Re: AUGD: MUGs Going the Way of the Newton
Re: AUGD: MUGs Going the Way of the Newton
- Subject: Re: AUGD: MUGs Going the Way of the Newton
- From: David Feng <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:23:33 +0800
A big reason our BeiMac user group was able to undergo spontaneous
combustion (otherwise known as explosive growth) in those recent
weeks (361 on March 23rd; 430 about a month later) was that we...
1. focused on people who didn't have a Mac but were interested in them
2. operated an iPod user group to keep on spreading the halo effect
3. moved our meetings into universities (BeiMac & BeiPod 4 U; 4 you,
also 4 universities)
4. encouraged shops on good terms with us to carry application forms
5. opened up an online signup system
6. kept this thing free...
(We kind of like the last one; correction: the membership kind of
like the last one...)
Plus, we're in the new final frontiers -- the markets that have a
billion souls and counting (I'm sure this is getting old...).
We insist that quality cover over quantity, and to this extent, we've
been able to enhance the new membership envelopes every member gets
without exception at meetings when they sign up for the user group.
Even with that in place, though, we're looking at about 2 - 3 new
members a day (with even more to come if they join us at a regular
meeting). Do the maths -- it's not going to be an exaggeration if we
hit the big 1K by March 2008.
Read otherwise: this is the kind of growth that the Zurich Cantonal
Bank has been able to pull off. (I've been their client back in 1997;
one of their ads struck me deep: "Others grow by merging; we grow
through satisfaction."). And while we don't consider ourselves sworn
enemies of UBS-/Credit Suisse-esque growth ("growth by gobbling
others"), we do consider ourselves stickers of the principle that we
treat our members well. Here's why:
Back in 2006, I enrolled in a new readers' club at this bookstore
chain in Beijing. The way I was greeted made me feel insulted: the
application form was on a piece of thin A4 paper with a layout that
had "MS rushed design" written all over it. I was handed a membership
card which worked for only about a few weeks, and the new "membership
info sheet" was thin, tattered and looked like it came through the
printing press like a Jeep through the desert, rather than an Audi on
the Autobahn. In short, I felt insulted and I felt I was being
treated like (expletive deleted; approximate meaning: animal + waste
disposal). So I made up the pledge: DO NOT TREAT OUR MEMBERS LIKE THAT!
Whole days are poured into designing our membership welcome
envelopes. We also get downright environmentally friendly,
supplementing the pre-printed ones with updated information rather
than sending the old ones to the dumpster. We take hours off
analyzing just how to do application forms right; we analyze various
application forms from mainland China, Taiwan, Switzerland, Hong
Kong, and see which bits look user-friendly and which look user-
fiendly (sorry if the play on that word didn't turn out that well).
I guess this is standard behavior for a president who's a Swiss
citizen... ;-)
David Feng
BeiMac
On Apr 25, 2007, at 9:07 AM, Jerome King wrote:
I agree with you David
Our club is expanding. We added about 6 dozen new members (often
husband and wife) in the last year.
I think the "characteristic" of the mug members may be changing
for some groups. Ours, here in Naples, FL was never (to my
knowledge) a forum for technologist but absolutely consumer people
wanting to use the computer for their hobbies, to stay in touch
with associates, etc. We are mostly retired people
At any rate, we tailor our efforts to enable our members to
increase their skills and expand the number of applications they
are comfortable using.
We just concluded conducting 10 weeks of 3 hour classes on
application usage. Typical class size was 30 students
So, if your club is targeting those who are new to the Apple
computer I think will have great growth
Jerry King, President Naples MacFriends User Group (NMUG)
On Apr 25, 2007, at 9:55 AM, David Stempnakowski wrote:
Did anyone happen to catch this article on Ars?
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/04/24/macintosh-
user-groups-going-the-way-of-the-newton
Interesting perspective, but for our MUG, we're seeing more
interest - not less.
David Stempnakowski
Kaiserslautern Macintosh User Group
Apple Ambassador
http://homepage.mac.com/kmug_de
http://web.mac.com/kmug_de/
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