On 08/06/2004, at 9:45 AM, Onno Benschop wrote:
On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 11:26, Matthew Healey wrote:
1. Members must be present on the night to receive all prizes except
for 1st prize. If a member wins 1st prize and is not there on the
night
to collect it, they will be notified by email.
I must confess that in this day of electronic communication that is a
pretty big dis-incentive to become a paid up member. I'm sure that you
have subscribers on this list who would love to become paid up members
of WAMUG, but who have no chance of actually arriving in person at any
meeting.
The biggest problem WAMUG faces these days is that all of the services
User Groups used to offer have been far exceeded by the Internet. The
result has been that WAMUG has turned into more of a social club than
anything else. As such, we have to find ways of getting people to come
to the meetings.
It's at this point we run into the paradox of having a computer social
club. Most geeks / power users (god I hate that term) / computer
enthusiasts are, by definition, not that great at the social aspect of
life. Those users that are good at human contact and social interaction
often prefer other things than going to a computer meeting.
The question is, how do we maintain a user group when we have nothing
to offer that can't be done better and cheeper somewhere else?
The WAMUG Server is helping there as we can offer a few services to our
members. Unlimited storage email addresses and local software downloads
are just a few of the things we have planned.
So, for my money, you won't be getting any this year from me.
Assuming you won a prize, how would you collect it?
I guess the ultimate question is, what does WAMUG have to realistically
offer to get you to join?
- Matt
