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Over a year ago, I sat with five other SPCUG members at Brookfield's over lunch to discuss expanding our group's educational offerings. When this educational committee meeting concluded, we had a set of four recommendations for the Steering Committee to follow. Two of them were recently met at last month's PC Jamboree at the Access Media School in midtown Sacramento.
You have already seen some of the results of the education committee's work at the past year's general meetings. We already have a pre-meeting Internet and Windows tutorial taught by Dennis Duffy, and our training media library is going strong under the care of Mary Lint and Richard Swarthout. Combined with our revived Beginners SIG meetings, the Q&A table, our write-in Q&A box and the Q&A session during the meeting, our General Meetings are a great place for people to get computer help.
Last month we partnered with Access Sacramento to produce the first-ever PC Jamboree, the first attempt to offer computing classes and workshops, along with unique services like on-site computer diagnosis and repair. Discussions about how to apply what was learned at this Jamboree to the next one are already underway. Congratulations and kudos to co-coordinators Beth Camero and Edwin Holloway and to all the volunteers who made the Jamboree a success.
The Jamboree is the next step in meeting our educational goals: To partner with educational organizations to present more training options for our members. This event may grow beyond its original scope to fulfill the ultimate educational goal-providing regular training for members at locations around the area. We're not there yet, but the PC Jamboree has gotten us off to a good start.
The fourth and final recommendation the education committee had was to put together an Education Fair at a general meeting. The Education Fair would bring several educational computing companies together to show off their latest educational offerings, perhaps with a keynote speaker. SPCUG product fairs in the 80s drew very large crowds, and there's no reason to expect that it couldn't happen again. Preliminary discussions to bring this event to a meeting in 2000 are already underway.
Keeping Up With the Macs
During the formation of the PC Jamboree, more than one comparison was made to a similar event held regularly by MacNexus, the local Macintosh user group. It was also mentioned more than once that MacNexus seems to be a healthier group than the Sacramento PC Users Group these days.
There's no doubt that Apple is riding a wave of dominating mindshare and increasing market share. With nearly two years of sustained profits, completion of its product strategy with the release of its iBook consumer portable and an effective ad campaign, Apple is a darling of the public media, not to mention Wall Street. Not too long ago, it was likely that Apple computers would only be seen in museums, so it's not surprising that Macintosh users circled the wagons around user groups to find the information they needed. Now that the Macintosh is popular again, it's easy to log onto Apple's Web site and find a user group in any area. (This line of reasoning does not mean that all Mac groups are in good health, as the Berkeley and Los Angeles Mac groups have been struggling to right their ships.)
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The PC world, on the other hand, is full of hegemony and ubiquity. Apple's effect on PC design has led to cheap iMac knockoffs like the eMachines and to more modern designs like NEC's Z1, but for the most part PCs are in gray or beige boxes and come with bulky monitors. Microsoft is the dominant player and only gets larger through its operating system dominance and purchases of other companies. (Visio was Microsoft's latest meal.) Corporate mergers and buyouts are everywhere.
People looking for a user group would probably start with Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn't even have a link to its user group site, Mindshare, from its main site. These days, many PC user groups are struggling.
Rampant Boosterism
Let's take stock of where our group is right now. We still have one of the largest computer user groups on the West Coast, and one of the bigger user groups in the country. We have a large and active volunteer base, a newsletter that gets most of its material from members and meetings that regularly draw 200 to 300 people. I daresay we are still the envy of many other user groups, and we have a lot to be proud of.
There's no doubt that we have a lot of challenges, and many of them come from rapid changes in the industry. But there are also opportunities afforded to us that we're taking advantage of. I think one such opportunity comes in the form of a survey conducted by InfoWorld recently. The results showed that people are using their PCs less often, finding that they want to spend more time with their families and friends and because they find themselves more frustrated with how the PC operates.
To me, this sounds like a golden opportunity for us, because our group addresses both concerns. Our resources and meetings provide a way for people to get out of the virtual domain and into the real one, have face-to-face conversations and make new friends. And our group's entire mission is devoted to disseminating information and helping make computers easier to use.
Now we have to take advantage by telling people about us, and you can help. We're already making good progress apprising the local media about our meetings regularly, and there's already talk of updating our brochures. We need to build on this. We need people to go to computer-related stores, tell them about the group, and ask them how we can promote ourselves in their stores (and ask them to promote their business in our newsletter). We need volunteers for the next PC Jamboree. These are perfect opportunities for you to get involved.
Let's not squander this golden opportunity. Please volunteer.
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