AUGD: When User Groups Go Beyond Themselves
AUGD: When User Groups Go Beyond Themselves
- Subject: AUGD: When User Groups Go Beyond Themselves
- From: David Feng <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:40:36 +0800
Macintosh user group (noun):
definition 1: a group of Macintosh geeks, nerds but also newbies,
dedicating about 3 hours per month for a discussion of what my
Zambian friend refers to as "MACINTOSH MACINTOSH MACINTOSH". An
association with a website, an email address, a newsletter, members,
executives, and all that kind of stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Some are strictly "groupish": one or two may consider involvement
deeper inside the community to be "something we can do... but you
see, we are a user group..."
definition 2: a group of Macintosh people who do Macintosh things
that turns definition 1 on its head.
In the distant kingdom, now people's republic, and soon People's
Republic of Mac (China), there is a Macintosh user group known as the
Beijing Macintosh User Group. When it was founded on March 2, 2002,
it was just a computer user group. One of the seven founding members
of the user group, the I-Haven't-Emailed-AUGD-For-Quite-Some-Time-So-
I'd-Better-Do-It-Againish David Feng, who, by pure luck and a few (in
fact all) ballots in favour of him in September 2002, was elected
President in September 2002, forming the Executive Board. The
newsletter thing got started earlier in May 2002. A website followed,
now gracefully hosted by the great folks at Itsamac. Meetings were
soon part of life for the Mac faithful in a sprawling megalopolis of
16 million.
Ja ja ja... a very ordinary user group.
In the candidate country for the world's most number of Macintosh
users, something funny happened in September 2005. It took about 27
people to basically agree that maybe it was time for the group to
move on. Our little community, which by then had about 3000 regulars
on the Web and an official membership count of 250, soon expanded to
move beyond a just-Beijing community, and soon started focusing on
other parts of the country. For example, when we visited Hong Kong in
July 2005, we took the time to say hi to 2 groups in the SAR. (No,
not SARS - the abbreviation stands for "special administrative
region", Mac-English for "the part of China that has a bit more Mac
users than the mainland".)
Ja ja ja... a very ordinary user group. Just with a bigger vision in
mind.
In the capital city where the western part of the 2nd ring road had a
hidden capability to become a car park from 17:00 to 19:00 every day,
and a ring road during all other times of the day and night, this
house of Mac freaks, fanatics and Feng-led faithfuls soon saw its
leader travel to America for Macworld San Francisco 2006, where
books, magazines and other bits of Mac-related "stuff" (for lack of a
better word) from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan was shown to the
rest of us, i.e. the already-Mac-ified United States of America. This
group from the northern capital also delivered speeches to a fellow
American MUG and to the User Group Lounge, telling people about what
1.3 billion potential Mac faithfuls are up to.
Ja ja ja... a very ordinary user group. Just with a bigger vision in
mind, and with the mission to foster "international cooperation and
exchange", Mac-wise.
When the user group in the city that will host the Olympics in the
summer of 2008 celebrated its 4th anniversary in March of 2006, it
gave away gifts to the world, and to the local community too, by
launching the first mandarin Chinese Macintosh vodcast and a website
for the outside world about Macintosh China. It also brought more
content to the Chinese Mac world -- a Chinese edition of Macsimum
News, so to speak.
Ja ja ja... a very ordinary user group. Just with a bigger vision in
mind, with the mission to foster "international cooperation and
exchange", Mac-wise, and with an intent to bridge Mac people from
outside the nation with people inside the nation.
In the Macintosh book market on the planet Terra (a.k.a. Earth), a
new book has been born. Yes, it is another Mac book. Yes, it is
written by another David. No -- the surname isn't Pogue or Reynolds,
and it is not from the USA, but from a different TLA nation: Feng
from the PRC. The guessing is over, and there is a winner (if you
guessed it right): the guy that wrote this email actually was
responsible for proofreading the latest edition of Apple Confidential
2.0 in simplified Chinese.
Ja ja ja... a very ordinary user group. Just with a bigger vision in
mind, with the mission to foster "international cooperation and
exchange", Mac-wise, with an intent to bridge Mac people from outside
the nation with people inside the nation, and with the will to shape
the Mac world in China, hand in hand with the other Mac compatriots
-- inside China and outside of China.
Mac
Members
Executives
Meetings
Web site
+ Email
___________
= Macintosh user group
___________
+ Doing more than a typical "Macintosh user group"
___________
= When MUGs move beyond themselves
By the way if this finished in your Spam folder I highly recommend a
quick visit to the Preferences window of your favourite email
program. :-)
Friendly greetings
David Feng
BeiMac, China
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