APCUG Reports
April-June 2007

This was my second Spring Conference and my third FACUG conference.

Lynne Rimmer and I attended, and like John Bianchi and I did last year, Lynne and I drove the 50 miles to Kissimmee in time to be there for the “breakfast session” around 8 a.m. each day!

That meant that Lynne had to get away really early since she had an additional 45 minute trip from “The Forest” to where I live in east Eustis.

Like previous conferences, there was a lot of information of value to member UGs again this year. Many of the speakers were the same as at previous conferences, but they did a good job of bringing their materials up to date. And there were new speakers who brought many new perspectives.

Based on my observation of the number of tables and the number of persons sitting at them, I believe attendance was down from last year. Also, there seemed to be fewer large UG teams than last year.

I don’t know if my observations were accurate, but as a new FACUG Board member, I think we need to find out; if so, then why! By the way, I have been asked to serve as FACUG Membership Chair with responsibility for the QuickBase member database and the mission to grow FACUG membership.

One thing even more apparent to me this year is that there are large differences in UG composition and domain. This greatly affects what works and doesn’t work for that UG.

For example, UGs from closed retirement communities are much different than ours, which has its potential member clientele distributed throughout a wide, tri-county geographic area. We need to publicize in the media to attract new members to replace those who have not renewed while the closed community has its inner network and clubhouse.

And our being located on a college campus, and being an official entity of that college, raises some additional constraints.

Most UGs promote themselves as educational entities and conduct many short formal instructional classes. We, of course, do not do this.

Those UGs with extensive formal teaching agendas say this is what gets and keeps members and also provides some limited funding. It is interesting to note that at least one “teaching” UG is situated on a high school campus.

After last year’s conference, we came up with “The Top Ten Ideas” gained from that meeting.

We implemented a New Member Folder program that has been quite successful, largely through the extraordinary efforts of Oscar David.

Another somewhat less spectacular effort from last year’s meeting was the development of an “LSCS Colleagues List,” which identified those members who volunteered to help with specific software applications. This didn’t work as well as we had hoped because so few members volunteered.

Volunteerism in LSCS, or rather the lack of it, has been especially troubling to me. I guess I see it as my personal failure as your President.

In our newsletter I cited some of Paul Lutz’s excellent and enthusiastic presentation on the topic. Paul said that in their Group they expect all members to volunteer, especially new members. He spoke in depth about the values and expectations of volunteering.

The conference was conducted on a quad-track format; attendees had to select from four simultaneous presentations.

I think perhaps this is too many different tracks, because one of the sessions I attended was “Local ISPs and User Groups,” which was very well handled by substitute, Eugene Elwine.

But, there were only four in the audience! And while I got some ideas about what the title suggested, there also was much good discussion about general UG management issues as well.

The social side of computer user groups was discussed at several of the sessions I attended. And I found the speaker’s views most interesting.

Two speakers, both from “closed community” UGs, always have social components of their meetings – cake and coffee, bagels and lox, a dinner or a night out, a SIG at the Pub, etc. They rate this essential to their Group’s success.

As you know, I have mentioned social aspects in at least one, and maybe more, of the Zoomerang surveys. At best you rated it lukewarm; some were violently opposed.

Yet in a very well presented roundtable on “The Social Side of User Groups” by June Wentworth, it dawned on me that many of you come for the social aspects of our meetings, as limited as that may be! How do I arrive at that conclusion? You cannot be there for the subject matter; you know more than some of the presenters – especially me!

It also does one well to try to assess how their UG is performing in comparison to other UGs. That’s hard to do, but I got some clues.

One closed community with 320 members has a turnout of 70 at their meetings. We have been averaging about 50 members out of 149 at ours; not too bad. The Central Florida Computer Society has about 200 members from the Orlando metro area; we have 149 members from our much less populated tri-county area. Again, maybe not too bad.

What was most disappointing to me about the Conference? The fact that only two persons attended from LSCS!

The Fall Conference will be held Sat. and Sun., Oct. 20-21, 2007, at the Bahia Shrine Temple in Orlando. The Central Florida Computer Society Tech Fair will be held in conjunction with this conference. Please make your plans now to attend.

And next spring’s conference will likely be at the same Orlando facility, which is especially handy for us. I’m not yet certain of the dates for this one – either Feb. 29 – Mar. 2, 2008 or Mar. 7-9, 2008.

What was the best thing about attending the FACUG Conference? Networking with other UG leaders – by far and away. The formal presentations are good, but contacts are priceless!

Why? Well, on page 1 you’ve already read about Corel donating a copy of Paint Shop Pro XI. And there are a couple more of these kinds of contacts still in the offing.

Without our membership in UG Associations and the contacts we make by going to the conferences, none of these opportunities would be available.

And we receive so many other benefits from our memberships too! Presentations in a Box, evaluation software, software discounts, book discounts, PUSH newsletter articles for the Newsbytes, outside speaker contacts, conferences, etc. – LSCS has benefited from all of these!

I would like to attend the APCUG conference though! But, it is held early January in Las Vegas in association with the Consumer Electronics Show. Travel expenses there would be significant and personal. An east coast site for APCUG has been mentioned, but so far nothing that I know of is in the offing. In reality the expenses would be about the same; perhaps even more.

So, I thank you for the opportunity to represent you at this spring’s conference.

I hope I’ve wet your appetite enough for you to seriously consider joining with me in attending the fall conference in Orlando!