President's File
June 2014

By Dick Gingras

Dr. John Patrick outdid himself with last month's presentation on the Future of Healthcare and the Internet. The hype leading up to it was not exaggerated and he captivated everyone's attention. Please read Steve Harkness's excellent review of John's presentation in the newsletter and check patrickweb.com for more information. Thank you John.

Last month I tried something we haven't done for quite some time. I asked each of you to follow a link that contained a poster and asked you to find a place to post it. I am sure it had some impact on the turnout last month. We had the highest turnout in 5 years with almost 60 people attending. Didn't it feel good to have more people at our meeting?  It doesn't take much effort so I will be asking you to do the same thing again over the next few months, and encouraging every one of you to help spread the word about DACS. We have some great presentations that many more people would enjoy if they only knew about them.

Mad Hackers Conference on Saturday, June 7

DACS plans to participate in the 2nd annual Mad Hackers event in Danbury at CityCenter. This should be a fun event for everyone and I hope you can stop by our booth while you are there. There are more details at www.MadHackers.com.

XP to Ubuntu Linux Workshop special event

This is scheduled for Saturday, June 14 at 1:30 pm in the DACS Resource center.  Learn how to convert your old XP computer, which may not support a Window 8.1 installation, into a useful and secure computer with Ubuntu. Read more about this in the newsletter.

APCUG overview

The Association of PC User Groups is an International, platform-independent, volunteer-run, nonprofit organization, devoted to helping User Groups offer better services to their members. There are currently about 150 member groups. We have been associated with APCUG for more than 20 years.

I have been working closely with the APCUG leadership, exploring ways to boost membership, increase public awareness of DACS, increase member participation, and raise revenue without raising dues. There have been some excellent suggestions and I am looking forward to learning from their collective wisdom.

APCUG conducted a Virtual Technology Conference (VTC) on May 3 that was packed with great presentations in the form of webcasts. PDF transcripts are available at http://www.apcug2.org/content/vtc11. All DACS members are encouraged to download presentations they find interesting. They also have an APCUG YouTube channel that contains video of past VTCs and will have the most recent presentations posted soon. You can view these at www.youtube.com/apcugvideos.

I am proud of the work that Alan Ostergren and Richard Teasdale have been doing with our DACS.doc newsletter. It has been recognized consistently by APCUG as an outstanding award winning newsletter. We will again be entering our three most recent issues to APCUG for review and the results will be announced in July.

The same can be said for Annette van Ommeren and Richard Corzo for their work with our DACS.org website. They will be entering the contest again this year, deservedly so, and hopefully will be awarded a prize on behalf of DACS for their efforts.

Something new this year is a Photo contest open to all DACS members but hurry, it ends June 10th. So if you have photos you have taken that you think are pretty good, take advantage of this and follow the link to Photo Contest for directions. Good luck!

Open Opportunities

DACS meeting ambassador and Greeter. Bob Green has been the smiling face behind the desk faithfully keeping attendance and registering guests at our general meetings for quite some time. He needs a break from it and would like someone else to step up to handle this. Please let Bob know if you would be happy to do this. Thanks.

If you are already using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Meetup, or LinkedIn, and have suggestions how we can use social media to publicize DACS events, please contact me. We need to seize this opportunity to entice more potential members to experience DACS.

Thank You …

Richard Teasdale for your Public Relations activities along with your other responsibilities as DACS.doc editor.

Annette van Ommeren for doing a great introduction to the Web Design SIG and ongoing efforts to revamp our website.

Steve Harkness for temporarily taking on the program committee role.

Joan Galligan for agreeing to help on the program committee to arrange monthly presentations.