The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
APCUG 2001 Report
George Skarbek
 gskarbek@melbpc.org.au

Melbourne PC User Group is a member of the worldwide Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG). The annual meeting in Las Vegas in November runs in conjunction with the largest computer show in the USA, Comdex. Approximately 380 delegates from user groups worldwide attended, with the large majority being from the USA. The format consisted of series of round table conferences where the chairperson gives a presentation and then ideas are exchanged among the delegates. There were usually four simultaneous meetings. As well as the round table conferences there were presentations by vendors. Noel Peters and I were selected to represent Melb PC.

Some of the discussions that I attended were:

  • Making and Selling CD-ROMs
  • Recognising and Preventing Burnout Among Volunteers
  • LISTSERV® implementation (This was a technical session)
  • User Group Management
Reports on these topics have been given to the committee and there may not be enough general interest to include the reports here, but one topic that will be of interest to many was, Finding Speakers for Meetings.

This listed the problems user groups face in obtaining a suitable speaker, especially if that group is small and has less than 50 members attending the main meeting. The discussion that followed was most interesting; some of the more popular topics from a variety of groups included:
  • Electronic sewing machines that interface to computers. Men can bring their wives, but generally the husbands were more interested. During the meeting Internet related sites were shown that have appropriate software and patterns
  • Hardware repair demonstration. Starting with some dead or sick computers and showing how to restore them
  • Build a computer from bits explaining what is required and why
  • Clearing junk files from your computer
  • Live demo of hacking
  • Police talk on e-mail fraud and other scams
  • Computer trends (this was presented by IT writers)
  • Word and Windows hints and tips
  • Technology related such as Artificial Intelligence, Fractals (University contacts can provide speakers)
  • Also all groups stated that the Question & Answer session is essential to attract the audience. It rates very highly in what users want. Even if you don't have an appropriate guru in your SIG, self help works well because usually there is someone in the group that can answer a question. We are fortunate to have Barry Martin and we will always have our Q&A session.
  • Many recommended asking the audience what they want to see in a future presentation.
This full report was also given to the committee and it is hoped we can implement many, if not most of those topics into our main meetings during 2002.

Microsoft Presentation

One of the APCUG sponsors was Microsoft and we were addressed by its CEO Steve Ballmer. We were honoured that the CEO of a major corporation was able to spend an hour talking to the user groups and answering many questions. Some of his main points were:

He predicts that in the next ten years there will be more change than we've seen in the last ten!

He suggested the following four changes were the most significant for personal computing in the last 20 years:

  • PC
  • GUI Interface
  • Internet
  • XML
The next big change, according to Microsoft, will be .NET. (Major integration of many currently largely unrelated programs and systems. One commentator has described the .NET as Microsoft's vision of "software as a service", a development environment in which you can build, create, and deploy your applications and the next generation of components, termed Web Services.)

Despite rapid developments in many areas of computing, hardware is still developing considerably faster than software.

Ballmer claimed 2001 was a good year for Microsoft. They released Office and XP for PCs, Pocket PC and Tablet computers (laptop computers that don't have a keyboard attached and look like one very large screen) as well as releasing the Xbox (a game console with many features and stunning graphics). According to Microsoft, tablet computers will become popular within a year and will cost a bit more than a laptop.

A new file format (not NTFS) will be required in the future to help with multimedia file types (Video/audio)

Naturally there followed a Windows XP presentation demonstrating some of the many benefits of this new operating system.

Reprinted from the February 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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