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July-September 2008

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SLO Bytes
A PC Users’ Group in San Luis Obispo, California
by Cheryl Wester

SLO Bytes was founded in January, 1984 by a group of businessmen in San Luis Obispo. The first meeting was at Computerland (then on Monterey St.) and then moved to Richard Racouillat’s office. Richard is a local attorney who is still in practice in SLO.

They quickly outgrew Richard’s office and moved to the vending machine snack bar at Camp San Luis. This was arranged by Byron Smith, national guardsman, who still lives in the area.

In 1987, with the help of Bob Ward, another move to a 24 station lab in the Biology Department’s Science North at Cal Poly University. About this time the president and longtime member, George Campbell, joined the club. Within two years they outgrew the laboratory and moved into a lecture room in the same building. Even this room, with a capacity of 65, filled needs for only a short time.

In 1992, they moved to the adjoining building, Fisher Science, where we occupied Fisher 286, one of the largest lecture rooms on campus. Meetings were changed from Tuesday evenings to Sunday, as this was the only day of the week they could be assured of the meeting hall and a large enough block of time to satisfy our needs.

As of January 1st, 1998, they were without a meeting place because of the large rent increase Cal Poly Foundation wanted to impose on the group. After a search of the area, they landed a new home at the I.O.O.F. Hall, located on Dana Street in San Luis Obispo. They started the first meeting at the new facility on February 1st, 1998 and have been happy there ever since. I have copied this from the web site of this great group because I found it fascinating that they have been in business for over 20 years and appear to be growing and holding there own. You can find more out about this group at the web site. http://www.slobytes.org/.

They have a Question and Answer period before every meeting. They also have several SIGs prior to the main meeting—including a Windows operating system SIG for beginners. They meet the first Sunday of every month at 12:45 with Q & A and SIGS with the main meeting starting at 2:30. If you are in the area please come by and join them as visitors are always welcome.

They had an interesting meeting in March. Zazz Daniel demonstrated how Oral History Interviews can help capture pieces of the past. They also had a special meeting in March on Digital Photography by Tim Gray, http://www.timgrey.com, a renowned expert in Digital Photography.

I like the Bulletin Board that they have for members. What a great way to interact and keep informed on what is going on. I hope to attend one of the meetings in the near future.