Yan Feng Apple Regional Liaison: Asia (excluding Japan) July 2004

Another update from your user group regional liaison - this time, the first in quite a while. During all this time, I've earned myself a bachelor's degree in finance, the Mac scene in my native China has grown considerably, and so has the scene all around the area.

This update focuses mainly on some events that have happened until now. It's what I'd like to call a "short but sweet" update.

Here goes:

BEIJING (PEKING) UNIVERSITY MAC USER GROUP INTRODUCES THE CAMPUS TO MACS
In May of this year, Beijing (Peking) University's Mac Group, the PKU AppleFans club, held what many consider to be a stellar show. A special guest named Wally was invited. The incredible thing about Wally was that he apparantly was a newcomer to the Mac world, but already is showing you nothing short of professionality. His excellent presentation packed the auditorium to the max. Zhongyida, an Apple Experience Centre specialist, and Macworld China magazine, sponsored the event, and representatives from the Mac community, including BeiMac's President and Common President, attended.

CHINA GETS NEW MAC MAGAZINE
Mac World China is China's new Mac-only magazine, spun off from a previous magazine (still going strong) called Desktop Yellow Pages. User groups were briefly mentioned in the June 2004 edition. An interesting note from the article: there are actually plenty of Mac user groups in China! It'll be my job to link them all together and to assist them.

OTHER BITS FROM THE REGION
Unfortunately, across the Greater China region, few people had January 24, 2004 to themselves; instead, they had to be with family to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Still, the Hong Kong Macitizen user group celebrated the Mac's 20th Anniversary by having a party on the day itself.

BeiMac has changed in nomencleature, becoming now the Beijing Macintosh Union instead of the previous Beijing Macintosh User Group. The idea is simple: instead of just serving its membership, it would be better to serve the entire community. The new user community is therefore a horizontal combination and union of the user group and the Mac community in Beijing. The structure doesn't actually allow the top executives to direct everything, but allows the membership and the constituents to act to move the group forward. As well as other organisational changes, the new group also focuses on more quality meetings rather than plain more meetings.

ASIAMUG COMING SOON
As Regional Liaison of Asia ex-Japan, I want to liaise all the groups in Asia, and, deriving from this, create a community of communities where everyone can learn and benefit from each other. The result is something I call AsiaMUG.

AsiaMUG, as I envision, will be more than a community and a directory of groups. Of course, groups will come to AsiaMUG for MUG chit-chat, a list of groups, and so on and so forth, but the real idea behind this is to assist groups in helping each other. The goals are to form a union of friendship and extend friendship and cooperation across all groups in Asia, and to develop Macintosh user groups in Asia, and to extend to them as many benefits as possible.

AsiaMUG is likely to get started on August 1, 2004. In the time between now and August 1st, I'd like Asian groups (but also others) to literally overflow my email box with ideas, and suggestions, of how you want AsiaMUG to be. I've a few ideas already, as can be seen from my report above, but I'd also like you to get together and create AsiaMUG. It's better working as a group.

On a more personal level, many things in my life have changed, socially and otherwise. Let me just say that I'm proud to be the Yan Feng I always wanted to be: successful, caring, and for the community.

Best,
Yan.