FACUG Leadership Conference

By Rose Lynn, Past President

GCM President Rose Lynn
leading a Roundtable seminar at FACUG

I spent the weekend of March 3rd, 4th and 5th in Kissimmee attending the Florida Association of Computer User Groups (FACUG) Spring 2000 conference and came home to Miami very overwhelmed.

My terms as President have been directed at strengthening our organization in many aspects as indicated we needed by a 2 year old survey. We have succeeded in increasing our membership, building our treasury, broadening our educational efforts, expanding our community service, bringing morale to a peak, exciting our membership, maintaining quality presentations, and taking our success on a national level to assist other user groups.

Just a few weeks ago I realized that we were missing the boat right here in our own state by not supporting and sharing with the FACUG. After all, I understood why I would receive "jeers" when I joined the APCUG Association of PC User Groups because of the stigma of the PC in their name…….. later about that group. BUT why had I skipped over the FACUG? Perhaps because they appeared to be pretty low key in the Mac community.

WHAT IS FACUG?

The leading regional association of its kind in the country, FACUG is a southeast regional non-profit tax exempt association of independent computer user groups with 46 member groups, including PC and MAC groups.

Founded in 1993 to assist user groups in the performance of their managerial and educational activities, to promote communications among local user groups, and to facilitate relations between user groups and the computer industry. FACUG is the successor organization to the Florida Suncoast Conference of PC User Groups. Suncoast was one of the early regional groups having been started in 1989 in Sarasota.

WHAT DOES FACUG DO?

Regional meetings of computer user groups on a semi-annual basis.

Arranges panels, round tables, and vendor presentations for user group leaders to review matters of common managerial and operational interest.

(Please refer to http://www.facug.org for more details.)

So what you say? Well, I learned things about managing a user group in general, I was reminded of things we need to focus on which had been buried in our efforts, and I learned that we, ALL USER GROUPS need to participate in associations such as FACUG.

GCMac Mugs on display at the Newsletter Exchange.
I wonder who did that?

It is important for the membership to support its leaders in their participation and involvement in such organizations and in turn, all will benefit. I left the conference knowing that we have good leadership in GCM but it can always be improved upon. Macintosh left an important mark on this Spring conference. I have made a commitment to them to bring more Mac groups in and my roundtable presentation gave incentive and energy to all who attended.

We will now be able to begin implementation of some of the activities I learned about to set the stage for our next administration.

December 2000