WAMUG as an entity is reaching an impasse. WAMUG (Western Australian Macintosh Users Group) has been an incorporated body since 1984, ie, the birthdate of the Macintosh computer. Long-term members will remember the early meetings at UWA, and later Curtin University, through the efforts of Martin Hill, Shay Telfer, John Curry and many others. After Curtin started placing prohibitive costs on our use of their facilities, we moved our monthly meetings to ChristChurch Grammar School in Claremont until clashes with school activities and resultant parking problems forced to find somewhere else. Member Lyn Muir kindly offered us the use of her real estate business premises at ProWest in Willetton, until the premises had to be rationalised in response to business pressures from a market downturn. so we moved to a hall in Bull Creek. Through this time our numbers dwindled to a mere trickle until Covid-19 hit and forced us to abandon physical meetings altogether. Since that time we have been running our monthly meetings via Zoom, but we have never had more than 3 or 4 members attending, other than the committee. We have found that the effort required in coming up with meetings themes, paying for Zoom, etc, is is not justified given the one or two people that do regularly turn up, so we have greatly reduced the frequency of the meetings, which has not exactly been met with a flood of complaints.
We now have a real problem: being an incorporated body, we are constitutionally required to hold an Annual General Meeting, and we are now well overdue to do this for 2024. Maureen Smith, our erstwhile President and now secretary, has declared that she will not be nominating for a position on the committee, thereby reducing our small, tired committee to 4: Bernard Barnwell (Treasurer), Pete Smith (Website updates), myself (President), and Daniel Kerr, who keeps this mailing list online and in order. Notwithstanding the fact that the remaining members are happy to retain their involvement, if no further nominations are received at the AGM our tiny committee will not meet our constitutional requirement of at least 5 members. Apart from this, we are desperate for some new blood. The current members are generally feeilng beyond their use-by dates, and it’s clear that it’s up to the exisiting membership to decide if we want to continue or not. The lifeblood of WAMUG in 2024 is this Maiiling List, and it is treasured by all those who contribute to it. It is certainly far less active than it was, but it really is all that remains of WAMUG is any real sense. If no-one is willing to step up to be a Committee member at the upcoming AGM these appear be our two options: 1 Dissolving WAMUG, the associated mailing list and website. 2 Changing WAMUG to an unincorporated entity in order to keep the mailing list. According to the Associations Incorporation Act 2015, we will need a Special Resolution meeting to dissolve or unincorporate WAMUG. Changing WAMUG to an unincorporated entity. This action Requires a Special Resolution meeting, and we still need people to run the organisation, but our current financial holdings cannot be retained and will need to be distributed according to the Associations Incorporation Act 2015, which effectively means we will be starting again from scratch. Whatever entity we decide to change into, we will still have to charge a fee for the mailing list. However, there is no insurance for an unincorporated entity so the people running WAMUG would be liable for its actions and results. We will also lose the use of [1]wamug.org.au as a Domain Name. Dissolving WAMUG This requires a Special Resolution meeting. Again, our current financial holdings will need to be distributed according to the Associations Incorporation Act 2015; and again, the website and mailing list will disappear. If you want to see WAMUG continue in any form, please give some careful consideration to what I've outlined above, and offering your services to the committee. These days, we are running most of our meetings online via Zoom, so there’s really no need even to leave the house! We desperately need some new blood on the committee and some new directions for the future. If nothing else, we need this list to continue. We area aiming to hold our Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 5th September by Zoom, in the absence of any better offers. Zoom details will be provided several days in advance. Kind Regards Peter Hinchliffe President, Western Australian Macintosh Users Group References 1. http://wamug.org.au/
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