Graeme Moffatt Apple Regional Liaison: Oceania December 2004

Hi

Once again it’s time for my regular update as to what’s been happening down under’ as far as Mac User Groups are concerned.

Firstly I would like to mention that there has been a change in the Apple User Group Advisory Board, the group of volunteer user group members in the US who represent the interests of all user groups internationally with Apple Computer Inc. Chuck Joiner, the founding chairman, has resigned and Sandy Foderick has been selected by the other members of the User Group Advisory Board to act as chairperson. Sandy's user group credentials include being a founding member and serving as the current president of America Online’s original user group, Virtual Mac, and a member of mini’app’les.

The last few months have been busy for many of the groups going by what I have been reading in their online newsletters. My group in Wellington has been especially busy holding the Digital Solutions Expo and MovieFest events in late September.

This was our groups twentieth anniversary year and we decided to celebrate it in earnest. In conjunction with the Digital Solutions Expo held in the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington, we put together a comprehensive display of Apple II and Macintosh computers. We discovered that Nicholas Pyers from AUSOM was planning on doing a presentation for his group on twenty years of the Macintosh based on Apples advertising during the period. This seemed like a good opportunity to not only enhance our display but begin a trans tasman relationship on a personal basis. Nicholas came over for the duration of our display and stayed a few extra days to take a look around Wellington.

In addition to the expo and Macintosh display, we held the national finals for Our MovieFest 2004 short movie competition. This is the second year that our group has organised the event and this year we received assistance from the Auckland and Christchurch user groups. As this is a nationwide competition, a necessity due to needing a large audience to achieve a sufficient level of sponsorship to get good prizes, we sought to include other groups in this event. We intend to take this concept further next year with more groups holding regional finals with a grand final to be held in conjunction with our expo.

I have discussed the concept with Nicholas and he indicated an interest in promoting this concept in Australia. This is an opportunity for all groups to participate in a nationwide event without anyone needing to leave their own patch. In New Zealand and Wellington in particular, there is a growing interest in filmaking thanks to the success of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and we are receiving a lot of interest along with funding assistance from our local city council. There are also a number of other smaller short movie competitions being held in New Zealand however we stand the chance of becoming the predominant one owing to our nationwide stretch with multiple user group participation.

Not everyone is interested in making movies but with Apples increasing emphasis in the digital media field, this is an ideal event for user groups to organise and promote along with an opportunity for fund raising as well. I would be interested in receiving some feedback from groups in Australia as to whether they would be interested in taking this further. I see the opportunity of having a trans tasman playoff for an Australsian winner each of the three different categories we currently offer. More information as to the objectives and rules of this competition can be seen at <http://www.moviefest.org.nz>.

Thanks to all those who have contacted me for whatever reason and I hope I have been helpful in each regard. I also thank those who have been keeping me updated to your groups activities with newsletters etc as it is interesting to see what other groups are up to. We are all in the same boat with regard to finding adequate topics to interest our members at meetings and my goal is to encourage committee members of all groups to utilise a common forum to pass information amongst each other. Chuck Joiner who is the webmaster of the MUG Center web site <http://www.mugcenter.com/> has reorganised the forums on his web site and has now included an international forum which would be ideal for this purpose. I would like each of you to register on these forums <http://mugcenter.com/phpBB/> and introduce themselves so that other groups can get to see who is who.

The MUG Center is also a very valuable resource for user group leaders with lots of information and links for everything to do with user groups and is well worth a visit if you have not already done so. There is also a section of the Apple web site dedicated to user groups at <http://www.apple.com/usergroups/> and this is also a source of information including a locator for registered user groups internationally.

Keep those emails rolling in (or start if you have not already done so) and I will pass them on to everyone via this forum and please advise me if you are no longer the contact for your group and who the new one is. Once again thanks for your support throughout this year and best wishes for the festive season. I look forward to being able to assist you and hear from you all during the next year.


Kind regards


Graeme Moffatt
Australasian Regional Liaison