My First Spring FACUG Conference
I want to thank SPCUG for giving me the opportunity to attend the Spring Regional
Conference of the Florida Association of Computer User Groups held March 5-7
at the Kissimmee Civic Center in Kissimmee, Florida.
I arrived Saturday morning
for registration and was welcomed by familiar faces right from the start. Hope
Hertz, Betty McMillen and Judy Dennis were the volunteers from our SPCUG in charge
of the registration. I was handed my "official cloth Comcast carry bag" and name
badge for the conference. The bag was filled with information about the schedule
of events and flyers from the supporting vendors as well as a few goodies.
 Breakfast was first on the schedule and was sponsored by Smart Computing magazine
with Marcy Gunn giving a presentation about their "suite" of publications. We
were given a free issue of Smart Computing in our bag and I was able to later
pick up free copies of two of their new magazines, PC Today and CE Tips. Marcy
showed us how we can benefit from our monthly subscription to any of their publications
by registering on the SmartComputing.com website where we can have access to
any and all of their publications.
Before I begin with the outline of the events I attended, I want to express
the feeling of sharing that I experienced everywhere I went. There were close
to 200 people at this conference from all over the state of Florida. They were
all just like us, volunteers in their groups. They love the computing world and
love to share knowledge and experiences.
There
were three or four roundtables going on at the same time, so we had to pick and
choose which to attend. For a complete list of all the roundtables and the agenda
visit the FACUG website at www.facug.org and
click Spring Conference.
The first roundtable I attended was "Creating A User Group Website" led by
Dave Dockery. I learned about user groups that accept new/renewals directly from
their websites using the Pay Pal service. Dave's user group also has developed
a system to prevent harvesting of member's email addresses by spambots. I discovered
that several groups are no longer printing their newsletters -- everything is
done through the website and email.
The next roundtable I attended was the "APCUG Work Shop" led by Peggy Ireland
and Steve Morgan. This roundtable explained the benefits of joining the Association
of Personal Computer User Groups. I knew that SPCUG has been a member, but I
never realized all the benefits.
The Luncheon Event was sponsored by Intel with Dave Whittle speaking about
the Centrino Mobile processor chip as well as the Pentium 4 with hyper-threading
technology. We learned how our user groups can obtain the free Intel "presentation
in a bag" program. Intel gave away a new Pentium 4 processor chip and motherboard
as a door prize -- the lunch was great as well!
The roundtable that I chose immediately following lunch was "New Developments
in Digital Photography" presented by Rod Scher. Rod is the publication editor
for Smart Computing magazine and has a background in teaching photography. The
PowerPoint presentation that he gave was excellent, and we were able to bring
back a copy for a SPCUG meeting.
The last roundtable for me for the day was "Making it Fun" presented by Rose
Lynn. Rose is with a MAC group and you could see as soon as you entered the room
that she likes to have fun. She stressed the importance of "making it fun" no
matter what the group is working on. If people have fun they will come back,
and be more willing to volunteer.
It was time for dinner, and Microsoft went all out. We had a truly fine dinner
with a meat carving station and all. Alan Chitlik, from Microsoft, presented
Digital Image Pro and used his own digital pictures to show all the fun things
you can do with the software. He demonstrated how powerful and easy the program
is to use. We had several lucky people who went home with Microsoft software
door prizes.
 The evening ended with the User Group Summit/FACUG Annual Meeting.
We were introduced to the new board members, and our own Dave Gerber is the new
President. Sharon Rump will continue as Secretary.
The winners of the three contests
were announced. SPCUG won a position in each contest. For the Community Spirit
Award, sponsored by the FACUG, we won Honorable Mention. The winner was the Tampa
Bay Computer Society, and they took home a check for $150. For the Web Page Contest,
sponsored by Adobe, we came in second place and won Adobe In Design CS software
package. In the Newsletter Contest, sponsored by Adobe, we came in third place
and won Adobe Acrobat software.
Breakfast on Sunday morning was at 8:00 am, and sponsored by Jasc Software.
We were wowed by a presentation showing Paint Shop Pro 8 and Paint Shop Photo
Album 4. This conference certainly brought you up to date on digital software.
Jasc gave away each of their products to some more lucky winners.
My first roundtable for the day was "Tech Session" with Alan Chitlik and Microsoft.
The group wanted him to show video and audio. Alan demonstrated how to use Windows
Media Player to organize your music and burn CD's of your favorites. He also
did a live demonstration using a video camera and Windows Movie Maker 2 to make
your own movies. We saw it before our own eyes -- and both of these programs
are free with Windows XP! Microsoft ended the session by giving away two more
office suites.
 The last roundtable for me was with our own Dave Gerber and Forrest Paradise
presenting "Communicating Electronically with Membership". Dave explained how
he has been able to "communicate" with SPCUG members beyond our website by using
a service offered by Forrest Paradise called "E-Mail Contact Manager". This service
will eliminate the problem all groups have when an ISP limits the number of recipients
for any given email message. Dave also shared his "Dave's Bytes" website newsletter
and explained how this type of newsletter can attract new members.
The Lunch Event was sponsored by Adobe with Dave Helmly presenting. We had
fun with digital again while Dave showed us Adobe PhotoShop Album 2. He demonstrated
how easy the program is to find, share, fix and preserve your photos. We ended
lunch with more prizes from Adobe. This was a very special luncheon for Dave
Gerber and myself because March 7th was both our birthdays and the entire hall
sang Happy Birthday!
The next hour and 30 minutes we were able to browse all
the vendor displays that were present for the conference. Here we were able to
get up close and ask questions and even order software at special prices.
 The "Wrap Up Session" was the Grande Finale of the conference. And what a
session it was. We were overwhelmed with giveaways from the vendors.
Everyone
present won at least one product, and many received two prizes. Thank you to
the vendors and to the hard workers at FACUG for a successful spring conference.
Event Sponsors: Adobe, Intel, Jasc Software, Microsoft, Smart Computing
Carry Bag Sponsors: Comcast
General Sponsors: Borland, Cerious Software, Creative Technology of Sarasota,
Net Fulfillment Inc., Office Depot, User Group Relations, Webworking Services.
Printing for the conference materials courtesy of Office Depot, Bradenton.
Author: By Nancy Dennis- SPCUG
Date: 03/12/ 2004
...return to top
|
