President's Message

 

November 2000

 

If it’s December, it must be John Patrick--that new media Merlin, whose magic wand conjures up visions of the future of the Internet and whose message each year seems fresher than the one before. Some people need no introduction, so I’ll cut mine short with: "try him, you’ll love him!"

Six for the board

For those whose interest in politics may have been jump-started by the recent presidential election, DACS has an encore--a contested race for the Board of Directors. For the first time in several years, we will have six candidates running for five seats on the Board at our annual meeting in December. Three of those seats are open due to the retirement of senior board members Wally David, Ed Heere and Dick Gingras, all of whom will continue serving in other capacities. Joining incumbents Charlie Bovaird and Marlène Gaberel will be four new contestants: Don Neary, Matthew Greger, Don Pearson and Andy Woods.

Board elections are conducted at the annual membership meeting held at the beginning of the regularly scheduled December General Meeting. Ballots will be counted by hand, and preliminary results should be announced by the end of Pig SIG following the General Meeting. By tradition, candidates not elected will be invited to participate in Board meetings and given special consideration for appointment as officers in April.

Editorial doings

Please welcome Ted Rowland as Associate Editor. Ted will be responsible for copy editing, and will help with final review of the publication prior to sending it to the printer. He brings to this position a solid background in copy editing and a commitment to our high standards for dacs.doc that are reflected in the numerous awards we have received from the user group community.

Frances Owles remains as Executive Editor, and will continue to give direction to the style and content of our publication. Although Ted will be relieving her from some of the more time consuming hum-drum, I am sure Frances will quickly exhaust her day with other unpaid volunteer activities.

Speaking of awards . . .

I have just learned that DACS is one of the twelve winners nationwide of the third annual Jerry Award for community service, sponsored by the Association of PC User Groups at Fall COMDEX in Las Vegas. This is the second time DACS has received the award, named for APCUG founder Jerry Schneider, which includes a grant of $750 to help further the user group’s community activities. The funds for the Jerry’s are donated by Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and MGI Software.

Many APCUG groups are involved in community service projects of all sizes and scope. The purpose of the Jerry Awards is to recognize and reward these projects and to encourage new and expanded involvement. These projects exemplify how the mottoes of "users helping users" and "user groups helping user groups" have evolved into "user groups helping the community."

Joan Dineen, Treasurer of APCUG, and a DACS member, will be on hand at the December General Meeting to present the prize, which is being given in recognition of our partnership program with area corporations to recondition recycled computers and donate them to needy organizations. Microsoft Corporation has contributed user licenses for Windows and MS Works for each of the donated PCs. The first annual Jerry Award was presented to DACS for its work on behalf of Voice for Joanie.

Volunteers from DACS are continuing to work on the more than 300 computer systems that have been donated to the project by Danbury Hospital, Cendant Mobility and Raytheon Corporation. So far, 162 refurbished PCs have been turned over to 26 area non profits.

Prestondigitation

Many thanks to Bruce Preston, whose brilliantly orchestrated presentation on setting up a local network was no sleight achievement. Jim Scheef has written a great review, along with a companion piece on home networking issues. In the meantime, I am trying to persuade Bruce to re-do his presentation as a written series for dacs.doc make his charts and graphics available for download from our Web site.

Of course, sometimes the best information on how to simplify a task is that which convinces us that the task may be not be that simple. I asked a member leaving the meeting if the presentation taught her how to set up a home network. She replied: "It taught me that I should hire someone to do it for me."

--Allan Ostergren
dacsprez@aol.com


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