Press Releases

FACUG Conference is being held in Zephyrhills, Florida March 13 through 15

Originally published by Hewie Poplock

We are within weeks of the FACUG Spring Conference in Zephyrhills, Florida.  The Florida Association of Computer User Groups, FACUG is the leading regional association of its kind in the country. It is a southeast regional, non-profit tax exempt association, of independent computer user groups including PC and MAC groups.

The 16th annual spring conference of the Florida Association of Computer User Groups, Inc. (FACUG) will be held Friday March 13 through Sunday March 15, 2009 in Zephyrhills , Florida. This year’s event is expanding and partnering with the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG) as a regional conference and will be open to the public as well. The theme of the conference is “How to educate & help computer users through our user groups about convergence, communication and collaboration.” I wanted to share some of the presentation topics for this exciting event.

Remember that this year the conference is open to the public and all interested people are invited.  This is a great opportunity for members of user groups, non-profit organizations, any club or organization, or for any business. Information on pricing, registration, and hotel accommodations are available on the FACUG website . The price includes Saturday and Sunday meals. 

Several of our sponsors will also be presenting sessions, and participating in a vendor fair on Sunday. New sponsors are being added, but confirmed as of this writing are Microsoft, Steganos, Techbargains.com, ai Squared, Magix, Smart Computing Magazine ,and Rebit.com.

For more information, go to FACUG.org  or email either information@facug.org , or me at, director3@facug.org .

BarCamp experience and Unconferences - I went to my first BarCamp in Orlando last spring.  I discovered that this activity attracted several hundred computer enthusiasts, most of whom were unfamiliar with our local user group and I had never seen any of them at any other local events.

Florida BarCamps are held in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, The name came from the word “foobar” and not from local drinking establishments, where they are frequently held. Barcamps are very loosely arranged “unconferences” where it is free to attend and the speakers are decided at the very last minute. It is based on the community and anybody who wishes to speak just puts themselves on the schedule. So, it is very informal and very community driven.

Our speaker, Peter Radizeski is one of the major forces of the Tampa BarCamp and will discuss how they work and how your groups can participate or create your own unconference.

Business, Education & Non-Profit In Virtual Worlds - I was introduced to virtual worlds with Second Life. I thought it would be an exciting way to hold meetings and to socialize on-line.  Elizabeth Stenger, a mentor and well known in Second Life will give a background of this and other Virtual worlds, how they are used in education, non-profits and how they might be used for your group.

Liz will demonstrate getting started in Second Life and creating your own avatar (personality). This should be an eye-opening session. It’s a lot of fun to get into virtual worlds, however, be careful, as it can become addictive!

Cloud Computing is one of the new buzz words.  Many companies like Microsoft and Google are making programs available on-line instead of installing them on your computer.  You can share documents and even collaborate in their formation and editing without passing them around.  You don’t need lots of versions floating around between members of your group.

Robert Dempsey is a leader in web development and will tell us what exactly cloud computing is, what’s available, what are the pros and cons.

doterati & its Florida initiative - This is an organization that’s all about you and what you do in the interactive media, marketing and technology arena. doterati is all about building community, consensus and camaraderie among like-minded individuals and groups. 

Tara Lamberson  is the President of doterati , and she will speak about this new and growing group. In this age when many user groups are shrinking, we have a new and innovative group that is filling needs of the technology users, professionals, and innovators. Come listen to Tara tell of doterati’s approach.

Editing & Storing Photos on line for Free - Come and hear Stan Ashbrook explain how to organize, tweak, create, e-mail, display, and store their digital photos on-line.  This is a good example of how Cloud Computing is used. This session will save you lots of time and money, and make it easy to share your photos.

How to Increase Membership, Interest and Speakers in your User Group - This session will be led by Jeff Robins and Sam Wexler, two members of FACUG’s Board of Directors and leaders of two very successful user groups in south Florida. They will discuss several proven ways to increase membership, interest in your group, and how to get speakers for your meetings.

Implementing CMS (Content Management System) using Drupal - Cheryl Wilson, FACUG’s award winning web mistress, will present a way to manage your group’s website with a new content management system, Drupal.  She will walk us through installing the program and show how easy it is to get it up and running.

Using Drupal, which is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Sites developed with this system will also provide a great opportunity for communication between its members.

Social Networking for Computer User Groups - Mike Ungerman, a long time computer user group leader and first president of FACUG, will demonstrate NING, a free social networking application that establishes individual social networks for any group which can be public, semi-public, or 100% private.

Mike will show how Hewie Poplock (me) and he have developed the Windows Special Interest Group (SIG) NING website to be able to have an announcement and discussion area that is much like our meetings, but available 24/7.  Mike also started a private NING site for a class reunion and doterati uses NING for its site. You will learn how easy you can set up this means for communications for your group.

Print Verses On-line Newsletters Many groups are struggling to decide if they should abandon the costs and efforts needed for a printed newsletter in lieu of an Acrobat and on-line version only.  Jeremy Hilton , MindComet’s Vice President of Media and Technology, will provide a unique perspective into solving this dilemma and how to create email newsletters.

Remote Presentations The ability to use remote presentations opens a new door for user group meetings.  In this day when companies cannot pay the expenses to send speakers to your meetings, they are willing to provide presentations from their offices or homes remotely. Don Singleton is a longtime leader of the Tulsa (OK) Computer Society and APCUG. He will demonstrate from Tulsa how to do a remote presentation.

Social Media : Creating better Communications within your Group One of the most interesting and knowledgeable people whom I have met recently is Mark Krupinski . When I talk with him, he just disseminates so much information about so many different ways of communicating through websites.

We are lucky to have him speak about the general area of social media and the many ways organizations can use and misuse it.  Mark is both Community Manager for Rasmussen, Inc. and Vice President-elect of doterati.

Twitter - A Tool Your Club May Find Useful - Chuck Vroman has been a speaker at several FACUG conferences and a longtime member of the Tampa Bay Computer Society. He will discuss one of the most popular forms of social media, Twitter.  New in 2006, Twitter is a social networking and micro- blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

If you watch CNN or your local newscasts, your announcer will talk about their Tweets. Once you become familiar with this way of communications, you will see how widely used that it is. Chuck will talk about Twitter from the beginner’s perspective. You will see how easy it is to use and how many people use it to communicate information.

Wikis - A Powerful Collaboration Tool for your Kit - FACUG’s and Tampa Bay Computer Society’s Dave “Doc” Dockery will talk about Wikis and how our groups can use them. Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. It’s open editing supports hyperlinks and has simple text syntax for creating new pages and cross links between internal pages on the fly.

About MindComet
Headquartered in Orlando and founded in 1999, MindComet is a leading interactive marketing agency specializing in social media, campaign design and branding, and technology development. The agency has implemented award-winning, relationship-building marketing and communications campaigns for many Fortune 500 companies. MindComet’s team delivers an unparalleled combination of strategy, creativity and technology to produce solutions that deliver lasting fan relationships for client partners. Over the years, MindComet has donated time and services to Habitat for Humanity, the Orlando History Center, the American Cancer Society, Race for a Cure and Toys for Tots. Last year, MindComet became a founding member of doterati, Central Florida’s up-and-coming non-profit interactive marketing, media and technology education group. For more information, visit www.mindcomet.com.

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