So why were people lining up at the Gold Coast Mac booth?

They were tossing beanbags into an iMac shell to win t-shirts and sweatshirts, and in the process, learning a bit about Macintosh and Gold Coast Mac!

GCMac was at the two day radio show, one of the biggest in the South, because amateur radio operators are making computers an integral part of their setups, and many of them have never before considered Macintosh part of their solution. By the end of the weekend, it was clear the booth was a success!

The double booth was donated by Hamboree organizer Evelyn Gauzens, who has been a big supporter of Macintosh and Gold Coast Mac. Inside a big blue pop-up tent, we set up the GCMac projector, and used it to do demos of iMovie, and to show the iMovie produced by Dave Game of the 2001 Macworld Expo in San Francisco. People stopped to watch instant movie creation, and saw themselves inserted almost instantly into iMovie, captured by a digital camera attached to the GCMac laptop. Many seemed impressed that the movies could be created so quickly and easily.

If they liked the demo, they loved the finished product, with every showing of the Macworld movie drawing people to watch the movie under the tent.

Past President Rose Lynn worked hard to get people to visit us, a challenge with the activity in our hall. Helium filled iMac balloons towered high over the booth, making it a landmark in the hall. A sound system provided by Jan Barkan boomed out the story of the Macworld Expo, and the beanbag-in-the-iMac engineered by Rose was a rousing success. People lined up for a chance at T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other Apple goodies donated by Apple User Group program manager Diane Cohn. We gave away over 100 iMac posters as consolation prizes, to winners who couldn't get five of five beanbags into the iMac. Enough people could beat the box, however, to win almost 90 t-shirts and other prizes.

A good turnout of members and officers kept the booth humming, and over the course of the two day event, we managed to touch a lot of people with the Mac message, and even solve a few problems for PC users!

It was a great way to reach an audience which would not have even known of us, and a great chance to reach out to another group as computer ownership evolves!

February 2001