President's Message

 

May 2001

 

There was a time when the April annual election of DACS officers was a real contest. A nominating committee would get a list of candidates; each of the nominees would be asked to leave the room while the members debated; and a hard choice would be made. The winners would generally run again and be reelected for about three years, and then others would step forward to succeed them.
Something has changed. In this year’s April meeting a show of hands indicated who was willing to run for another term, and all were affirmed by a single vote of the board.

Most of the officers of DACS have served for four years or more, and are ready to retire. However, few have come forward to replace them. Perhaps it’s a sign of the maturing of the computer revolution, or of DACS itself, that members seem either to be content with the way things are being run or don’t know how they might do it differently. Since membership has been relatively stable, I conclude that we must be doing something right--but for how long? Without new leadership, any organization will run out of ideas and lose direction.

That is why, after four years as president, I have decided that I will not run again (actually, I came to that conclusion last year, but this time I’ve put it in my column and can’t retract). During my last term, my most important goal will be to find new candidates to bring DACS well into the new century. We have already brought in several new board members, and more board vacancies will open up next December. After all, as anyone who is not intimidated by the high tech bear market will agree, the computer revolution has really only just begun!

SIG transit gloria DACS

An important but often neglected part of the DACS mission is its Special Interest Groups. We once had a SIG coordinator and more than twenty active groups, but today all we seem to muster is ten. Yet a measure of the viability of any user group is its ability to bring members together to learn and to solve problems. One of the bright new stars on the board, Don Neary, has offered to visit with each of our SIG groups during their monthly meetings to find out how they are working, what the board can do to help, and how we all can benefit from their activities. Some of the answers to these questions will be revealed in a column Don will contribute to dacs.doc, and it is hoped that SIG leaders will also write more about their activities in the newsletter. Perhaps this will help guide others on how to organize a SIG, and help us to fulfill our mission of people helping people.

InterGalactic

The annual InterGalactic User Group Officers Conference has been moved up from June to April this year, and Don and I will be on hand as representatives of DACS. The theme of the gathering will be regional cooperation, and we hope to come out of the event with new ideas on strengthening user group activities. One goal of InterGalactic is to inform computer industry leaders of regional UG monthly meeting schedules, so they can organize their presentations to cover several groups in succession. We have benefitted significantly in recent years from the expanded role the Association of PC User Groups has taken on in providing shared newsletter content and national advertising. A stronger regional cooperation will hopefully provide a tier of services that the much larger (APCUG) is too distant to provide effectively.

--Allan Ostergren
dacsprez@aol.com


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