Opportunities

        by Bill James       April 2004

In my article last month I talked about the challenges that PC User’s Groups face with declining membership, vendor support and revenues. These conditions give new impetus for user groups in finding ways to maintaining their current members and attracting new ones. Our club is facing similar conditions, but the board is making strides to improve our situation so that we can continue to be a viable and productive organization. Our purpose is the serve the community so it is important that we adjust ourselves to meet the needs of our current and future membership. During the month of March, our User group met a few hours on a Saturday to discuss those issues and find ways in how we can best serve our community and our members.  We discuss our purpose and our mission. Next month I will provide my article outlining what we see as our vision and our mission.

This month we started our Beginning Computer Basics that is open to the public. The response has been overwhelming. We have 4 full classes meeting Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Our board secretary, Doris Collins, created the syllabus for these classes which starts with the basics from how to properly turn on and off the computer to basic mouse techniques and using e-mail. The students are newbie’s to computers. This course will probably stretch into 8 weeks. If interest remains high, we want to continue these courses. However, we need volunteers to teach the course. If you have an interest in being an instructor or a coach for future courses, please contact Isaac Franklin, our VP of SIGs at ifrank9999@cox.net

Also this month plans are underway to offer a computer building class. Here the student can choose the computer they wish to build and spend over a span of several weeks working on it. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn how computers work and have some ‘hands-on’ experience. Check our Web site for further information.

Here are just three examples of what your computer club is doing on your behalf. We are carefully considering our options, so over the next few months expect some innovative changes and programs that we think will better promote the club within our community to keep our doors opened and remain true to our motto: Computer Users helping Computer Users.

Bill James is President of the OKC PC Users Group. Bill can be reached at james@qns.com