Marsha and I spent a portion of Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday morning attending the many workshops, group discussions and the wonderful meals at the Mission Valley Hilton in San Diego.  Prior to the conference, we spent three days exploring San Diego.  We had an exciting time but one needs much more than three or so days to do San Diego justice.  The weather was a little muggy (unusually so, even for San Diego) but otherwise excellent.
     The 1999 California Computer Expo was going on at the same time but, unfortunately, we did not get the chance to look in on it.  Many vendors were in attendance for the Regional UG Conference: Microsoft, Power-Quest, Corel, and Symantec, just to name a few.  In fact, Marsha and I both got a big warm hug from Richard Katz, who later spoke at one of the luncheons sponsored by Intuit, Inc.

      All and all we had a really great time (with the exception of my having an emergency tooth extraction mid-Saturday). Judy Taylour and her staff did an astounding job putting the conference together.  I'm sure each of the attendees was impressed, as Marsha and I were.  My only regret at the conference was not having enough of an opportunity to discuss how other clubs were solving their various problems.  Of course, the biggest problem facing most of the clubs is declining membership.  Although there was a fair amount of discussion on the subject of declining membership, I'm afraid it was treated much like the weather in that we generally have little control over it.  I humbly disagree.  I believe there is much we can do to attract new members, not the least of which is offering new services to members. This leads into a reminder about the upcoming PC Users Jamboree.

PC Users Jamboree: September 
      On Saturday, September 18, we will be trying something new.  Edwin Holloway and his volunteer staff have been organizing an event that will not only help educate current
members and be a whole lot of fun, but will 

     Have I mentioned that the success of this club rests on our ability to attract new members?   Did I fail to mention that, at the current rate of decline, by the year 2003 we could have a club who can meet in a telephone booth?  You do the math.  We were over 3,000 members strong at one point several years ago.  Current membership is not much over 1,000 today. Don't get me wrong.  We do not need to be a large club to survive.  A smaller club is actually much more manageable.  What I am saying is vendors such as Microsoft or Symantec will not present at meetings with only a few people in attendance.  If we lose the ability to attract presenters, we lose a lot. One way to stay large enough to attract vendors is to provide training to our members.  The folks over at Access Sacramento have handed us a golden opportunity to have the PC Jamboree in the Coloma Community Center at 4623 T Street.  It has excellent training facilities that include ten networked PCs with Internet access.  What we lack right now are more folks like Edwin Holloway and Beth Camero (beth@cahf.org) who are pumped about this and want to see it succeed.  Your help and your participation are truly needed.  So contact Edwin or Beth ASAP.

Sacra Bytes Comes Down While the Listserv Thrives
      Since the Sacra Bytes BBS will be coming down on September 9, much of the most current club information and announcements are available over our listserv, (Sacpcug@CalWeb.Com) on our web site (http://www.sacpcug.org ), as is information about computer problems and solutions.  Instructions on how to join and use the listserv is on the "Contact Information" page in this issue of Sacra Blue. I hope you will join it and consider it just another good resource from SPCUG.