The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
APCUG Conference 1999
George Skarbek
 gskarbek@melbpc.org.au

In November 1999 Morris Tobias, Ash Nallawalla and I were privileged to be selected to attended the international conference of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG). Once again, Las Vegas played host to this annual event in which about 350 User Group representatives comic front around the world to discuss a range of issues. The APCUG motto is "User Groups Helping User Groups".

Apart front the fact that the median size of the user groups is about 250 to 350 members, most groups are similar to our group in that they have regular general meetings where industry leaders will often give presentations. However, many arc struggling to find speakers. Almost all groups produce newsletters or magazines and all of their have Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to cater for specific topics of interest. Almost all that lead a BBS leave phased it out as most members now use the Internet.

So what was going on at the APCUG conference? There were breakfasts lunches and dinners provided by vendors who showed off their new software. Some of the vendors were Microsoft, Borland, MGI, Corel, Jasc, Powerquest , Adobe and Intuit. However the initial attraction to us was the holding of user group seminars in three simultaneous streams. I took part in discussions on several of the 18 topics that ran over two days. Some of tlhese topics were financial imanagement, imarketing your group, chairing meetings, succession planning, Internet crime and sharing articles and ideas for group magazines.


Corel Corporation presents to the APCUG delegates over a meal 
in the Main Conference Room

Seminar Notes

How to be a Popular Program Chair

This dealt with working with the speakers at the meetings to ensure that they will return and also spread the word that this user group is worth visiting. Vendor representatives aren't there for the sole purpose of giving you their goods. They have to justify where they go, what they do, and how much money they need to do it,

  • Be honest when claiming the members attending. This has been mentioned many times by many speakers. If you claim that 500 users attend regularly and the vendor flies in with a lot of stock and on arriving counts that there are only 250 chairs in the hall and even if it is nearly full, that vendor will fly out with a lot of unsold stock and will never return. Also, as many vendors compare notes, others will not come.

  • have an adequate projector and inform the vendor of its capability.

  • Avoid product shootouts. Nobody wants to have his or her product criticised.

  • Have newsletter and, if possible newspaper reports in before that event and inform the presenter that they arc getting additional publicity.

  • Use e-mail to advertise the meeting. Give users the ability to he deleted from this list. Many clubs use PDF newsletters.

  • Advertise the meeting details on the Web.

  • As it may not he possible to leave an industry representatives at all meetings, many user groups are finding that hands-on presentations by users are very popular. According to other groups, some of the more popular ones have been to build a computer, burn CD-ROMs music and data and have SIGs involved in this. Internal people and topics are also popular.

  • Finally, have "product in a box" on standby as a fall back. Many vendors have these available for the smaller clubs.

Marketing your UG

This was a good session. Almost all user groups have a declining membership and some have declined by over 30 percent in a year. This seminar covered topics that should help to retain existing members and gain new ones.

The main points that were covered were:

  • Concentrate on proposed members and also on the current members. If you have promotions only for new members you may lose your existing members. These are the hardest group to market to but it is worth the effort.

  • Use monthly feedback from all monthly meetings. A form was circulated that had five questions about the presenter and topic that had to be rated one to five. One good question, in my opinion, was "Would you like an updated presentation on this subject in 12 months?" Other questions were: "Was the subject interesting? How technical was it? What was the quality of the presenter? and What subjects would you like to have for future presentations?"

  • Have a trial membership. One group charges $5 for 3 months. However, their magazine is much smaller than ours (approximately 12 pages black and white) and therefore their printing costs would be considerably smaller.

  • Some have a 3-year subscription at small discount. This results in less chance of users dropping out due to apathy at renewal time.

  • Advertise your group to the community at large. Leave your membership form at schools, libraries, community groups etc.

  • One surprising fact that was brought up was that it is a waste of time to hold exit polls. Several Melb PC committees have wanted this to be instigated so that we could find out why members do not renew their membership. This exit poll was tried by several user groups and similar answers were received. Why users leave is predictable: circumstances change, they move, die, their needs change and there is no single main cause. The general consensus is that such a poll is largely a waste of time and money.

How to Maintain the Membership Database

This seminar was a waste of time. It dealt with the combined APCUG database and how user groups should update their office bearer's details. Unfortunately there was no projector so the presenters could only talk about the various fields that were not being filled out correctly and moaned how bad the data is. They also gave example after example and wasted two thirds of the session on something that could have been covered in five minutes. Unfortunately, at a plenary seminar there was a projector so they spent more time by going over their gripes again and bringing up a relatively simple database with limited fields.

The only slightly worthwhile aspect was the demonstration of WebBoard software, which fulfils the role of a BBS but uses the APCUG Web server. This software would enable the few user groups that had a BBS to close it. The Melb PC BBS will not be closed. It is still free to all the members, although the number of lines has been reduced from 16 to 4 due to diminishing load. This will significantly cut down the phone rental as we pay commercial rates for our phone lines.

Voice Mail for User Groups

This was a good presentation on how to make life easier for user groups and give a professional image by using a voice mail system with multiple mailboxes and fax on demand. The product that was used, recommended and demonstrated was Symantec Talkworks 3.0. It appears to be a very good product and reasonably priced. It requires a computer to be on but it does not have to be a dedicated machine.

The main aspects of it are:

  • It has multiple menus that can be selected from a touch phone giving most SIGs their own message bank. Also last minute changes to a venue or presentation can be quickly implemented.

  • It provides Fax back on demand with options enabling the user to select and receive a fax that may answer their particular problem at any time during the day or night.

  • SIG leaders can e-mail their new WAV files to be copied into the appropriate mail box by the administration staff.

  • The important aspect when starting to set up such a system is to decide on a menu system before starting. With many options it may be better to start with a simple structure.

My Impressions of Comdex

The last days of the APCUG conference coincide with the Comdex computer show.

First, despite the numbers being down this year, it still is huge. There are many acres of carparks just for semi-trailers that brought in the gear. To walk down every aisle in every hall (someone wrote) would be about 30 km. Having walked down very many of them, I think that statement may be correct. However, in my opinion this is not a computer show. Most of the large computer manufacturers were not there. The large companies that were absent included Compaq, IBM, Dell and Gateway. The only large manufacturer present was Toshiba. (Compaq had a token presence in a distant corner as a part of an educational organisation.)

It was a show for accessories and services. In particular services for the Internet. If anyone had any doubts whether on not the Internet is a passing phase, Comdex would have dispelled such doubt. There were products and services aimed at the new home user to large companies setting up Internet trading. Some of the more interesting software/accessories at the show included:

  • There were many examples of using Internet software to copy images from your digital camera directly to the web and then send the images in a postcard with your wording to your family or friends. The format will be automatically adjusted for your needs so that you do not send a 1 MB file and you do not have to install your camera's software on a cyber cafe computer, as this software is automatically available from the Internet. During one presentation at the APCUG we were asked how many own a digital camera and about 70% of the hands went up. There were digital cameras with image manipulation software for sale for us $100.

  • Software to boost your productivity with mobile phones. You can export your list of names and phone numbers from Outlook to your phone via the Internet. In a demo this took only a few key clicks and within 30 seconds several dozen names appeared in the mobile.

  • At the higher end of the Internet software there were companies selling Web creation software for merchants who need to set up a database of their products, collect sales statistics and trends and automatically have the credit' card details transferred to their bank accounts. To do such a task manually it would take many man-weeks or more. In one presentation they asked for business cards of anyone who is selling goods on the Web and guaranteed to set up a new site within 30 minutes or give that person a US$100 note. It was the longest presentation that I sat through but the software demonstrated was impressive.

  • LCD flat-screen displays were seen on more than 50 percent of computers. Some computers are just the LCD display with the CD and floppy drives in the side, connectors on the base. Although the LCD prices have fallen dramatically since last year, they are still about three times dearer than the equivalent CRT monitor.

  • DVD was on the majority of PCs, especially on the laptops. So after coming and coming for many years, I think this year they should take off. Similarly for USB accessories.

Having most of the memory manufacturers there, I asked most of them why did the price of memory go up so dramatically in the final quarter of 99? No real answer was offered and all started their explanation with "I don't really know" All admitted that they were guessing and gave a variety of different answers. It was a positive sign to me that not all mentioned the earthquake in Taiwan as the price rise started shortly before that earthquake.

Another advantage of having many senior representatives there is that you can ask them for future trends in areas that they know and also they can comment freely. I asked a senior software developer for a large company that deals in digital image software as to where the hardware is going as he must know this for his job. He predicted that there will be a digital video camera that will have 1 Megapixel still image resolution within 6 months. Also expect to see a one minute video with sound from a still digital cameras.

Finally Linux has almost arrived. The Linux hall was about 1/3 size of the entire Melbourne PCIT show. However, the number of desktop applications is still very sparse compared with Windows.

Conclusion

This trip has been a worthwhile one from the point of obtaining information for Melb PC. Some of the seminars that I attended were of significant benefit. There were good ideas on how to improve the monthly meetings, how to attract and keep members. The committee may even implement these ideas within a few months. At least as important was the information that an exit poll will not reveal any new information. The last committee were on the verge of spending a reasonable sum of money to hire a professional who would have made up a questionnaire and telephoned about 200 members who failed to renew their subscription. This was also a proposal that earlier committees had proposed but this expense can now be saved.

Although Melb PC is big we can learn from other user groups as to what works and what does not. The exchange of information comes not only from seminars but also from talking to the individuals from other user groups during the meals and breaks. Creating and maintaining contacts is a valuable way of being able to exchange information in the future.

One other benefit is being able to approach larger software companies who have agencies or branches in Melbourne or Sydney and convince them to come to our monthly meetings. Another minor benefit is that at APCUG and Comdex a lot of free software and occasionally books is given away. Overall, I believe that there is benefit obtained for the group by sending some delegates to APCUG.

Ash's Addendum (by Ash Nallawalla)

George has done a great job describing our APCUG visit, so I have relatively little to add. I covered the Editors track at the conference and I chaired a Web Contest judging panel where our external Web site won a couple of awards (Runner-Up, Design, and Honorable Mention, Up-to-Date Content). Of course, I did not judge our own site!

Morris covered the Management track and one of the more interesting seminars he attended covered the thorny issue of "problem members" on the management committee. With the three seminar tracks, we really needed three people; this is something I have to explain year after year. On some days we needed people to be at three places, if not more. For example, we all skipped the Intuit breakfast mainly because we had seen the entertaining presentation in the past and the US company has little to do with the product sold in Australia (at least from the viewpoint of our user group needs). While Morris went to the PowerQuest breakfast, George and I went to the Bill Gates breakfast where about 100 imaging companies also set up small booths. Having three people there also enables three individuals to learn about user group management; one cannot expect one delegate to come back and somehow impart seven days' worth of knowledge.
We met with several senior vendor representatives, particularly the ones from Microsoft, Corel and Aztech, and "sold" our group to them. These in-person meetings make it easier in the future for us to hit them for magazine ads, review material, meeting presenters and freebies for the raffles. Some of these relationships have to be strengthened in later years, or rebuilt when the staff member has moved on. We pointed many vendors at some of our SIGs, notably the video SIGs, the developer SIGs, and the Web SIGs.

Sadly, the number of vendor mealtime presentations during the week had dropped to almost nonexistent. This is mainly owing to the cost of feeding 350 people and the uncertainty of returns. The user groups have not done a good job of selling themselves for this purpose. On the plus side, the number of vendors who set up a table at a combined presentation was the highest on record and as APCUG makes more money with this event than the meal events, they were happy. The lack of lunchtime presentations was also appreciated by some attendees, as they did not have to leave the Comdex show barely 90 minutes after arriving from breakfast. The number of exhibits was about 75 percent of what I saw in 1997, my previous visit. The high cost of exhibiting, the high cost of hotels, and the dominance of Microsoft were all cited as possible reasons for this.

Photographs

I signed out an Olympus Camedia 20002 camera for the duration of the show. It is a 2.1 Megapixel camera that retails for US$999 with an 8 MB Flash memory card. I could have bought the loan unit for US$680 with a 32 MB Flash card but, being unable to justify the expense to myself, I passed up the opportunity. At its medium resolution (1600 x 1200 pixels), the 32 MB card could take 64 images, which was great for my purposes. The images printed in this issue, however, were saved at 640 x 480 pixels, owing to an unforeseen problem. At that low resolution I could have taken 489 pictures. See www.olympus.com/digital/ for more details about the camera.

To see the rest of my Comdex photographs, please visit www.photopoint.com/  and supply my e-mail address, ash@melbpc.org.au, to view them.

I bought a cheap digital camera for my 11-year-old son. It is an IXLA Superpro 640 and it cost me US$80 (RRP US$100) including the Web Easy Deluxe software. I noted later that it will sell for A$199 locally. Its resolution is fixed at 640 x 480 pixels and it stores about 40 images in its fixed 2 MB internal memory. IXLA is an Australian company that presented at our monthly meeting a couple of years ago. It has a fixed-focus glass lens, a flash, USB and serial ports. The USB port is a great feature at this price because downloading images over a serial link is much slower. I cannot recommend this camera for any serious photography but it is acceptable as a child's first digital camera. The owner's guide had a printing error that had somehow managed to omit all product images. For more information, visit www.ixla.com.au/.

Reprinted from the February 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia