It's been a busy & quick month here in the northwest, here's what's happening from around the region.

PMUG (Portland) is putting the final touches on MacCamp Spring '04. The event takes place the weekend of the 17th, and is a combination of the best of two worlds. You get to take your Mac into the beautiful setting of the Oregon Cascades & spend a weekend learning, sharing & making new friends. More info on the event is available on their web site (and you'll find wrap-ups of past events on their site as well - to whet your appetite for the next one around).

RCMUG in Crescent City (our newest MUG in the NW) has this report: Last meeting was great fun as we poked around Panther, Mac OS 10.3 and some of the iApps. Because of a scheduling conflict with a child's music recital, we decided last time to move April's meeting to the 7th. This is no longer necessary because the recital moved to the 15th and I would like to keep the meetings on there regularly scheduled days of the second Wednesday of the month, as our web site shows. It will still be at the Harbor Art Gallery and at 7pm. I hope to have some new demos for you when I receive a package from Apple. Ron Gastineau

dBUG (Seattle) is having their next main meeting April 14 with Filemaker on tap. dBUG's Main Meeting for members and guests will happen on April 14th, 6:30 to 9 PM at dBUG's Resource Center near Oaktree Plaza in Seattle. Come hear all about the tremendous range of the new FileMaker Pro and win an iPod Mini.

The fantastic Macintosh Swap Meet is scheduled for June. Visit the Web site for more details or reserve your table by sending mail to [email protected].


SPSMUG (South Puget Sound) has sent in this info for their upcoming meeting:

The South Puget Sound Macintosh Users Group will meet on the second Tuesday, April 13 at 7:00 p.m.. in the Chalet basement auditorium of Panorama City. During the meeting we will visit Favorite Internet Sites online; and after the meeting these sites  (some or all) will be listed on our own web site.

JoMacs is gearing up for their annual Expo on June 13 The Rogue Valley Mac Expo is in it's 3rd year, and working to make this year it's best ever. Rob Griffiths, author of Mac OS X hints will be one of the speakers for the day, and we're working on growing the list.

SMUG in Sequim has had great success with adding an online forum to handle member Q&A. Jay Cline shares "You might mention our groups use of the a online forum for discussion of problems. We used to have half hour question and answer periods at our monthly meetings. Since starting the forum a little over a year ago the monthly Q&A has dropped dramatically, most are using the forum to post questions now. Questions are archived so members can go back and research problems.

SMUG serves Port Angeles and Sequim Washington and has about 50 active members. The straitmac forum has 105 members, mostly local Mac users. Use of the forum has steadily increased, last month we over 11,000 hits. Drop me a line if you have any questions on how your group can setup a forum of their own."
You will find the forum at: http://www.straitmac.com/yabbse/

Until next time - from the northwest, Happy Mac-ing!


Cheers!

Chris Kiltz
NW Regional Liaison
Apple User Group Program
"Catch the MUG BUG, get involved!"