APCUG

Stu Silverman Hello Region 5

Last April, Marie Vesta, FACUG President was invited to participate in a Summit Meeting sponsored by Microsoft in alliance with Culminis. This meeting consisted of IT Professionals and User Group leaders from around the world.
One of the outcomes of that meeting was a discussion of the NEW Mindshare program which will become active shortly. In addition, Microsoft has developed UGTV. This is a network for User Groups which provides a way for them to interact and share information. I think we need to really applaud Microsoft for using their technological resources to improve communication and functionality of User Groups throughout the world.
They seem to be heading in the Web 2.0 direction, as was recently presented to us by Doc Dockery.

Here is the URL for the interview and introduction of this new project, http://edge.technet.com/Media/UGTV-User-group-Television-for-ITPro-Debuts. the home page is http://edge.technet.com. Marie Vesta was selected to be interviewed for its initial program. With User Group TV (UGTV) and live meeting being made available to us by Microsoft, User Group leadership will have some very powerful tools to juice up UG meetings.

Here are some of the upcoming month’s presentations.

Show Details:

May - ITPRO

Intro UG Members

Interview with Trisha Cardell

Demo with

Demo on Operations Manager with Barry Shilmover

Interview with John Martin (STO) on Community Platform

June - ITPRO

Intro UG Members

MVP Summit Recap

Interview with Culminis

Intro UGTV Cares Segment – call for content (The Doc Watson Show. This segment highlights the cool stuff that User Groups do in the community for charitable causes)

July - ITPRO

Intro UG Members

TechEd Recap (in depth)

Perhaps some sessions on film or more demos

UGTV Cares first contribution

This edition of NOOZ is sent to the President, Vice President, Director, Secretary, Treasurer, APCUG Representative, Newsletter Editor, Webmaster, Membership and Program Chairs of each APCUG-member User Group.

We urge you to share the information in NOOZ by including it in your newsletter, posting it on your Website, or e-mailing it to the members of your group.

Stuart Silverman - EMail
APCUG Region 5 Advisor , FACUG Directors

NOOZ - June 2008

1. Successful Leadership Conference recently held in New York
2. Midwest Regional Conference in September
3. Upcoming New Benefit of Membership – watch for the roll-out information
4. Linda Moore Appointed as APCUG Secretary
5. APCUG Survey
6. Tax Exemptions of Charities Face New Challenges
7. Updating Your Group’s Information in the Database
8. Fundraising Idea from the New Mexico Computer Society.

1. Successful Leadership Conference recently held in New York

Over 60 people enjoyed 2 days of fellowship and many interesting programs, discussions and presentations. Sam Wexler, Hank Feinberg, Bill James and the rest of the team did a fantastic job getting this first regional event for the Northeast off the ground. More details about the event will be in 3rd quarter Reports.

2. Midwest Regional Conference in September

The Midwest regional is off and running with lots of work happening for that event being held September 19 – 21 at Prairie State College in Chicago Heights. You can find out more about this event at http://mwug.apcug.org

3. Upcoming New Benefit of Membership – watch for the roll-out information

User groups will be able to use Microsoft Live Meeting for free! We hope that this will prove to be invaluable in helping you to run successful meetings, especially when it is not possible to get all of your members to attend the same location at the same time.

This account will be provided to you specifically for use within your user group and for the benefit of your user group. Once given your account, you will be provided with a user name and password which you must keep confidential. Only your president will be able to schedule meetings although, of course, any of your members will be able to join and even run them once set up.

Please note that although you will receive a LiveMeeting account with its many benefits, you will not be provided with a telephone conferencing facility – you may use your own if you have one, and LiveMeeting has the ability to provide audio conferencing through any PC which has a speaker and microphone. Some of the many advantages that your LiveMeeting account will provide include:

The ability to share both audio and video with anyone connected to the internet who has the LiveMeeting client software – a free download – installed.

The ability to present both PowerPoint presentations and anything on your desktop to the meeting attendees.

The ability to collaborate on documents and other content.

The ability to record presentations and events and make them available for review at a later date and time.

Once logistic are ironed out training and logistics for using this service will be announced.

4. Linda Moore Appointed as APCUG Secretary

Jim Evans has had to step down as secretary of the organization and Linda Moore was recently appointed to take his place. Jim remains as a Director.

5. APCUG Survey

We need to ask you some question on how APCUG is doing and have created a short survey that we would like you to take. The survey will ask questions about APCUG’s quarterly news magazine, Reports, the monthly NOOZ sent to selected officers listed in the database, and other important issues. Your help is needed to steer the direction of ACPUG. Your time will help us greatly to plan next year’s budget. Please take the survey and if you’d like to bring up any other items please contact your regional advisor.

6. Tax Exemptions of Charities Face New Challenges

You might want to take a look at the information provided at http://snipurl.com/2aqjt. It could possibly affect your group. From Gabe Goldberg, Advisor, Region 2.

7. Updating Your Group’s Information in the Database

We would appreciate either your President or APCUG Representative taking a look at the information contained in your group’s record. Many editor’s PUSH e-mail (articles attached) bounce because the address is no longer valid. And those PUSH articles make it much easier for your editor to put the newsletter together. If your president’s e-mail isn’t current, he/she doesn’t receive any information from APCUG and this applies to all of the other officers listed in your record.

If you need your log-in / password, please contact cdb@apcug.net and they will be sent to either of the above officers. Many treasurers said they did not receive information re dues renewal and over 5 e-mails were sent to the officers listed in your group’s record regarding dues renewal. If your Treasurer’s contact info is not listed in the database, we rely on other officers forwarding pertinent information to him/her. Please help us get the information to the correct people in a timely manner.

8. Fundraising Idea from the New Mexico Computer Society.

Do you have an Office Max, Staples or Office Depot in your town? If so, you might want to get a ‘rewards’ card for your user group. If members don’t have one of their own or don’t accumulate enough purchases to enable them to receive a monetary reward, they can use your UG’s number and the reward can go toward purchasing door prizes, administrative supplies, photocopying, etc.

Has any group followed up with Amazon to become a member of their Affiliate Program? (See Gabe Goldberg’s 2nd quarter Reports article.) You can check out how his group, Capital PCUG in Washington DC, has added the information to their website (http://shop.cpcug.org/). If your group is doing this – or any other affiliate program, please let your Advisor know how it is going. Sharing ideas like this makes it much easier for all of us – we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Your group is a member of APCUG; you have received this e-mail to inform you of updates, changes, or special news and information. APCUG’s policy is to send e-mail messages only to announce such information, and we will continue to honor this policy. If you no longer want to receive these e-mails, please reply to the sender. Thank you for being a member of APCUG.

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