THREE YEARS AGO : Justin Berka, in his column Infinte Loop at arstecnica.com talks about the decline and eventual death of compuer user groups in general and Macintosh user groups specifically.
He says: “Sadly, user groups and computer clubs are slowly fading away, due in large part to the rise of the Internet. Bulletin boards, and later forums, have replaced classrooms and libraries as the meeting places for technology enthusiasts. …”
“Honestly, I’m not sure how much the decline of user groups should be lamented. From a usefulness and informational perspective, the Internet offers up far more in the way of knowledge than any group of people can, since it aggregates the knowledge of all such groups. The sense of community present in the MUGs is still there, too—but now it’s present every day and is available online rather than just being available every other Friday. …”
I think that we should all leave comments about this.
(this was discussed on the UGAD mailing list. That had some good comments, but not where the general public could see them.
We started a Mac user group about five years ago in our community that happens to be a 55+ “active” retirement community. 90% of our members have been using Macs for years, but they enjoy attending the meetings since we focus on new and interesting applications as well as how to make the most of OS X on their computers. We have over 60 members with at least 25 showing up for our monthly meetings.
I frequently request NFR copies of software from vendors and developers who enthusiastically support user groups… it is a good marketing tool for them, and we promise and deliver by giving them detailed feedback after our meeting as to how well their products were received. They also frequently offer copies of their software or other spif for us to give away as door prizes.
Our presentations are done using Keynote, and every member, whether they attend the meeting or not, received a PDF version of the presentation shortly thereafter. We have an active and growing group… we don’t see any decline in attendance or interest.
Tony Taylor
Apple User Group Ambassador
Trilogy Macintosh User Group (TMUG)
Redmond, WA
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