President's Message

"Anyone who says he knows what’s going to happen next January 1 probably doesn’t really understand the problem." Those paraphrased words from former DACS president Tom McIntyre were the central message of our Y2K-II conference last month, and one which was echoed by each of the distinguished panel of conferees. Although there was shared confidence that critical services would remain available or that interruptions would be short and few, no one could really predict how events would unravel as the Year 2000 approaches and gets underway. Although never stated directly, perhaps the clearest management principle one came out of the conference with was "redundancy. . . redundancy . . . redundancy."

Planning and organizing an event like Y2K-II seemed almost as daunting as navigating the millennium itself. Ed Heere, Wally David, and Marlene Gaberel performed yeoman service in publicizing the event through radio interviews and contacts with the news media. Chamber of Commerce President Steve Bull sent out fliers to the Chamber membership, while Ancell School acting Dean Ron Benson helped publicize the event among WestConn students and faculty. Gene Minasi assisted in providing hospital facilities and equipment, and WestConn’s Audio/Visual Department helped in videotaping the conference.

With all the publicity, we booked an extra room at the hospital with closed-circuit video to handle possible overflow. The fact that overflow crowds did not materialize may say something about the public’s growing indifference about Y2K alerts, but not about the need for redundancy in planning.

If you missed the conference, look for more on the DACS Website and on your local cable channel. We have some great video takes that deserve another run.

InterGalactic/PCExpo

Once again, it’s PC Expo time. That annual pilgrimage of cyber phreaks to see the latest and greatest in computer technology will be held at New York’s Javits Center from June 22 to 24. The Association of PC User Groups (APCUG) will again be holding its InterGalactic User Group Officers Conference on the weekend before, and will be cosponsoring a number of PCExpo events for UG leaders.

Wish us luck at InterGalactic, as we compete once again for the annual APCUG newsletter and Website awards.

Postal Service

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I received my May newsletter five days before the General Meeting last month. If the Postal Service deserved our ire when the .doc was late (my April issue arrived two weeks after May’s), then they now deserve our cautious praise.
More on this later.

The BeOS or EndOS?

For those who thought Windows was the only game in town, come to our June General Meeting for a presentation on the next upstart operating system. Like Linux, BeOS is attracting a growing phalanx of business users who yearn for an open system that they can tweak to their own needs. Whether home users will run down to try it out, or even care for another choice, it will be good to see what the competition is coming up with. But if you are looking for another duel of the titans, check out where the real money is going in future operating systems: the Internet.

--Allan Ostergren
dacsprez@aol.com