For those who took notice of the page count for the July/August/20-Year special issue of Sacra Blue, you should know that the SPCUG had plans to have that issue printed in hardcopy form as an important publication that would be used to promote the group. We would send issues to libraries, business organizations, and pass them out at COMDEX. Of course, members would get a copy as well.
Unfortunately, those plans were derailed because we couldn’t find anyone to print the issue. Seems everyone is being tasked to print political propaganda. By the time we can get ourselves in the queue, half of the issue would be a few months out of date and the other half, the 20-Year retrospective, might not stand on its own.
In addition, Mike Zellmer provided a ballpark cost estimate of $3,300, or about $6 per copy. The Steering Committee felt this cost was too high for the benefit gained.
So, we decided to shelve the hardcopy project and returned to mulling over the possibilities of having all available Sacra Blue’s put on CD-ROM. Keep watching this space for further information. If you have any ideas on the matter, please let us know.
The Webmaster hopes there are no unresolved problems with members accessing the password-protected areas of the Web site. There seem to always be a few members who don’t remember the information e-mailed to them, and a few members who, for whatever reason, didn’t or can’t receive these necessary e-mails. The Webmaster uses a program designed to send bulk e-mail, but it’s not configured to obscure where the e-mail is coming from in any way. The SPCUG hopes to discover why these members are having difficulties.
About six months ago, the Steering Committee sent advisory letters to all the chapters and SIGs detailing certain reporting requirements. The information provided by these reports is needed for tax and insurance purposes. As of today, only the Orangevale-Folsom Chapter has submitted their report. That means those that did not submit their reports are in imminent danger of losing their association with SPCUG. If you are a member of an SPCUG chapter or SIG, please start pestering your group’s leadership to follow through on their reporting requirements.
The SPCUG is red-faced about the way we handled the door prize tickets at the August Main meeting. One of our presenters graciously offered as prizes discount coupons to a class in digital photography. Tickets for those coupons were drawn immediately after that speaker’s presentation. There were other prizes that were to be distributed at the end of the meeting.
Now, we know that not everyone is interested in taking such a class and so dreaded winning what would be to them a worthless prize. We sincerely apologize for what happened and will soon adopt a strict policy regarding the drawing of tickets as soon as we identify and iron out all the variables.
Andy Pischalnikoff of Snap-A-Rific tutored the audience on a certain aspect of digital photography: layers and the manipulation of special effects in a photo. Unfortunately, many who attended that night’s meeting were under the impression that Andy was to give more broad coverage of several digital photography subjects, including how to best take photos using a digital camera. We hope to have Andy back soon for another informative, and more basic, presentation.
