[kwlug-disc] OT: User group

Darcy Casselman dscassel at gmail.com
Wed Jan 24 17:52:00 EST 2018


If people are reading this thinking "hey, it'd be great if *I* could do a
booth and show off my cool project or teach people something," may I direct
your attention to Maker Expo, June 2-3 at the Aud. We'll have a call for
exhibitors soon. Drop me a line if you want more details.

Darcy.

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 2:13 PM, Charles McColm <
charlesm at theworkingcentre.org> wrote:

> Back in 1983 I joined a computer group called BUG (the Barrie User’s Group
> – a Commodore group). The very first meeting I went to had approximately
> 100 people in attendance (pretty amazing when you consider Barrie itself
> had a bit more than 28,000 people at the time). The meeting was held in the
> gymnasium of a school. It was a really nice venue because the main
> presentation took place on the stage, while a number of members had other
> things going on at booths (much the way you’d do for a tradeshow). One of
> the “booths” was a 5 ¼” floppy disk of the month, a compilation of software
> put together by volunteers with some custom programming by one of the club
> members. Pretty neat at the time, perhaps not exactly fitting for today.
> Another booth had a member who was showing off his tiny dot-matrix printer
> (it printed on calculator-like paper). At one meeting I remember a member
> leading a few others building a “light pen” using a magic marker-like tube
> and electronic components.
>
>
>
> I liked the booths idea because you could walk around and look at things
> that specifically interested you. When the group lost the spot in the gym
> attendance went down to less than half (around 40ish people) and eventually
> hit lows of around 20 people. The group operated a bit different, with a
> charter, insurance, etc. (one of the lessons from the school gym
> experience) than KWLUG. There was a membership fee that went towards the
> insurance and other expenses. Although they’re quite a bit different from
> KWLUG, they still operate as the Barrie Computer and Technology Club:
> http://barrietechnology.weebly.com/
>
>
>
> Just thought I’d mention the group because I remember how much fun those
> initial meetings were and noticed they still do some things similarly (disc
> of the month).
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Charles
>
>
>
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>
>
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