We urge you to share the information in NOOZ by including it in your newsletter, posting it on your Web site, or e-mailing it to members of your group.

  In this edition of NOOZ:

1. New Combined Database
2. 2011 and 2012 Annual Meetings and Regional Conferences
3. APCUG Newsletter, Website and Photo Contests
4. Website Re-design
5. Gene Barlow Offers Online Presentation
6. Region 5 Specific

1. New Member Database –As most of you know, we have not had a member database for the past few months. Well, that is about to change. The programmers have been busy creating an entirely new database, aptly named the User Group Locater Service or UGLS, that will provide much needed functionality for all of our members. It will allow the management of APCUG to track its member groups, provide a central place for vendors to find information on a specific group, and give the Regional Advisors the assets to readily communicate with all of the groups within a specific region or geographical area.

The Presidents and/or the APCUG Representatives of each of the member groups will soon receive the login and password for the UGLS, and they can start populating their groups data. It is very important that his be performed by each group, as having the correct data in the UGLS will allow us to help you when contacting vendors and/or potential members. The Advisors for your region will be ready to help wherever possible.

1. APCUG Plans 2 Annual Meetings and Regional Conferences – The 2011 APCUG Annual Meeting will be held in conjunction with the Cleveland Regional in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 15 – 17. Early Bird Registration is open until May 31^st. More information can be found below and at http://cleveland.apcug.org/

The 2012 APCUG Annual Conference is tentatively scheduled to be held in conjunction with the FACUG Technology Conference Bahamas Cruise. The Conference at Sea will be held on the Norwegian Sky Cruise Ship, leaving on January 23, 2012 and returning on January 27, 2012. Again, Early Bird Registration is open until August 15^th. Conference details can be found at www.facug.org . Annual Meeting details will be made available soon on the APCUG website at http://www.apcug.org/. 

1. APCUG Contests – Time is running out to enter the APCUG Web, Photo and Newsletter contests. Please encourage members of your groups to enter. Information and entry forms are on apcug.org. The deadline for all contests is June 17th. Winners will be announced at the Cleveland Regional Conference 15th to 17th July 2011.

1. APCUG Website – The APCUG website is being completely redesigned to make it easier to find information and to make it much more “user friendly”, and we are looking for volunteers with experience in website design using “Drupal” and graphic designers. If you, or any of your members would like to volunteer to help, and to make an impact on our website, please contact:

David Williams at dwilliams@apcug.org or (515) 957-1339

 Gene Barlow offers Online Presentations – Gene offers two online Skype presentations: Moving to Windows 7 using Disk Director and Acronis. You need to have good broadband to host one of his meetings. Contact Linda at linda@ugr.com to find out what is needed and to get on their schedule.

1. Region Specific -. Put your regional specific NOOZ items here.

 Region 5 NOOZ

 Technology and computers have always been about independence and this year we are gathering for the APCUG Annual Meeting & Conference in Independence, Ohio, just eight miles from the Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The conference will start with a sign in and registration on Friday afternoon, July 15th at approximately 3:00 PM EDT and will be followed by a meet & greet in the lounge. The early bird attendance fee for the conference is $50. This will cover the Friday night meet & greet a full day of workshop sessions on Saturday & a half-day on Sunday. The fee goes up to $65 on June 1st.

The final conference schedule is being worked out, but some of the currently booked workshops and general sessions will include

 Virtual Machines

 MAR’s Refurbishing & Recycling

 iPad features along with using iPad for e-books

 Windows Tips & Techniques

 The Linux Guy

 Linux and the future of computers

 Safe data destruction

 Ins and Outs of Skype

 Fundraising

 OneNote

 Q&A sessions with the Boards of Directors & Advisors

We have several slots that need to be filled for presentations as well as a possible Digital Photography, Genealogy and Tips for Maintaining & Growing User Group Membership. See the tentative schedule on the web page.

APCUG has negotiated a $79.00 night room rate plus applicable taxes at the Crowne Plaza Cleveland South—Independence. Additionally this rate will apply for 3 days before the conference and 3 days after for those who would like to arrive early or stay over and do some sightseeing. Conference registration, hotel reservation and other conference links are available on the conference web page on the APCUG website

(cleveland.apcug.net).

APCUG Website Contest

The contest is open to all current APCUG member groups. Prizes will be announced soon. All submissions must be made by June 17, 2011. Judging will begin on June 18th. Winners will be announced at the Annual Meeting in July. Now is the time to examine your website and be sure it is current and working properly. 

The judging will be based upon the following criteria: · Communication (20 Points)  · Organization/Navigation (20 Points)  · Visual Presentation/Design (20 Points)  · Creativity/Original Ideas/Content (25 Points)  · Follow Standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (15 Points)  Total Points – 100 Questions and a request for the application can be addressed to Hewie Poplock hpoplock@apcug.org 

 There are some very interesting information and opportunities for members being provided for members of Region 5 (Florida). 

The 2012 APCUG Annual Meeting will be held upon the Norwegian Sky, as we navigate the Bahamas Islands. The Conference is January 23-27 2012. Since the 2012 FACUG Technology Conference Bahamas Cruise was announced, we currently have in excess of 340 registered and paid for the conference.  This is well above the critical mass needed for any successful conference. The cost of the 5 days/4 nights (interior cabin) is $269/person + tips including the FACUG $25/person incentive rebate; ocean-view is $319/person + tips.  The $25/person early-bird rebate of the registration fee is valid until August 15 when it will end, so the sooner you book, the better the availability.  Please see the FACUG website (www.facug.org) for more information.

Membership & Leadership Development Forum

We are delighted to announce Judy Taylour (President, SCV Computer Club, CA and recipient of the FACUG Lifetime Achievement Award), David Steward (APCUG Board of Advisor Chair), Don Singleton (APCUG Director and former President), Hank Feinberg (FACUG Director and President, Rockland, NY PC User Group), Stu Silverman (FACUG Vice-President and APCUG Advisor), Sam Wexler (FACUG President and APCUG Advisor) and many others will be helping with the Monday, June 13 FACUG Membership & Leadership Development Forum meeting which will discuss User Group issues, problems and anything else User Group. 

This event will be open forum style to discuss what you want and exchange ideas with experienced User Group leaders to get new ideas with different viewpoints.  This idea comes from conversations with people during last two technology conference cruises as well as the last three Town Hall meetings.  Register by Thursday, June 9 to get the audio and video links.  Please forward this email to appropriate members of your User Group.  All User Group topics are on the table including but not limited to the following list below.  This is your meeting so please feel free to add to this list by sending your specific questions, issues and concerns in an email to forum@ariesmart.com.  

Officer burn-out

• Finances
• Program Planning
• Meetings (programs, speakers, publicity, giveaways, venues)
• Presentations
• Vendor relations
• Industry matters
• Cooperative arrangements, partnerships, opportunities
• User Group associations
• Communication (newsletters, Web sites, etc.)
• Social media/networking
• Volunteers

Keystone Learning Systems

• For the last FACUG Technology Conference Cruise, Keystone Learning Systems provided access to their DVD classes for Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2010 and Windows 7, which are free to anyone in the State of Florida, who uses one of the licenses they gave us.  If you are interested in taking any of these classes at no cost, send your name, email address and “Office 2007” or “Office 2010” to keystone@ariesmart.com.  Windows 7 training is included in both options.  There are only a limited available so it is the early bird that gets the worm.

 Access to these free classes went out earlier today to those who had previously requested so send an email to keystone@ariesmart.com if you have not received your requested access link.  

Stu Silverman
APCUG Region 5
Advisor

Time: 7PM – 9PM Eastern Time

Place: Cyberspace

Topic: User Groups

Attendees: FACUG Liaison Advisors, FACUG Consultants, User Group leaders and members as well as User Group knowledgeable people

Registration by Thursday, June 9 to forum@ariesmart.com.�
Leave your name and User Group to get the remote video and audio links which will be sent by Saturday, June 11.

We are delighted to announce Judy Taylour (President, SCV Computer Club, CA and recipient of the FACUG Lifetime Achievement Award), David Steward (APCUG Board of Advisor Chair), Don Singleton (APCUG Director and former President), Hank Feinberg (FACUG Director and President, Rockland, NY PC User Group), Stu Silverman (FACUG Vice-President and APCUG Advisor), Sam Wexler (FACUG President and APCUG Advisor) and many others will be helping with the Monday, June 13 FACUG Membership & Leadership Development Forum meeting which will discuss User Group issues, problems and anything else User Group. 

 This event will be open forum style to discuss what you want and exchange ideas with experienced User Group leaders to get new ideas with different viewpoints.  This idea comes from conversations with people during last two technology conference cruises as well as the last three Town Hall meetings.  Register by Thursday, June 9 to get the audio and video links.  Please forward this email to appropriate members of your User Group.  All User Group topics are on the table including but not limited to the following list below.  This is your meeting so please feel free to add to this list by sending your specific questions, issues and concerns in an email to forum@ariesmart.com.  

• Officer burn-out
• Finances
• Program Planning
• Meetings (programs, speakers, publicity, giveaways, venues)
• Presentations
• Vendor relations
• Industry matters
• Cooperative arrangements, partnerships, opportunities
• User Group associations
• Communication (newsletters, Web sites, etc.)
• Social media/networking
• Volunteers 

Doc Dockery and Ira Kistenberg were re-elected and John Witmer was elected to replace Sharon Rump who is retiring from the FACUG Board of Directors after many years as our Treasurer. Thank you Sharon!

Hank Feinberg, President of the Rockland PC Users Group was elected to the FACUG Board by the BOD.

Sam Wexler was elected President, Stu Silverman was elected Vice-President and John Witmer was elected Treasurer of the Board.

Our 2011 Technology Conference Mexico Cruise from the Port of Tampa was last January and 68% of the post-event survey responders gave it an “A” rating which is obviously excellent.

The FACUG Membership & Leadership Development Forum meeting will be on Saturday, March 19 @ 1PM – 4PM Eastern Time. This meeting puts the User Group experts (our new Board of FACUG Consultants) together with User Groups liaison reps, that have issues in their own groups and come with the hope of finding solutions. This will be our third quarterly remote meeting in cyberspace, where all you need is a PC or Mac to attend. Send an email to forum@ariesmart.com for more information or to attend this meeting.

FACUG has just finished negotiating and signing a new contract directly with Norwegian Cruise Lines for our 2012 Computer & Technology Conference@Sea from January 23-27, 2012. We will be announcing all the really exciting details within the next two weeks. I can at this time inform you, there will be no greater value for a cruise anywhere. In today’s paper, there is an article about NCL raising their rates up to 10% – this does NOT affect us. The APCUG and FACUG annual meetings will both be held at this event. Bookings will start within two weeks and we hope to have more than the 175 cabins/350 people we had last time. The deeply discounted early-bird rates will be valid only until May 15.

One of our sponsors on our last cruise was Keystone Learning Systems (www.keystonelearning.com) who gave us 100 certificates. Each certificate is good for a selection of courses (Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2010) that retails for well over $300 and expires on January 31, 2012. They asked we make these certificates available to the people whom we thought did the most to help User Groups and FACUG. Please let me know if you are the FACUG Liaison Advisor for your User Group and would like a free certificate sent to you. If your User Group currently has no FACUG Liaison Advisor, send an email to liaison@ariesmart.com to either nominate yourself for the program or find out more about it.

If you need a very good in-person speaker from our newly formulated FACUG Speakers Bureau for your User Group during the next two weeks, contact me and we will see if Bob Gostischa still has some openings in his schedule for “Protecting Yourself and Your Identity Online”.

FACUG has subscribed to state-of-the-art audio and video software that opens many doors for our membership. It allows us to provide high quality remote access to presenters anywhere in the world. At our March 19 forum meeting where we hope to actually use this software, we would like to have a discussion whereby the attendees can help determine how we can best deploy this cutting edge technology.

As you can see, membership in FACUG has never provided more needed benefits to our member User Groups and this is just the tip of the iceberg! If you have not yet renewed your FACUG membership for 2011, now is the time to do so.

So how are we doing? Should we do more, should we do less; are there programs we are doing that you like, are there programs you dislike. Please hit reply to this email and say as much or as little as you like but please say something. Your FACUG Board of Directors need your feedback on this bold new direction we are taking the Florida Association of Computer User Groups. Thank you.

Sam Wexler
president@facug.org

We are delighted to announce Judy Taylour (President, SCV Computer Club, CA and recipient of the FACUG Lifetime Achievement Award), Marie Vesta (APCUG Vice-President), David Steward (APCUG Board of Advisor Chair), Don Singleton (APCUG Director and former President), Bill James (APCUG Advisor), Jim Evans (APCUG Secretary), Hank Feinberg (President, Rockland, NY PC User Group), Stu Silverman (FACUG Director and APCUG Advisor), Sam Wexler (FACUG President and APCUG Advisor) and many others will be helping with the Saturday, March 19 FACUG Membership & Leadership Development Forum meeting which will discuss User Group issues, problems and anything else User Group.

This event will be open forum style to discuss what you want and exchange ideas with experienced User Group leaders to get new ideas with different viewpoints. This idea comes from conversations with people during last month’s technology conference cruise as well as last year’s Town Hall meetings. Register by Thursday, March 17 to get the audio and video links.

Please forward this email to appropriate members of your User Group. All User Group topics are on the table including but not limited to the following list below. This is your meeting so please feel free to add to this list by sending your specific questions, issues and concerns in an email to forum@ariesmart.com

• Officer burn-out
• Finances
• Program Planning
• Meetings (programs, speakers, publicity, giveaways, venues)
• Presentations
• Vendor relations
• Industry matters
• Cooperative arrangements, partnerships, opportunities
• User Group associations
• Communication (newsletters, Web sites, etc.)
• Social media/networking
• Volunteers
• Services User Group associations should offer its members

Date: Saturday, March 19, 2011
Time: 1PM – 4PM Eastern Time
Place: Cyberspace
Topic: User Groups

Attendees: FACUG Liaison Advisors, FACUG Consultants, User Group leaders and members as well as User Group knowledgeable people
Registration by Thursday, March 17 to forum@ariesmart.com Leave your name and User Group to get the remote video and audio links which will be sent on Friday, March 18.

Sam Wexler
president@facug.org

Now that you haven’t heard from us in a week, we are once again back in your mailbox. We recommend that you go to our website www.facug.org and watch a replay of the sail-away that you may have missed live. You can also get to see parts of some of the presentations that were videoed and relive some of the excitement of the weekend. You may want to listen to a recording of Carey Holzman’s radio show last Tuesday (March 2) evening, where Sam Wexler and Stu Silverman were interviewed by Carey and his partner Craig Crossman.  You can view lots of photos of the Conference at www.flickr.com/facug2010. If you have photos to add, just upload them to this site.

We know that you had a wonderful experience at FACUG’s Technology Conference@Sea. How do we know? You told us. Your overwhelmingly positive replies to our survey convey to us all that we did right as well as something’s that you feel could be improved to make your experience even better. Many of you who never cruised before were quite leery. We had emails indicating that many expected to pay for lots of additional things but have had an eye-opening experience. That was only the beginning; next year’s ship will provide even more amenities.

We have given you a weekend to remember. Now, we need your help. The way the cruise industry works is different than one might expect. If you or I were in a business that depended upon thousands of people needing to buy your service each and every week and someone came along that indicated that they could supply at least 300 such people then they would certainly gain your attention. Not so, as all of you have heard, we are looking to have a bigger and more exciting Conference next year; however, in order to do that we need to prove to Royal Caribbean Cruise Line that we are the real deal. We need 100 reservations by the end of this month or we will not be able to have the required meeting rooms or guarantee the price. We found out this year that the most difficult part of the deal was not the price, but rather them allocating the meeting rooms to us and thus denying the rest of their passengers’ use of them. On this past cruise, there were some who held out with the belief that the costs would decline. That did not happen. The costs kept rising. We believe the same will hold true for next year.

One other aspect of next year’s cruise that is significant at this time. Your $100 deposit is needed this month, but is 100% refundable until 90 days prior to sailing as opposed to this year whereby the travel agent assessed a $50 per cabin administration fee.  There is absolutely no risk. Last year, even without our having had the opportunity to prove what we could provide the type of experience you had and given the fact that we could lose money if we changed our mind, we had about 75 deposits within a week. That is not happening this time. We know the location is different. We know that it is a day longer and that it will be somewhat more costly for a significantly better rated ship and we also know that we have ideas that will make next year’s experience even better. As we said before, there is 0.0 chance of risk.  If you change your mind 30, 60 or 90 days after this month then you will receive a full refund.  Please go to www.facug.org and make your reservation now.

Sam Wexler

president@facug.org

After all was said and done they came up with the three top prize winners and four honorable mention photographs. The results are posted below.
The Board of Directors of the FACUG want to thank the judges for all their help in this project and the Corel Corporation for its continuing support of our organization, and its members. Most of all we want to thank all of the participants in the contest and congratulate the winners.

All photos can be seen in the 2010 FACUG Conference @ Sea Gallery

Grand Prize	2nd Prize	3rd Prize
"How Much is that Chicken in the Window”	“Mother’s Love”	“Clown”
Karl Wittman Bellaggio Lake Worth, Fl	Stanley Ashbrook Tampa Bay Computer Society, Largo, Fl	Kit Snider Valencia Falls Computer & Technology Club, Delray Beach, Fl

Honorable Mention in alphabetical order

“Exiled”	“Shells”	“Surrender”	“All in a days Work”
Adrienne Falk Bergen Valencia Falls Computer & Technology Club, Delray Beach, Fl	Ruth Lee (Mike) Haacke Timber Pines Computer Club Spring Hill, Fl	Sharon Rump Sarasota PC User Group Sarasota, Fl	Frances Silverman Valencia Lakes Computer and Technology Club, Boynton Beach, Fl

Grand Prize	2nd Prize	3rd Prize
Wacom Intuos 4 tablet Corel Painter 11 Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate Painter 11 for Photographers book Picture Yourself Learning PSPX2 book Estimated value = $950	Wacom Bamboo pen and touch Corel Painter Essentials 4 Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate Picture Yourself Learning PSPX2 book Estimated Value = $350	Digital photo frame Corel Digital Studio 2010 Estimated Value = $200

EARLY DISCOUNTS AVAILBLE NOW

The FACUG is delighted to note another special event.

A five-day/four-night Technology Conference Mexico Cruise, on the Royal Caribbean Radiance of the Seas

SAILING FROM TAMPA on Thursday, January 27, 2011, calling on Cozumel, Mexico and returning to Tampa on Monday, January 31, 2011.

Click Here for detail page

Watch Us on our CruiseLIVE streaming video of our “Sail Away Party”

CLICK HERE details below.Ray Zukowski, one of our presenters and professional videographer, is planning on setting up live streaming video of our sail away party. We will be live, as will podcast as long as we are able to maintain a signal from land based towers, as the satellite based Wi-Fi on the ship is much too slow. Ray will also be seen the entire weekend, all over the ship, videoing our experience.

What does this mean? Here is a website www.action-vp.com/live . You can give this link all your friends and relatives, who might be interested in watching the ship as it sails out of the port of Miami. The quality of the audio and video is outstanding. We will be interviewing some of you at this time and you then can be seen by those connecting to the link. Since this is another activity that has never been done before on a cruise ship, we cannot guarantee that there will not be some technological glitch, but we believe it will be successful.

The FACUG is delighted to note a very special and unique event – a four-day/three-night Technology Conference Bahamas cruise, on the Norwegian Sky sailing from Miami on Friday, February 26, 2010, calling on Nassau and Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas, returning to Miami on Monday, March 1, 2010.

We are about to embark upon an exciting new adventure. We will be creating an opportunity for many who have never before attended a computer and technology conference to share in the fun and enjoyment surrounding such an event. We are seeking to provide novel and interesting presentations for both the computer novice as well as those who may be more knowledgeable. There will be time to spend at workshops and also time to enjoy all that the ship has to offer.
For this event, THE “SKY’S” THE LIMIT!

1. Board Elections
2. Contest Winners
3. Name That User Group
4. Database Update
5. Regional Specific

1.Board Elections

At the Board of Directors Meeting, Kathy Jacobs was elected to be APCUG’s newest Vice-President.
The Board now consists of:

President – Jay Ferron
Vice-President – Kathy Jacobs
Secretary – Linda Moore

2. Contest Winners

Remember, these are national awards.

Contest Winners – The APCUG announced to the User Groups in December, 2008 that it was sponsoring a APCUG Newsletter, Web and Photo Contest. The contest ran from January 1st through January 31st. We also announced that the contest was to be managed differently in that all submissions would be posted to the APCUG SharePoint site. Additionally, we also eliminated the user group size as part of the judging criteria for the Newsletter and Web submissions. Judges were selected in February.

You can see all the entries just by logging into SharePoint and look under Shared Documents/APCUG 2009 Newsletter, Web and Photo Contests. There were 15 Newsletter entries, 22 web entries and 97 Photo entries.
The APCUG board extends its thanks to the judges Judy Taylour, Charlotte Semple (Newsletter), Doris Collins, Patty Lowry (Web), Don Singleton and Paula Sanders (Photo) who graciously donated their time and energy in selecting the winners.

Newsletter

• 1st Place – Boca Raton Computer Society, Florida
• 2nd Place – The Personal Computer Club of Connecticut
• 3rd Place – BPCA News, Broward Personal Computer Association, Inc., Florida

Web

• 1st Place – Quad-Cities Computer Society (www.qcs.org)
• 2nd Place – The PC Users Group of CT (http://tupcug-ct.org)
• 3rd Place (3 way tie)
  Tucson Computer Society (http://www.aztcs.org)
  Temecula Valley Computer User Group (http://www.tvcug.org)
  PC Community (http://www.pcc.org)

Photo Contest

A. People

• 1st Place: Edge of Light –
  Phil Ball-
  Prescott Computer Society
• 2nd Place: Seeing You …
  Tanya L Mattson-
  Computer Users of Erie
• 3rd Place: Engineer….
  Josh Cockey-
  Fredericksburg PC Users Group

B. Animals

• 1st Place: Cormorant-
  Barry Rimmer-
  Lake-Sumter Computer Society
• 2nd Place: GreenHeron –
  Linda B. Boyatzies-
  Northern Neck Computer Users Group
• 3rd Place: GreatBlueHeron-
  Linda B. Boyatzies-Northern Neck Computer Users Group

C. Landscape (which the rules define as: Landscape can be mountains, sky, sea, flowers, desert, trees, etc.)

• 1st Place: Windy Day-
  Richard Davis-
  Northern Neck Computer Users Group
• 2nd Place: Morning Flight-
  Richard Davis-
  Northern Neck Computer Users Group
• 3rd Place: Black Swallowtail-
  Richard Davis-
  Northern Neck Computer Users Group

D. Still life (which the rules define as: Still life is any object not shown in motion; architecture, automobiles, boats, sculpture, historical objects, etc.)

• 1st Place: Driftwood–
  Richard Davis-
  Northern Neck Computer Users Group
• 2nd Place: Building Reflections – Phil Ball-

  Prescott Computer Society

• 3rd Place: BridgeAtNight-
  Linda B. Boyatzies -
  Northern Neck Computer Users Group

Best of Show: Edge of Light –
Phil Ball-
Prescott Computer Society

3. Name That User Group

When you correspond with APCUG, renew membership, make a suggestion, gripe about something — please give full identification for your user group! With hundreds of groups in APCUG’s database — many with similar or identical acronyms — and thousands of volunteers listed, it’s often difficult or impossible to determine which group is being discussed.
Mysteries delay responses and wastes folks’ time digging through
records. Please provide full group name, acronym, Web URL, city/state,
email and telephone contact information, your position in the group, and
anything else that will help APCUG respond to you. Sometimes even
Advisors — the APCUG volunteers closest to user group members —
haven’t memorized all the groups in our regions, so these clues are
always appreciated.

 

4. Database Update

CDB Information – This item is for the Presidents of our member groups. Please be sure that your user group’s information is correct and up to date
in the database on the APCUG web site. This information is very important, to both us and you. It allows us to communicate with you and your officers concerning changes in the organization. It also allows sponsors to contact the correct person in your group. We would like the President or APCUG representative of each of the groups to log on and verify the information. If you have forgotten your login and password, send a message to the secretary at secretary@apcug.net, and it will be forwarded to you

5. Regional Specific  – Wake up Region 5

Have you ever had a presenter cancel a day or so before your meeting?
Are you having difficulty getting presenters to visit your club?
Do you have members who might be homebound?
Is one of your clubs services helping to repair member’s computers?

We now have solutions for these problems.

Let me tell you about Windows Live Meeting and SharePoint.

APCUG has established closer relationship with Microsoft, as a result, they are providing services that would be quite expensive in the market place.

Live Meeting is a program that all APCUG User Groups have access to. It allows you to broadcast a meeting remotely to up to 250 locations. It allows you to have a presenter at the other end of the country or world for that matter visit your club electronically. You can see and hear them make a presentation. It is interactive and questions can be asked of the presenter a major advance over PIAB’s. APCUG will train and authorize selected members of your group to hook up to Live Meeting. This service ordinarily sells for $4.50 per person per month, way beyond the budget of most user groups. APCUG members get it FREE.

If you go the www.sharepoint.com/apcug you will get to the SharePoint website. There we will be posting newsletters, PowerPoint presentations for all APCUG members to use.

This year there is another compelling reason to rejoin. You may have heard about next spring’s Regional Technology Conference aboard the Norwegian “Sky” February 26,March 1, 2010. This is event is shaping up to be historic. Never before has there been a User Group Conference at sea. You will not want to be shutout of this experience. You will need to act quickly, as cabin space is going quickly.

We toured the ship and found it to more than meets our needs. It looks great! For those of you who have never cruised before it is a great opportunity to break the ice, at a great price to surf upon the Norwegian Sky. What a great way to use your $250 Social Security stimulus. The waters between Miami and the Bahamas, I have been told is among the calmest anywhere. Now, ALL your members are welcome to attend this conference not only the leadership as previously was the case. This offer is only available to APCUG and FACUG member groups.
It is shaping up to be an extraordinary experience. It will be a weekend full of outstanding programs, many surprises, yet plenty of time to party.

We are departing from the port of Miami on Friday February 26, 2010 at 5:00 PM. You can board as early as 11:30 AM. Lunch will be available in the Princess dining room until 2PM and at the buffet afterwards. NCL has Free Style dining. Eat whenever you want and dress however you want.
The initial 99 inside cabins rate is $173. This includes all taxes, fees and trip insurance. These are rock bottom prices. For the cost of an average hotel room for a single night you can go cruising and have all your meals and entertainment included. When these cabins sell out, unfortunately, NCL will be increasing the price $30-$40 per person. Outside cabins will be $60 p/p above the base rate of $173. We will be offering the opportunity for bus service to the port, from the west and east coasts as well as South Florida. It will be less costly than parking at the port.

There is a $50 conference registration fee for those wishing to attend the conference. At least one person in each cabin must register for the conference. There will be a $36 charge for gratuities for the cabin steward, waiter, busboy and Maître D that is prepaid. Any additional services you may desire are at your discretion. This deal will probably never be able to be duplicated. We have only reserved 300 cabins of which about half have already been inquired about.

See the FACUG (www.facug.org ) website for additional details.

We therefore, are asking you, if you would please cut and paste the cruise information part of this mail and send it to your entire membership.

If you are interested in participating in this exciting and unique event or have questions, send an email to ap5@ariesmart.com and a cc: to stusil@comcast.net, with names of cruisers, name of member organization and whether you want an inside or ocean view cabin.

Those who respond to this inquiry will receive a notice shortly with additional information about registration and booking procedures The rate that you will receive, will be assigned on a first come first served basis.

I am very happy to congratulate the Boca Raton Computer Society on their first place award in the APCUG Newsletter contest and the Broward Personal Computer Association’s 3rd place award.
Barry Rimmer of the Lake Sumpter Computer Society placed first in the animal category of the APCUG Photo Contest.

Go Florida ! ! !

Your group is a member of APCUG; you have received this e-mail to inform you of updates, changes, or special news and information. APCUG’s policy is to send e-mail messages only to announce such information, and we will continue to honor this policy. If you no longer want to receive these e-mails, please reply to the sender. Thank you for being a member of APCUG.

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