Why is the group growing?
I think we’ve grown because the people who are joining are bringing other people who join, and so on. Why are they joining? One, we have a great board of directors making sound decisions about the group.

Two, we offer generic programs with information that people want. For example, we’re doing a meeting on email—how to use it and what everything means, with a demo of Netscape Mail, Outlook Express and Eudora. Our own members will be demoing the apps, which goes over better because members relate better to other members.

We used to focus on pretty specific programs, like Adobe PageMaker or Macromedia Freehand, which is great for people using the program, but not for everyone else. Now we only do these once in a while.

What other kinds of meetings do you have?
A couple of others are ask the Experts and the Schmooze Fest. Ask the Experts is nothing but Q & A the whole meeting. We usually get 10 members with varying expertise to sit in front and answer questions, some of which are written in advance. The panel is moderated by one person who determines when to move on. We have this meeting once a year.

The Schmooze Fest is a unique event we try to do twice a year. Basically it’s a party with food and drinks. The past couple of times we’ve had enough software and hardware donated from vendors that we’ve had a big auction and given away lots of freebie stuff also.

Exploring new frontiers: Kevin Holmes, Greg
McCaslin and Wayne Coil take the iMac for a spin.

How do you pay for all this?
Simple money management. We’ve always maintained a positive balance in the bank account. We never borrow money to do anything. Because of this, we have no debt.

And we’ve streamlined our costs. For example, we bid out our newsletter printing, which enabled us to add four more pages and still save money. We also finalized all the non-profit status paperwork for the US Postal Service to get a better postage rate—little things that add up, but no one thinks about.

We bought a PowerBook G3 for our presenters and rented a small office that we converted into a training center where we offer our MacCORE College classes. In the lab we bought four iMacs and had two donated by corporate members. The classroom has an ISDN Internet connection, 10BaseT LAN and desks with comfortable chairs.

We axed our monthly shareware diskette and went to a quarterly version. Besides the usual software updates, we video tape our members talking about different topics, like how to create a simple database in Filemaker Pro, and convert their presentations to QuickTime and add them to the CD. This helps sell it.

Do you work with local resellers?
Absolutely. They are the main reason we were able to create our training center. Most of the items in it were donated. It’s amazing what businesses will do if you just ask.

What keeps you all together?
Our board—they’re great. Without good volunteers and good management, a group doesn’t exist.

The best thing about them is the diversity. They all come from different facets of both the Macintosh world and the regular world. We have people who are still learning, we have hard-core graphics people, we have retired people and we have me—I’m only 27. Not everyone agrees all the time, but that’s helpful. This year we had 3 more candidates than spots on the board.

And what keeps you going?
Progress. We see that we’re making a difference. We see the club growing.

Any advice for other groups?
First of all, don’t be afraid to try new things. If they don’t work out, they don’t work out. Move on and try something else. Not everything is going to work for every group.

Second, be open-minded about ideas pertaining to club business, growth and meetings. Perhaps we have been successful because there is more awareness about the Macintosh, but perhaps not. All I know is that it’s a lot of fun every month to see we are growing, and I just wanted to share it with someone.

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