The Meeting Reports
One of our chief problems currently is transcribing the text of the general meeting. In the past, the meeting reporter created the report that leads each issue of Sacra Blue by taking notes and writing an article. For some time, though, we’ve been taping the meetings and having them transcribed by volunteers—first by Terry Naleway, who happens to be a professional transcriptionist and performed yeoman (yeowoman?) work for quite a while. Lately Dennis Solheim has been handling it, this month with the assistance of Twila Carver, a new volunteer.

There are those who feel the reports should be shorter, and should reflect the sense of the meeting, rather than trying to report at great length on what was said. But it’s the feeling of the Steering Committee that we perform a valuable service by providing a highly-detailed report on the meetings for those who can’t get to the meeting. With membership on a slow decline, it’s important to extend our offerings to all the members we can. We’re now investigating the cost of hiring a professional transcriptionist to do the job on a regular basis.

Writers Wanted
We’re still looking for writers, or people who want to write.

There are a number of columns I’d like to see running regularly in Sacra Blue. Columns on WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, Access, and PowerPoint would all fit very well in these pages, and be very useful to our membership.

More generic columns, focused on a series of topics rather than one particular product, are something else I’d like to have. For example, I wrote a couple columns called "All About…" that were focused on firewalls and system resources. A regular column, focusing on a different computer issue each time, would help many members.

We receive newsletters from many other PC user groups around the country, and I scour them regularly looking for material to reprint in our newsletter that might be useful. (Fortunately, all the user groups grant blanket permission to other user groups to reprint the material in their newsletters. We do the same, and much of our material has been reprinted elsewhere.)

There’s just one problem: With all due respect to editors and writers of other UG magazines, Sacra Blue is publishing possibly the best material, month in and month out, that’s available in user group magazines. The result is that a lot of our original material shows up in other people’s newsletters. As members, that’s something we can be proud of. (Modesty forbids me from mentioning the authors….oh, heck, it’s Ken and Brian and I who write most of this material.)

But it doesn’t leave us a lot to draw from, when the best pieces we find are reprints of our own articles.

If you’ve gotten this far, you know where I’m going with this. The logical place to look for more good content is the place where most of the good content is already being found: in our own group.

We have, in SPCUG, a lot of very sophisticated, very knowledgeable people who have solved quite a few tough computer problems. We have a lot of members experimenting with the latest technology: optical mice, digital cameras and camcorders, photo editing software, sophisticated document processing, and much more.

Many of our members are eager to know more about subjects like these, and we’re physically limited in how much we can present at the general meetings. In addition, some of the subjects would attract a limited audience at a meeting, but a substantial audience in print.

One bonus is that your articles will almost surely be reprinted around the country by other user groups. There’s a great demand for intelligent, clearly-written material.

And if you don’t think you’re any great shakes as a writer, you can feel comfortable putting yourself in our hands. We won’t let you look bad in print.

So when you’re struggling with your latest problem, remember how you handled it and send me an e-mail with all the details when you’re done.

When you’ve figured out how to handle that really tricky formatting problem, send me a .DOC with the instructions.

Are you someone who is continually upgrading and updating your computer? Do you add modems, hard drives, CD writers? Have you networked your home? Are you always getting new software? You’re the perfect candidate to write occasional articles telling other members how to do the same.

Got any tips on scanning? Do those cheap scanners really give you any value? Do you use a digital camera? Many of our members would love to know your thoughts on the equipment currently available, or how to take a digital picture with a soft focus, or on digital photography generally.

Do you spend a lot of time on the Net looking for useful software? Do you track down and try out all the free utilities you can? How about contributing to a shareware review column with comments on your experiences with some of the programs you’ve tried out?

As you can see, there are lots of topics we can use articles about. We can’t write all of them, and although I have a healthy self-esteem, I don’t think I know absolutely everything about computers. Can you help? Send me an e-mail.