el presidente's RAMblings February 2009

Welcome to the first president's column of 2009. Late in February we attempted to send out an email to all members of the club to trial some new mechanisms for distributing club news. As I was announcing the first competitions for the new year I have inserted the text of the email here. As more than 40 percent of members did not receive the email the closing dates are extended to the last day in April. Please send all entries to the office by any means that you like (fax, email, post or hand delivery) addressed to El Presidente.

"Seasons greetings to Everybody, I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2009.

This email has been sent to all members of the Melbourne PC users group (for several reasons) as a trial of some technology that we are looking at using to disseminate information to club members.

Firstly as I was too late to get this announcement into the February issue of the club magazine I wish to
announce a competition open to all members of the club.

Courtesy of Charles Wright's influence with Microsoft we have five copies of Office 2007 to give away so I have created five categories, with one copy as a prize for each category.

1) A digital photo, any subject, any camera
2) Poster design to advertise our club (A3)
3) One page (A4) item on what my PC means to me
4) One page item on what I would like
to see happening with Melb PC
5) Photo taken on a phone on any aspect of digital technology. (As long as there is some link to digital technology I don't care what the subject is.)

The competition closes on the last day of March 2009. Only one prize can be won by any member but you
can enter as many times as you like in all categories.

The judge's (that's me) decision is final and winning entries will be published either on-line or in the magazine.

Secondly as we develop this technology and our relationships with vendors we are looking to use email to advise you the members of both club news and special offers in the most timely manner.

There should never be more than one of these emails a month on either news or club related offers but we respect the rights of members to decline to receive these communications. Therefore to not receive news related emails send an email with "unsubscribe news" as the subject to president@melbpc.org.au. Similarly to unsubscribe to offers send an email with "unsubscribe offers" as the subject, to the same address.

Keith Younger
President"

When thinking about the missing email addresses (which we are looking into) I thought about the club's contact with its members. At most monthly meetings I am seeing about 150 Members. In the News groups I am informed that there about 200 individuals posting.. I read most of the groups on an Ad Hoc basis and some of the names are very familiar to me. It seems to me that we have a very large silent majority. As the club struggles to be relevant to the needs of its members we are in danger of catering to a vocal minority. This was the reason behind the fourth of the competitions to help me get the views of the club.

We as a club should be doing our best to act as the advocates for the "man in the street" computer user. A case in point is the current debate regarding "A Clean Internet Feed". In this issue is an article by Rob Strover outlining the issues in an unbiased manner. The club should be making representations to the minister which reflect the views of the majority of our members, most of whom seem to have little contact with the committee of management. My personal view is that the government is about to waste a huge amount of money to satisfy the requirements of some vocal minor political party members in the senate whose votes they need.

This money is being wasted because the means of circumventing the system have already been well publicised. The stated aims of the government don't match the reality of what will be achieved. However the position advocated by the club ought to reflect the majority opinion of the members. If you have a view on this or any other matter let me know by e-mail so that we can develop the clubs presentation for forwarding to the minister and for release to the media.

Also in this issue of the magazine is Richard Solly's summary of the last month's postings in our newsgroups. As you can see discussion is wide ranging and covers a wide variety of subject matter. Some of the threads end up a long way from their starting points. Most of the banter is friendly with some longstanding inside jokes which take a little while to cotton onto. I hope that this column will become a regular feature of the update (perhaps with a selection of different authors taking turns to write the item to give different perspectives). If anybody needs assistance to set up a newsreader the club is happy to help.

By the time that you read this I will be half way through a three week trip to Africa on business but I will be checking email on a daily basis and would like to hear from you all (not all at once please).

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