OBSERVATIONS FROM THE APPLE USER GROUP CONVENTION
Copyright (c) 1992 Apple Users' Group, Sydney
Republished from Applecations, a publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia.
The 4th Annual User Group Convention was held on the Weekend of August 22-23rd this year. The event was held in Sydney at PittWater's Mirage Hotel.
User Groups from all over the country attended - some delegates travelling from as far afield as Perth, Townsville and Hobart. Our own AUG (Sydney) sent 4 delegates this year - Bill Gletzos, Tony Szabo, Tony Williams and Wayne Short. The attendees are all committee members from their groups and may hold varying positions from President to ordinary committee member.
The User Groups, while representative of the interests of their members, vary dramatically in size; from 60 members for the smallest to almost 1800 members for the largest. Some User Groups cater for Macintosh or Apple II interests only while others (such as the AUG) cater for both product lines.
The convention is held under Apples' patronage with two primary objectives:
* To foster improved communication between user groups. This includes a discussion of the common problems in running a user group. The result is hopefully better services to the membership.
* To gain an insight into Apple's own future product strategies and marketing policies so that club's are better equipped to cope with these.
Formal Presentations were made by Apple Computer in addition to several of the User Groups. For example VMUG (The Victorian MacIntosh User Group) gave a presentation on "How to run a UserGroup" while AUSOM (Apple User's Society of Melbourne) gave an excellent presentation of their bulletin board software.
A large amount of informal contact is also allowed for delegates to discuss ideas and learn about similarities in their operation as well as differences.
At the end of the conference it was agreed to maintain closer communication between User Groups and a working party was established to help make this a reality.
But ALL WORK and NO PLAY makes us dull computer USERs.
Some people lost a lot of sleep on the weekend playing Bolo - a multi-player tank battle game (unique in that is played over a network) while some went home recovering from their hangovers. Well you must do something while watching QUICKTIME videos.

THIS CONTENT COPYRIGHT © 2007, APPLE MACINTOSH USERS' GROUP, SYDNEY
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Permission is hereby granted for non-profit user groups to republish this content.
PLEASE CREDIT THE AUTHOR AND THE SOURCE: Applecations, publication of the Apple Users' Group, Sydney, Australia

THIS PAGE COPYRIGHT © 2007, ANDREW ROUGHAN