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The idea for this meeting actually started during the first weekend in June when the APCUG Directors and Advisors met in Tulsa and agreed on a North East meeting in 2008. When Dick Kranz (Mid-Hudson Computer User Group), Hank Feinberg (Rockland PC User Group), Jack Marsella (Inter-Group Liaison) and Sam Wexler (APCUG Region 1 Advisor) met for the first time in mid-July, everyone agreed we needed to learn from a summer, 2007 meeting before we could do a bigger meeting the following year. Right from the beginning it was decided that we run the Symposium like a business. A few meetings and a lot of emails later the Symposium was ready to start. The Hometown Buffet was chosen because their meeting room had the best price (free) in return for our attendees having dinner there. The date was only a little more difficult. We all knew no date was good for everyone so we picked a date that was best for most. The meeting had to be before Labor Day, the summer weekends were quickly ruled out and August 22 was available at the restaurant so that was our date. The agenda was put together, volunteers were easy to find to present or run each segment and the announcement was sent out to the Region 1 User Groups. There were only two changes to the original agenda. Jay Ferron was elected the new APCUG President in late July and added to do the Vision presentation. We discovered DACS had done a Focus Group on our main topic and everyone wanted to hear their results. The door prizes segment that was run by Jack Marsella went from where do we get them to a flood of items by the day of the meeting. We had hoped for 20 attendees from the 5 biggest User Groups; we actually got 27 attendees from the 6 biggest User Groups. The bottom line: the Symposium itself may have been a big deal but the actual putting it together and running it was definitely no big deal. We urge all other Regions to give it a shot!
The official starting time was 4:00PM but it was announced the week before the meeting that attendees could come earlier and many came as early as 2:30PM to set up. From 2:30PM to 5:20PM, which was called “Primary Meal & Fellowship Time” on the agenda, just about everything was discussed in what became a networking segment.
Sam Wexler rang the opening bell at 5:20PM announcing Jay Ferron, the new APCUG President, who officially welcomed the attendees and talked about his vision for the future. Jay said he had been on the APCUG Board for approximately a year when he was elected President. Three months earlier a number of APCUG people did some soul-searching on how User Groups are serviced and concluded they were not doing a good job. Jay said we should do better and he was told to do it. He looked at what was being done and how we were doing it before realizing we needed to change how “to do” business.
Jay’s philosophy is to run APCUG like a business; either do it well or not do it at all. Since becoming President, APCUG is starting to do some things in a very different way. His very simple question is what we can do to make the lives of the attendees better; like how can we get more people to our annual conference or to your User Group meetings. Jay said the website needs a major updating because for a technology organization, the website should show who you are. Since the APCUG is the definitive technology User Group in the world, it should be represented like that.
The CDB (Content Data Base) has all the pertinent information about all APCUG members and should be current. Every group has access to the CDB so when an Advisor sends an email on what is happening, there should be no bounces. He talked about the new web server and services. Within six months, every User Group should be able to post meeting nights. Why? So any vendor can see who else is available when he is in the area so this vendor can contact all the User Groups for a tour. Jay asked how many have gotten free software from vendors to review but took the $500 product and never wrote again. Every chair should have a co-chair so if someone gets tired or sick then someone can take over and there is always someone around. There will be a big effort to get Regionals off the ground next year like the May 17, 2008 meeting under discussion at the Symposium. The plan is to put Presentations in a Box (PIAB) and a speaker’s bureau on the website, making it easier to find a speaker or give a presentation if there is none.
Jay requested you either let him or your Advisor know if you have a complaint or issue because if no one knows the issue exists then it can’t be fixed. They are working on job descriptions for volunteers because it is easier to get a volunteer if it is known what is wanted. Your volunteers should be recognized and spotlighted in your newsletter. He closed by asking everyone to come to the APCUG National Conference in Las Vegas next January. A Q&A session followed.
During the next session run by Earl Gundersen (Westchester PC User Group), every attendee introduced and talked about himself to the other attendees.
Successful membership and speaker development experience was the subject of Sam Wexler’s keynote presentation. Sam is President of the Valencia Falls Computer Club in Delray Beach, Florida and Secretary as well as on the Board of the Florida Association of Computer User Groups. He is a snowbird and was elected APCUG Region 1 Advisor last March.
The object of his presentation was to not only give the answers to specific questions but also show the processes to get more answers to other questions. Not everything works for everyone so if you learn just one thing you are ahead of the game; two or more puts you in bonus territory. While Sam has been involved with computers for almost a half century, he has been a businessman/entrepreneur for more than 25 years and is very passionate about saying the APCUG and your User Group should both be run like a business. There are very few major breakthroughs out there and these days most innovations are just slight variations of what already exists. For example, the inventors of the Swiffer broom that many attendees own were on television recently and they showed how they took the shortcomings of a broom to invent their new product. Likewise just a few relatively minor tweaks could result in major positive improvements to your User Group. While most groups are losing members, there are some that are actually gaining and he talked about three such groups. He suggested the attendees tried what he called the “screwdriver engineering” approach where you take a chance and try something new that has only minor hits if you do not succeed but major gains if you do. Jay Ferron added even if it didn’t work the first time, you should try it again in six or twelve months. Sam looked at this Symposium to show what a few people could do in little time and at no cost. When we started no one knew if it would happen but if it didn’t the loss would be very minimal. However they took the chance and everyone sees what happened.
Most groups talk about the exciting new technology but call themselves a computer user group. Many people consider the computer old school resulting in a “been there/done that” feeling which is a turnoff. Some groups should change their name but others should not. Special interest groups (SIGs) give a one-on-one with the technology resulting in a good touch and feel of the product. Sam believes you should know the experience of your customers (i.e. novice, intermediate and expert members) and cater to the majority. If your group is 10% experts and you cater to experts then you will lose most of the 90% majority. Allow email problems from members as well as non-members. Sam’s rule of thumb is if he can answer the question in five minutes then he will do it. If it happens to be an area where he has an interest then he could spend more time on it. Rethink if you really want to read the minutes and the financials at your meetings. Most people do not come to the meeting to hear that. Look at your subject matter as a Quality of Life issue. For example, you are not talking about processing or savings pictures; you are talking about receiving, processing and saving pictures of your kids or grandkids. Many members come to meetings to solve all their problems in one hour. If you show them the benefit of learning just one thing then they would appreciate if they actually learned more than one. Make every negative event into a positive experience. For example have all attendees at a meeting scream out “I told you so” so when someone does not back up their hard drive and loses valuable information, you can say the club said “I told you so” and not you. Do surveys; if you do not know what your customers (members) want then how can you give it to them?
Every year his club does several new things. Each year they would lose several new members after one year so this year they held a free mini-brunch for new members and only lost one. Everyone likes to get something for nothing. They had one speaker who showed how to get free merchandise via the internet and the next week an entrepreneur who owned several companies with ten million subscribers gave an inside look at how he does business. His club gave away a $950 laptop in a free raffle and everyone loved it. A Google presentation was coupled with a contest to predict the price of Google stock on the day of the presentation and the prizes were a percentage of Google stock.
The next speaker was Dick Kranz (Mid-Hudson Computer User Group) who ran a membership development brainstorming round table discussion on ways to build membership. The resulting ideas follow. Some may be better than others and more work needs to be done but a bad idea as stated could be a good idea if tweaked by someone else. Please let Sam know if you used any of these ideas and what happened.
At the next session, Rob Limbaugh and Sean Henderson gave some of the results of the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS) Focus Group session that was held last March 3, 2007 at the DACS Resource Center. It was conducted by a professional focus group moderator. Participants were made up of past, present and potential members. DACS volunteers fulfilled recruiter and host duties.
Hank Feinberg (Rockland PC User Group) next did a short PowerPoint presentation on how to build your own presentation in 60 minutes. First you open up a new Word document and list 3-5 possible topics of interest to your User Group. Then you copy and paste the information that interests you about these topics under each heading including graphics. You should cut and paste as you gather content for each topic and create a rough draft with full content. Check magazines, interesting sites and search engines like Google for material related to your topics. Decide which you want to use. then edit and expand. Send this all to Microsoft PowerPoint. Edit, add background, timing, special affects and change slide positions. Your 60 minutes is up and you have your very own presentation.
During the Symposium recap run by Dick Kranz and Sam Wexler, the date for the next meeting was decided to be Saturday, May 17, 2008. Several places were suggested and the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, NY was chosen. All APCUG Regions are invited including the Florida snowbirds that happen to be in the area at that time. Please hold the date and more information will be coming out. A list of volunteers was put together for this meeting and contact Sam Wexler if you wish to add your name to this list.
At this point Jack Marsella (Inter-Group Liaison) opened the virtual vault for the massive number of door prizes and everyone went home happy. Later that evening, an on-line survey was sent to all the attendees and the results were excellent. A video DVD of the Symposium highlights was sent to all Region 1 User Groups that requested it, so ask your APCUG Rep if you wish to see it.