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APCUG and CES 2005
By Cheryl Wester, APCUG Advisor
The APCUG conference was probably one of the best events I have ever attended. We had innovative round tables and marvelous sponsors and meals. Let us not forget the fellowship. How great to be able to spend several days hanging out with nothing but a lot of geeks. I wasn’t even criticized for wanting to play with computers.
Some of the roundtables were on public speaking, maintaining members, cyber crime, PowerPoint, and how to get more youthful members to join. We had wonderful speakers and great meals from AMD, Smart Computing, Intel, Microsoft, Adobe, and Corel. A new edition to our sponsors was CompUSA. They had an excellent luncheon and discussed how they hoped to increase business and work with User Groups. Intel was impressive in sharing how technology changes and what to expect in the future. An impressive PowerPoint kept us listening and wanting more. A big thank you goes out to all our sponsors.
All the new photo programs had me wanting to buy them all and try them out. The feature that was my favorite was the quick fix feature. I don ’t have a lot of patience in fixing photos and this was great. I also have tried ordering pictures online from Sam’s Club and picking them up. This was a feature that I wasn’t aware of until I heard the Microsoft presentation. All I did was click order prints when I was in My Pictures on my computer and follow the directions.
I found the vendor forum to be excellent this year. It was great to see how they want us to help them, and suggestions were made for us to promote our vendors more. They are a wonderful asset to our community and we definitely don’t want to lose them. One of the suggestions was to have a train the trainers session where someone was educated in more detail prior to doing a presentation in a box. The vendors also requested detailed directions to the meeting and a contact person. Map Quest is not always correct and often there are better ways to get to a location. Another request was for recommendations for hotels and motels in the area. A list could easily be prepared for your club in different price ranges and sent as part of a speaker packet.
As a new advisor for Region 5 in APCUG, I really saw the conference through different eyes. I honestly had not realized how much work and effort went into planning this. A big thank you to all that put this together. Caryl Hall and her group did a terrific job.
I am looking forward to going to many more of these in the years to come. Plans are already being made for 2006 and 2007. It takes a lot of work and a lot of volunteers and time to pull this off. Plan on being involved as much as possible. I know that the more involved I am that the more I enjoy participating.
CES 2005, WOW. This was quite the place to be. As a gadget goddess I am always interested in what is new and different and I found it all. I literally drooled my way through several halls of innovative and interesting items. For three days I watched exhibitors show their wares. I saw wonderful cameras, played with the SPOT watches, checked out the new Palm devices, and examined SmartPhones and Pocket PCs.
The crowds were tremendous but it was will worth it. The Microsoft area was marvelous and I was able to see many of the new and innovative products they had to offer. I even won a SPOT watch and can’t believe how impressive it is. I have all the movies from the local theaters on it, check out the local weather and the weather in North Dakota, where my son is. I also get news updates and the California lottery. It even changes the temperature data based on where I am. On top of all of that it is a watch and is accurately set by satellite!
The latest phone editions in the Windows Mobile devices are wonderful. I was able to watch Dale Coffing and Jason Dunn (both Microsoft MVPs) show off the latest and greatest. My husband had to drag me from that area or I would never have left!
The cameras and printers were great. After CES we even bought a new CANON printer that we had seen demonstrated. It has quickly become our favorite printer.
I am already looking forward to attending both next year. It was a great way to start the new year. I hope to see all of you in 2006 at the conference.
There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author. The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.