer Bug bit me and I became a member
of our Shareware Library Committee. I’ve always found leading SIGs
to be very rewarding and I do so whenever my time permits. I was
first elected Director in 1995 and have served for 10 years on our
Board as Secretary, Vice-President and President. When I would lead
the New Member Orientation for SPCUG I would always mention that
when I first joined, on a scale of 1-10, considering I knew how to
hit the power button, I was a solid 1. I now consider myself an 8
and attribute that to my involvement in SPCUG. It was sometime in
1995 that my friend Gary Schweinshaupt encouraged me to attend the
Florida Association of Computer User Groups (FACUG) Annual
Conference. I guess that he saw something about my dedication to
SPCUG that led him to believe that our organization would benefit by
my involvement at the regional level and I hope he was correct. I
returned from my first conference with a renewed level of enthusiasm
and many new ideas. I became an FACUG Director in 1998 and was proud
to serve as Vice-President and President before I left the Board in
2005. Amongst my proudest accomplishments are Dave “Bytes”, the
e-newsletter I have produced for SPCUG, Computers & You, the TV
program I created and hosted for 5 years and now the “Bits & Bytes”
Computer radio show which has worked wonders in promoting User
Groups to our community. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY,
married with 2 children and 4 grandchildren |
