Fwd: AUGD: Re: User Group support/help
Fwd: AUGD: Re: User Group support/help
- Subject: Fwd: AUGD: Re: User Group support/help
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 00:18:12 -0500
In a message dated 1/27/06 12:01:14 PM, email@hidden
writes:
Good day!
I'm this years president of AppleCore in the Memphis TN area.
<http://www.memphisapplecore.com/>
One of the hardest parts of this job is finding people in the area
who are willing and able to speak to our group about how they use
a Mac in their work or at home.
Anyway, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions for resources
that will help our members and hopefully encourage attendance by
new people. I'll also visit Apple's site to investigate their
'support'.
Hope you have/had a great weekend!
Jim Chaffin
Hi Jim!
Gary Kempel sent your note along to me. I'm located a long way from
TN, but I can assure you that developing interesting meeting
presentations for MUG meetings is a universal challenge.
Our MUG is lucky to exist in a geographic area where there are other
cities with their own MUG's within one to two hours driving distance.
The distance is large enough so that there's no real competition
between us for members but close enough that we can and sometimes do
try to work together in such areas as (i) structuring our meeting
nights on consecutive evenings so that a speaker who has travelled a
long way can visit more than one MUG before heading home or (ii)
arranging for one large meeting at a central site so members of all
the MUG's can get together to listen to a major speaker who simply
has only one night they are available. We've also worked together on
other things such as staffing Help desks at computer shows in our
region. At the very least, we are able to share info about outside
presenters who did a great job at one MUG and might be in a position
to do it again at another MUG.
If you are NOT familiar with all the other MUG's within a 100 mile
radius of your location, you might find that the Apple User Group
Locator database can help you develop a list, from which you can make
initial contacts. The Apple UG Locator is found at:
http://www.apple.com/usergroups/find/
By the way, I recommend that any MUG should also build relationships
with their neighbouring PC groups. I am scheduled to do a
presentation on March 9th to our local PC Users' Group about the Mac
Mini, iChat AV, and iLife '06. No idea how I am going to cram all
that into one evening's session! The point is just that the request
for me to do this grew simply out of the fact that the Execs of our
two clubs keep in touch with each other over the course of the year.
We run business card sized ads for each other's clubs in each other's
monthly newsletters, and by and large I would say that any
"migration" of members today is in favour of PC users coming over to
the Mac platform.
Frankly, we don't rely a lot on outside speakers. We are lucky enough
to have one or two per year. We usually try to have one of our local
Mac retailers present just before the Christmas season and we are
lucky enough to have been able to get a local Apple rep to visit our
club once a year or so. But we have put more emphasis on persuading
our own members to make presentations. This is not easy, as many of
our members seem to like to pay their annual dues and then just want
to sit back and be entertained for the year. But, gradually, like
water dripping on a stone, we seem to have been able to bring along
some of our members - some more than others - to the point where we
have a pretty nice selection of speakers from inside the club itself.
Another thing which we are hoping to try out is the idea of hosting a
speaker over an iChat AV session. So far, we have only tested out the
infrastructure in our meeting location to be sure the technology all
works fine. Now we have to find that special speaker located thousand
of miles away that will really show off the technology. When we
visited the Library where we hold our meetings, to test out the iChat
AV technology to be sure it would get through their firewall, we had
David Feng in Beijing, Lorene Romero in San Francisco, and Alain
Pougeoise in France all lined up for a session with us in little ol'
Whitby, Canada!
Usually, contacts that we have between Macintosh User Groups focus on
discussions between the respective clubs' Executives, trying to help
each other out in running their clubs. I have always thought that
there would probably be less interest on the part of our club members
in talking to other MUGs' members than in our respective Executives
talking. However, with the development of technologies like iChat AV,
we are even thinking of running sessions between two MUG meetings or
of at least having us interview a MUG Executive from one end of the
country at one of our own MUG meetings in the middle of the country!
We already use iChat AV fairly regularly at our Executive meetings.
One of our Execs retired a few years ago and moved about 100
kilometres away. In the winter time, it can be a nasty drive for him
to get to our Exec Meetings. So, for most of the meetings in the
winter time, Chris is just a talking head on the iBook screen that
sits on top of the stove in the kitchen where we meet. We find that
he hears all of us just fine, and we hear him just fine, and pretty
soon you just get used to talking to the talking head on the stove!
Finally, I'd recommend that you not spend a lot of time looking for
Apple to help you in this area. That's not being critical of Apple -
I am just reflecting the idea that whatever fun and satisfaction you
get from helping to run a User Group will come from within, not from
anyone at Apple or anywhere else waving a magic wand over your
efforts. A wiser man than I once said to me, "If you're not having
any fun at this anymore, Jim, you should stop doing it." I decided I
didn't want to stop doing it, so I stopped blaming others and I also
determined to stop feeling like the weight of the world was always on
my shoulders to come up with great meeting programs, and I resolved
to just try to have fun and let the chips fall where they may. I have
been a lot happier ever since I adopted this stance. The meetings
aren't necessarily all that much better, but I just don't fall on my
sword as much as I used to when one doesn't go as well as I had hoped.
Good luck with your efforts.
Jim Foster
President - Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
http://www.mause.ca
&
Apple User Group Regional Liaison - Canada
http://www.apple.com/usergroups/contact/liaisons/
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