Our Trilogy MUG in Redmond, WA, is composed of members all of whom are over 55 since we live in a 55+ community. Of the 60 or more members (about 25 attendees per meeting), many are long-time Mac users; whereas some are either relatively new Mac users. Either way, they all enjoy hints as to how to make their Macs more useful, whether it is addressing OS X "secrets" that are often not always so obvious, or just how to make the best of some of the great Mac applications available.
So in addition to our monthly feature presentation on new applications, utilities or products, we always have a portion of our program dedicated to "Back to Basics." Fortunately we have a great meeting room with an overhead projector to which our presentation MacBook Pro is connected, and the presentation is always done using Keynote. No one needs to bring their own computer since on the evening following the presentation I save the Keynote presentation as a PDF file and then e-mail it to every member, including to members who cannot make the meeting. Since some of the presentation PDF files are large, I send each member an e-mail with a link to my MobileMe account where the presentation file is automatically downloaded to their computers for their review. This process works out great since few of our members even bother to take notes during the meeting knowing that they will receive a copy that evening. By the way, any time during the presentation I refer to a product or anything related to a Web site, I include the link to the Web on my presentation slides so that our members can go online if they wish to get more details.
I might make mention that we have door prizes at most every meeting; it just means that I must plan ahead to have some of the great Mac developers and vendors send us NFR (not for resale) applications or products with the promise that I will demonstrate their applications or products as a part of our meeting presentation, and will then provide them feedback as to how well the presentation of the product was received at our meeting. After the presentation I ask the MUG members who are present to give me a rating from 1 to 5 in response to five standard questions that could apply to any application or product, and it is these ratings and comments that I then send back to the vendor or developer. As long as I promise to provide this type of feedback (I include all of the questions that will be asked and how they will be rated) to the developers or vendors, I almost always get their enthusiastic support in sending us NFR products. Sometimes we have received NFR door prizes of considerable value since the developers or vendors see us as a valuable marketing and review source. In addition to the NFR items that they send as door prizes, they usually offer discounts to any of our members who wish to purchase the item in the near future.
Love My Mac!
Tony Taylor Apple User Group Ambassador Trilogy Macintosh User Group (TMUG) Redmond, WA
email@hidden
On Feb 10, 2010, at 1:12 PM, S. M. Henning wrote:
Hi Bill,
Your MacBeginnings programs sounds great. We have a fairly small group and try to handle new users with mentors who the newbies can call anytime. Since many members have laptops, they can bring their computers to our meetings and we work with them before or after the main presentation. We have some retired members, so this works for us.
Steve Henning Mac@LehighValley Ambassador Emmaus, PA http://macatlehighvalley.org
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:33:10 -0500 From: Bill Kline <email@hidden> Subject: AUGD: MacBeginnings To: AUGD???? List <email@hidden> Message-ID: <email@hidden">email@hidden> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Last night was our regular meeting of Greenville Mac User's Group. Tonight is our MacBeginnings Class. We started this about a year ago to help new users get up to speed. This grew out of a number of "Deer in the Headlights" looks from new people at our meetings. A few months ago, we started having our MacBeginnings the next evening after our regular meeting so we could set up our choir room once for 2 meetings. Works nicely. We run a 6 session cycle, so we get 2 cycles each year or so.
The question came up a few minutes ago, if any other groups did anything like MacBeginnings. I said I'd ask y'all.
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