APCUG

Stu Silverman Hello Region 5

Welcome to March's edition of NOOZ, sent to member groups from APCUG.
As the Advisor for Region 5, I would like to share some of this information with you.

Earlier this month, FACUG held its Annual Spring Conference. We had an outstanding program this year. We are now in the planning stages for our Fall Conference in October.
We will be coordinating our efforts with the CFCS Tech Fair. This will prove to be an exciting innovation.

FACUG

Here are the new 2007 Board of Directors of FACUG

Kissimmee Civic Center

President, James Thompson (center front)
l/r Stu Silverman, Steve Rosenthal, Marie Vista (VP) Sharon Rump (Treasurer),
Sam Wexler, (Secretary) and outgoing President Hewie Poplock (back right),
Thomas Thiel, Center back Dave(Doc) Dockery and Ira Kistenberg
at the FACUG 2007 Spring Conference

Each year we try to honor those groups who have produced outstanding Newsletters and Websites. Here are this years winners.

Newsletter Contest

Winner Central Florida Computer Society	1st Runner Up Space Coast PC User Group	2nd Runner Up Charlotte County Computer User Group

Robert Black accepting Award	Steve Rosenthal accepting Award	accepting Award

Webpage Contest

Winner Florida Macintosh User Group	1st Runner Up Space Coast PC User Group	2nd Runner Up Manatee PC Users Group

Winner	1st Runner Up	2nd Runner Up

Awards from Adobe

1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes from Adobe for winners of the 2007 Newsletter and Website contest. We would like to thank Adobe for continuing to support user groups by shsaring their outstanding software with us.

NOOZ

In this edition of NOOZ:

1.Welcome to the New Region 1 Advisor
2. 2007 Annual Conference Presentations
3. PUSH Disclaimer
4. Publicize Your User Groups on Wikia.com
5. O’Reilly
6. Smart Computing
7. Compu-KISS.com
8. Linspire

1. Welcome to the New Region 1 Advisor

The Board of Advisors welcomes Sam Wexler as the Region 1 Advisor, replacing Jay Ferron who is now a Director.

Sam is president of the Valencia Falls group in Florida but spends part of his time in New York – welcome aboard, Sam.

2. 2007 Annual Conference Presentations

Have you had an opportunity to check out the 2007 Annual Conference presentations at http://apcug.net/events/conference07/conf07files.htm?

You just might find something that you can present to your group. They are also handy to have around in case the vendor is unable to attend or the member giving the presentation becomes ill.

3. PUSH Disclaimer

Starting with the March PUSH articles you will find a new disclaimer at the bottom of each article and review.
It’s in two parts: This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses require the permission of the author.

When published, the following statement must appear near the title of the article

Obtained from APCUG with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups.

Why did we change it?
Since PUSH articles are a benefit of membership in APCUG, they are no longer being posted on www.apcug.net and an editor brought it to the board’s attention that the disclaimer should probably be changed to indicate the articles were only for APCUG-member groups.
After discussion by board members, the February articles included a revised disclaimer but there was subsequent discussion about an author being able to have the article published by organizations other than APCUG. The new disclaimer was created by APCUG’s attorney.
If you have any questions, please contact Judy Taylour at jtaylour@apcug.net.

Editors / Authors: when you send articles to the PUSH chair, Judy Taylour, will you please include a statement that the author has given permission for the article to be published by APCUG member groups (some editors / authors already do this).

4. Publicize Your User Groups on Wikia.com/ wikipedia.org

An APCUG Regional Advisor recently heard from a user group leader that important informational/reference Web sites are shockingly uninformed about user groups.
http://computing.wikia.com/wiki/Computer_groups lists exactly two computer groups: one New Jersey user group and APCUG. Hardly any info is given for either organization, though there are links to the groups' real sites.
That there's NO entry for "user group" seems surprising. A longer -- but hardly complete -- list of user group entries appears on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_users%27_groups.

Note that Wikipedia is the better-known user-written/edited encyclopedia, while Wikia is, "an advertising-supported platform for developing and hosting community-based wikis. Specifically, Wikia enables groups to share information, news, stories, media and opinions that fall outside the scope of an encyclopedia."

5. O’Reilly

Marsee wanted us to know that O’Reilly has recently posted some Missing Manual Screencasts (videos) online for Office 2007 if people want some tips and to see it in action.
They are by the authors of their Missing Manual books.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=missingmanuals&search=Search

6. Smart Computing

Thanks to Smart Computing, partnering with Corel®, for sponsoring a digital photo contest open to all attendees of the Annual Conference.
They gave the shutterbugs at the conference a chance to showcase their talents and have their photo published in Smart Computing.

Frank Lachut from the Cincinnati PCUG won 1st place in the CES category for “The Many Faces of Technology”

Ruth Lewart from the Brookdale Computer User Group won 1st place in the APCUG category for “APCUG Managers.”

Check out page 11 of the April 2007 Smart Computing magazine for more information about the contest and to see the 1st place pictures.
They also sponsored a contest at the recent FACUG conference – look for those photos in a future issue of Smart Computing.

7. Compu-KISS.com

Folks receiving NOOZ likely know that a major benefit user groups receive from APCUG membership is the monthly assortment of articles sent to newsletter editors.
Frequent authors Sandy Berger and Gabe Goldberg collaborate on the Compu-KISS Web site, www.compukiss.com . Compu-KISS offers a wealth of content, including articles, product reviews, and more.

The Compu-KISS message board, www.compukiss.com/happycomputing/ recently introduced several new topical areas (Health & Wellness, Freebees & Bargains, Photos & Printing, Cell Phones, Games & Entertainment, etc.), serving as a free forum for discussing all-things technology. While the sites' orientation is the boomer-and-beyond generations, there's no age-check for using the Web site and technology clearly knows no age boundaries!

Don’t forget the generous discount Sandy & Dave Berger have offered APCUG-member groups – 35% off Sandy’s books at http://www.greatagebooks.com/bookstore.php

8. Linspire Discount Offer

Thanks to all the members who downloaded the free Linspire program during the month of February. They were quite pleased with the almost 600 downloads and have indicated they will have another one coming up.

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