AUGD: What a difference a Primer makes (from Beijing)
AUGD: What a difference a Primer makes (from Beijing)
- Subject: AUGD: What a difference a Primer makes (from Beijing)
- From: David Feng <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 11:30:40 +0800
Dateline January 2006. I was giving the East Bay Macintosh User Group
a quick visit, talking about the miracle in the making otherwise
known as the People's Republic of Macs. (I was on about the Mac world
in China, and it was quite a prezo.) I bought along a group-made
Primer -- the Mac in Beijing Primer. I heard someone in the crowd go:
"Maybe we should make one of those too."
Flip back to May 2004. Then, BeiMac, the Beijing Macintosh User
Group, was just two, and our membership was in the hundreds (read:
100s). We felt a bit odd -- the expat community knew that we were
there, but we went already for a few months without a single meeting.
(Doesn't that make you feel weird!) So we came up with a not-so-well-
publicized "thing" (for lack of a better word) called the Mac in
Beijing Primer.
The whole idea of the Primer was to forge a bridge between expat Mac
people in the Chinese capital and the rest of the Beijing Mac
community. Given the fact that I know English, German, French,
Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, it was probably not rocket
science for me to go around the Beijing Mac world. But what about
Scott, who just came in from Perth, with a dead PowerBook? What about
Andrew, in Beijing for a conference from Cupertino, with a dreaded
kernel panic? (All people names are made up, for lack of a better
word.) These people spoke zero Chinese -- and they formed our core
target.
Locals get around really easily. They speak the lingo, and if they
wanted support, off they went to sites like MacFans China, and
"boom", they got their Q's turned into A's there. But what about the
expats in town from Adelaide, Arkansas and Auckland?
The Primer was updated just a bit for January 2006's extravaganza
otherwise known as Macworld. But then again, this Primer in its form
-- 8 pages of A4 -- looked to head on over to that big sunset in the
west. We wanted something that was updated, and that came in our new
group appearance (Thesis Sans as the font).
Up went the new Mac in Beijing Primer -- just yesterday. The new
Primer has been expanded to 40 pages (and costed me two days in front
of the Mac -- in full), and goes on into great detail about where you
should buy Macs, scams to avoid, and even teaches you a little
Chinese to get you by when you needed help. We didn't forget the un-
Aquafied people: in went along a few "troubleshooting phrases" in
Chinese about the Classic Mac OS extensions, the old "bomb" (system
error dialog box), and that kind of stuff, including the famous
"rebuild your desktop" cure.
We had a debate chez nous about how we should expand the group. The
consensus was to keep the stuff that was out there (Chinese Mac news
hub, meetings and so on) open to the public, but to put our new
projects (including this Primer) in the realm of members only. This
Primer, then, is for members only -- but a ten-page Sampler is
provided for the rest of us -- we do like the adage "try before you
buy" (even if our group offers membership for the low price of zero).
The way I think of the new Mac in Beijing Primer is that this is sort
of like a magic pill, not just for us, but for the whole community:
1. It showcases what we know about the Beijing Mac world and re-
establishes us as Beijing's internationally friendly Mac club;
2. It's a big magnet for expat Mac people in the capital (recently
Chinese applications have been the norm; we like it the way it is
plus with a bit more "foreign involvement");
3. It's a great way for shops to leave their mark. We're working on
an expanded edition where every shop can have their own paragraph and
a photo, as well as more FAQs;
4. The Primer has room in the future for (well-managed) advertising.
(The way we see it, money that comes in gets used for the good of the
group -- at least in the foreseeable future.) Then again, we probably
don't want the whole thing chock-full of ads;
5. The Primer engages local shops with our group and strengthens
BeiMac - shop ties even more; the same can be said about Apple Beijing;
6. We get more members, because they have to join to get the whole
Primer;
7. Expats' problems are solved, shops get more revenues, more shops
open or the support from the shops to us groups is more forthcoming.
The funny thing is that we're the Beijing group. Even funnier is the
fact that we're hosting you guys a la Olympics 2008 next year. So
with that in mind (and not just the fact that we'll have 15 subway
lines come 2015, relegating our famous jams to the dustbin of
history), we decided to throw open membership to everyone on the
planet above 14.
(The primer, by the way, is currently at our Union site
macinchina.com - we'll have it on our user group website real soon.)
Food for thought, anyone?
David Feng
BeiMac, Beijing
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