APCUG Reports
October-December 2010

I have been approached by our President and other members of APCUG Board of Directors about the possibility of holding a Northwest Regional and I am now “floating the boat” as so to speak in the possibility for holding such a Northwest APCUG Regional with Boise, Idaho as the location.

Why Boise, Idaho, you ask? Boise, Idaho is a destination city with a centralized population of almost 500,000 and is only an hour or two away from such areas as Sun Valley, and there is a prime ski resort, less than hour away and 5000 feet in elevation, called the Bogus Basin which is also a playground in the Summer with beautiful mountain forests, where you can smell the trees and enjoy scenic Idaho vistas. A couple hours north is McCall, Idaho, another Idaho destination with the scenic Payette Lake nestled in the central mountains of Idaho, complete with its own Sharley, a fresh water serpentine monster (not that anyone has ever seen it, or at least photographed it). Sharley has been a legend forever, even when I attended Scout Camp on the shores of the Payette Lake as an 11 year old, and there was a carving of him (or her) on the wall in the dinning hall, but I digress.

Boise has its own set of amenities and attractions along with being the home of Boise State University and the Boise Bronco’s, the current 3rd rated College Football team in the country, having defeated Virginia Tech in the Labor Day match-up on September 6th. Boise is also called “Bronco Nation.” Boise is home to Micron and the HP Printer division. Culturally, we have the Morrison Center (Harry W. Morrison, co-founder of M-K Company in Boise, Idaho, builder of the Hoover Dam), the Boise Art Museum and three awesome parks in Downtown Boise. Boise is also the State Capitol.

On the Technical side, we probably have more user groups than any city in the nation, which includes .netDUG (Developers), VMware, Drupal, SQL Server, Sharepoint, Ruby, Boise Software Developers, the Idaho PC Users Group (APCUG Member), and the Boise Linux Group (founded in 2003). We are also home to the Boise CodeCamp and Techfest, a highly successful user group driven event with over 400 attendees with presenters and attendees that fly in from other cities in the Northwest to attend.

We have two proposals on the table for holding an APCUG Regional Conference in Boise, Idaho. One would be to hold one in conjunction with the two-day Boise CodeCamp and Techfest (I am on the organizing committee for this event) or possibility even hold our own stand alone event. We have several venues available as Boise is a convention city with lots of conference facilities as well as educational institutions.

Going forward, what we need now is a sufficient show of interest in attending such an event as well as the type of venue we would prefer including a single day or two day event. Please contact your regional advisor, members of the Board of Directors, along with myself, c_tinsley@msn.com, with your ideas and thoughts to keep the conversation going. One other note, if we were to hold our conference in conjunction with the Boise Codecamp and Techfest, they plan to hold it the last weekend of February, 2011, at Boise State University so will have to get moving on this.