| Some of you have heard it before. We, the leadership of Gold Coast Mac on the road to Kissimmee, Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, Podunk or wherever user group leaders need assistance. We are the leaders’ leaders and in many cases what other user groups aspire to be, so we try to guide them along. This trip was a little sparse with just two of us but we were mighty nonetheless.Our road trip began at Noon on Friday and after packing Esver’s Expedition to the max, we had a very pleasant ride North to Kissimmee. After checking in to our luxury suites at the Super 8, we dashed over to the welcome reception. Yes, as representatives of one of the most popular user groups in the state, we had many responsibilities and they began by arriving in a timely fashion and rubbing elbows with friends new and old.
We went back to the “8” and Esver had not completed his first presentation so he burned the midnight oil while his older travel companion slept soundly. We started the morning fresh and ready to dazzle. Esver received a standing ovation, and the buzz about his presentation on Building and Maintaining Membership was the best of its kind.
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| Rose Lynn leads the session, "Making it Fun!" |
On to Making It Fun by Rose, and the buzz was for the newbies not to miss Rose on stage -- and there was a full house. Many appreciative people enjoyed the enthusiasm, and said they couldn’t wait to return to their groups to try some of the ideas. Even FACUG is primed to inject more fun into the conference next year. Since the room was so full, we ran out of outlines. [ Webkeeper: There's a link on this page for downloading.] We tossed squishy apples and showed our toss-the-bean-bag into the iMac game too.
Esver presented iTunes and even against the Microsoft tech session, he was able to draw an eager crowd of mixed platform users. He did a great job! We even set up the laptop with cool sound sticks & subwoofer for the enjoyment of hungry guests as they waited in the food lines.
Our job is to assist, and as an example of how we filled our weekend other than presenting, we organized room monitors, offered tech support in various break-out rooms, assisted with meal set up and clean up, judged the newsletter contest, presented the Community Spirit Award, provided wireless internet access throughout the conference and equipment to other presenters. Our friends to the North in Atlanta arrived with four members and supported us throughout! Thanks Atlanta Macintosh User Group AMUG (President Chris, Paul, Mary and Jay).
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| Atlanta MUG members Jay Cann, Paul Quinnell and Chris Waldrip (President) pose with Rose. |
One of our duties at conferences such as this as YOUR representatives is to remain close to the vendors. As many of you know, they are no longer able to visit individual groups as often as they used to. We spent some time with Dave Helmly who represented Adobe and received some good advice that we will follow-up on. Dave was quite taken by Esver’s lighted, flashing pin (as were half of the attendees) and offered to provide some special product in exchange for a pin. That was a no brainer! We gave him the one we had and made a great deal. You’ll have to check further publications to find out what we will be receiving.
Alan Chitik from Microsoft even depended upon the Mac table for some comic relief and we gladly accommodated him. The representative from Jasc wanted the same deal we gave Adobe but we reminded him that he had nothing to bargain with for a Mac group…he understood.
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| Roger James, President of the Polk Computer Users Group, accepts 2nd Runner Up award for the Community Spirit Award. |
Our friend Marcy from Smart Computing, and her new associate Heather, made it known that they would love to plan a Miami trip. They publish five magazines now, and though PC-centric, they are great friends, super supporters of user groups. Their articles in which the Mac is used for comparison are generally very complimentary to our platform. And why not? Many articles are not platform specific.
We always learn from our attendance and this trip was no different. Ideas to get more participation from the general membership at meetings and other club functions, better communication between the leadership, and the membership are examples. Every conference is a benefit to the club in many ways. These benefits will soon be evident to members and guests. Also, please remember that we go on our own time and receive absolutely no funds from any of these organizations. We don’t even keep the prizes for ourselves.
Rose did not run for the Board of Directors of FACUG this year but did agree to serve on the newly formed membership committee. Peggy Ireland, President of the Association of Personal Computer Users (APCUG) was there, and formed an ambitious posse to convince Rose to become the Florida Regional Advisor for the organization. Rose agreed to begin serving after the job search progress is complete. We should be reminded that our membership with APCUG offers many benefits we have not taken advantage of. They include a browser based web board, a list serve to facilitate communication among the membership, a leadership conference at COMDEX in the fall in Las Vegas (to which Rose will feel compelled to attend). Apparently the East Coast will be represented well on the Mac side as Gail Murphy from Wired Women and the Apple Computer Network will represent her region.
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| Rose and Esver take a lunch break from presentations. |
Back to the conference, we stayed for the door prize drawings and hit the road back to Miami with lots of goodies to share. One of the prizes is a really incredible computer bag. Unfortunately, the INTEL logo is permanently affixed. We believe that the winner should leave it on there because it will be less inviting for a thief than an apple with a bite missing.
There were many comments and suppositions as to why we were not traveling in the MacBus and for some we explained and for others, we let them guess. Hopefully, we will have a full house next March and the bus will be on the road again.
March 2004
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