Last month, some of the board (Joe O'Connor, Lee Sauer, Jack Fordyce, Mark Holmes and Miriam Liskin) held a special meeting to discuss some of the alternatives that have been proposed. At our March meeting, the changes were approved by a majority of our active (paid) membership.

First and foremost, we will broaden the scope of the group to encompass all Microsoft database application development tools used to build desktop, network, client/server and web applications. The databases that fall under this umbrella include Visual FoxPro, SQL Server, Access, and MSDE. The middle-tier and front-end tools used to access these data sources include Visual FoxPro, Visual Basic, Access, Visual Basic for Applications, Visual InterDev, Active Server Pages, OLE DB (ADO and RDS) and Web scripting languages. Some of these tools have uses that don't fall under the scope we envisioned (for example, VBScript and Javascript are widely used to create dynamic web pages unrelated to databases, and Access is also an end-user tool). We'll be concentrating on using all of these tools as programmers to develop database applications.

This does not mean abandoning FoxPro! We believe that very few developers work exclusively in VFP anymore, and broadening our focus will address issues already of interest to most of us and help us to attract more members.

We will change the name of the group to Sacramento Microsoft Database SIG (SMSDB SIG). We hope to work more closely with the Sacramento Microsoft field office, specifically with Bob Heath (who did the excellent presentation on Windows 2000 at our January meeting) who, in spite of some good-natured heckling and Microsoft-bashing, has expressed an interest in working with us further. We hope that the local Microsoft office can help us with mailings to potential members and speakers, as MindShare (Microsoft's user group support unit) is apparently unable or unwilling to do.

Here are some of the specific actions and strategies we propose to implement this year:

• For the first year, part of each meeting will be devoted to a tutorial-style presentation on an essential topic that may be unfamiliar to many old and new members of the group. Our initial plan is to focus on SQL Server and Visual Basic, offering a tutorial topic on each in alternating months.
• We will send e-mail and snail mail notification of this change (along with invitations to attend the new group) to everyone on all of our collective mailing lists. We also hope to coordinate some mailings to large companies in the Sacramento area with the local Microsoft office.
• We will get our web site back up and make sure there is a link to our site on the Sacramento PC User Group web site.. Miriam will host the site, and Lee is working on the pages. We will shortly establish a real domain name for ourselves (hopefully smdb.org or smdbsig.org).
• We hope to kick off the new group in June with a major event, hopefully with some assistance and a special presentation from Microsoft. (We can't imagine getting the change approved and coordinated before May, and the May meeting coincides with DevCon in New Orleans, so attendance will probably be light in May).

For more information, contact Miriam Liskin at (530) 432-5670 or by e-mail at mliskin@oro.net or mliskin@yahoo.com.

If you haven't attended a meeting lately, we'd love to see you again! Meetings are held on the third Thursday of every month at 6:30 pm at: CalWeb Internet Services, Inc., 1111 Howe Avenue, Suite 495, Sacramento, CA 95825-8543.