The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Gary Taig editor@melbpc.org.au |
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Firstly I must say many, many thanks to the 583 members who completed the PC Update survey. Some people seemed to think it was organised by the Melb PC management committee, because they included comments about me (thankfully mostly good) but make no mistake, I needed the feedback, paid for space on the facility, wrote it, have collected and will act upon the responses. Its purpose was purely to ensure that PC Update continues to please the biggest possible majority.
If you missed completing it, I'm already working on the next one and you'll have an opportunity soon - perhaps as early as next month. The first one was very straightforward, the next one will dig a little deeper into certain areas so that published material can be tailor made for this membership.
Unfortunately I forgot to add a last page saying "Thank you for completing the survey". To some people it wasn't obvious the survey was completed; others may have noticed that too. However, by the time I realised it three or four weeks had passed by and it was just too late. I guess you can cover most things the first time, but not...
Apart from the varied comments contained in responses to the open questions the figures published in May PC Update have remained consistent throughout the entire survey period. To save space in PC Update I will make a file that can go online for those who are interested in the details.
Photographic Competition
There are three competition periods each of seven weeks duration. You can begin lodging entries as soon as you like. The periods end on 15 August, 3 October and 22 November. The new rules allow each member to enter up to three separate photographs in any one competition period, but each photo must be entered under a different category.
The competition will end in time for late November judging so that the winner can be announced at the monthly meeting on Wednesday 5 December. The main prize, the Sony 8.1 Mp DSC-H9 Cyber-Shot digital camera will be available for the winner to take home on the night of the December meeting. I'll be looking for some Melbourne based judges this year; if you know anybody suitable, please be in touch.
An e-mail message arrived from one member who read this column last month and he insists that these days the rules for photo competitions have been greatly relaxed (my words). With the entire photographic world behind him, he doesn't like the rules drawing a distinction between a photograph and a piece of artwork. I asked another photographically oriented member for a comment and he supported this in part, admitting that he had almost completed an artwork entry last year before discovering that the rules didn't allow artwork to be submitted as a photograph. Maybe I am the odd man out; perhaps I am like the first member said, stuck in the 20th Century, or did he say 19th? Anyway, on the strength of this I've decided to talk widely to more people and if it turns out that the photographic fraternity in general agrees with him, next year we'll add a second, parallel stream to the competition where entries may be substantially enhanced, to create what I'll continue to refer to as, a piece of artwork. If the photographic community accepts artwork in lieu of original photographs, frankly I don't mind being old fashioned.
While we have so-called educated professional radio announcers and others who no longer understand the difference between deny and refute, or between allow and enable, and there are many other examples, I'm quite prepared to accept that some sections of the photographic community might have become so bored now that cameras are smart and they don't have to do any real work to get a half good photograph, that they no longer understand the difference between a photograph and a piece of artwork. This makes you wonder how long will it be before some start referring to a vector image created in Corel or illustrator, a photograph.
For the purists, we will still have a photo competition with a camera as the main prize. Perhaps the prize for the other section should be some image enhancing software. Wouldn't that be appropriate!
Please feel free to send comments in a letter to the editor if you are sufficiently motivated by this...
By the way, this month there was insufficient time to complete arrangements for some secondary prizes, so that's on hold for the moment. We used to have a year of free Internet access as a secondary prize, then just prior to last year some of our Melb PC people met some senior Microsoft people, struck up a relationship and managed to arrange copies of some image manipulation software as secondary prizes. This year I'm waiting to hear back from committee on whether or not we can give away some Internet access. If you have six copies of War & Peace in your back pocket or kicking around somewhere 1/2 dozen gold eggs that were laid by a golden computer retailer, let's know and we'll put together some novel secondary prizes.
Reprinted from the July 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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