APCUG Region 2 Advisor Gabe Goldberg recently participated in an interview conducted at an APCUG member organization, the Greenspring Village Computer Club. The video was recorded and edited by Steve Gurney, Publisher of Guide to Retirement Living Sourcebook, it includes Greenspring Village residents describing their computer club's extensive activities and resources, and Gabe -- who has presented to the club many times -- describing his longstanding commitment to user groups.

Greater Cleveland PCUG’s Facebook Timeline & Security PPT chosen to be on SlideShare’s homepage! “Hey GCPCUG, Congratulations! Your presentation It's Time for Facebook Timeline has been featured on SlideShare's homepage. Kudos from our editorial team for your effort. Your presentation was chosen from the thousands uploaded to SlideShare everyday from across the world. – The SlideShare Team” Facebook gurus Jim Evans and Susie Sharp helped the attendees at the meeting on January 14 sort through the newly released Facebook Timeline, a replacement for your Profile where you can decide what other users can find out about you. With Timeline, it is much easier to see everything you have done on Facebook: the good, the bad and the truly ugly. You still have some control, but it is a lot different. New menus / dropdowns / options are all over the place. Facebook calls it granular control; it can be confusing. You will find the presentation at: slidesha.re/AwqaEq

January 5th at 2PM ET there will be a webinar on The Overachiever's Guide to Online Fundraising: 10 Steps to Kick Start 2012!. Click on the link to register.

APCUG holds successful California region virtual meeting California kicked off the regional virtual meetings to be held in each APCUG region in 2012. The meeting was facilitated by Cheryl Wester, Advisor, Region 10 and Judy Taylour, Chair, Board of Advisors. The December brainstorming session was attended by 15 UG officers and members not only from California but also Arizona, Florida and Canada. The meeting was scheduled for 60 minutes but the sharing of ideas went on for over 1-1/2 hours. Everyone got many ideas to use with their clubs. If you want to see what went on, click the link for the Recording of December 6 Brainstorming Session. Unzip the 33.8 meg file in its own folder and double click on index.html

”We really enjoyed getting to be part of the online conference. Thank you for including us. There were some good ideas shared, no doubt! It is wonderful to see how APCUG has come together in the past year. Though it's a tougher world for user groups, I see APCUG as a stronger partner than ever, with only good things to come.” Katherine Malone, President, San Francisco PCUG.

Hewie Poplock, Vice President of the Central Florida Computer Society and APCUG Director did a presentation at LIFE @ UCF. LIFE (Learning Institute for Elders at UCF) has 500 members, with a waiting list. They meet once a week during the University's school year, with 2 classes every week. There were approximately 400 attendees for this class about Skype. During the class, Hewie promoted User Groups, CFCS, and APCUG as sources for computer help. He passed out CFCS brochures. Several showed people showed interest and some have already joined.

Melvin Weekly, Seniors Computer Group in San Diego, reports that there was a lot of excitement in at their meeting yesterday (October 29). An article on the SCG made the front page (PDF) of the Union Tribune newspaper and they had the largest attendance in three years. They are looking at statistics in light of this and discovered that they have done much better than they thought this year. They have received 33 new members this year and there are still two months to go. There is a lot to be said for having a PR person active on their board. www.SignOnSanDiego.com here. -->

Helping Tulsa was featured on Tulsa, Oklahoma’s, Fox 23 TV station when Don Singleton, Editor, APCUG and founder of Helping Tulsa was interviewed by Janna Clarke. The interview was over 2 hours, but it was edited down to a short clip; you can watch it here. HelpingTulsa has been refurbishing computers since 2002 and through 2008 had refurbished approximately 2,000 computers that were given to schools, churches, and non-profit agencies, Senior Citizen Centers, Tulsa Housing Authority facilities, and HUD Section 8 facilities. Read more about Helping Tulsa here.

If you’re not using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, MeetUp, and other online social media tools to publicize and market your user group, you’re missing out on a lot of modern “bandwidth”. Days are long gone when meeting rooms are filled just by listing events on user group calendars, supplemented by (remember these?) elaborate mailings by vendors promising star-studded presentations, company executives, and monster giveaways.

I’m an active LinkedIn user, a Twitter dabbler, and a toe-dipper in Google+; I’m still resisting Facebook.

I find LinkedIn a valuable tool for learning about events, sharing events with my network, and publicizing my own events. Here’s an article from Wayne Breitbarth’s Power Formula blog titled, “LinkedIn Helps You Fill Seats at Your Next Event”: bit.ly/qStoqz -- beginning “Many people have not even discovered the LinkedIn Event Application, let alone all the other features that can help them boost attention and ultimately attendance at their event. Thus, I thought I would share my best practices for using LinkedIn to promote events.” The article includes 13 Ways to Effectively Promote Your Upcoming Event Using LinkedIn.

Software Freedom Day was September 17th and APCUG’s member group, The CPUser Group cpusergroup.apcug.org/ Tarentum, PA hosted a software freedom day event. Your user group could also host a software freedom day event next year. Go to wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide for details on how to organize one of these events.

The Second Virtual Conference was held on February 25. Click the link for handouts and recordings of each session, and don't miss Future APCUG Virtual Events

Early Bird Registration ($50) is open for the APCUG/CAMUG 2012 Regional Computer Conference

APCUG is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Early Bird Membership Renewal Contest. The winners of the three Kindle eReaders with $300 worth of O'Reilly eBooks installed are: Plateau PC Users Group (Region 4), Lake-Sumter Computer Society (Region 9), and the Computer Booters of Sun Lakes (Region 9).

APCUG Reports Q1 2012 is online and available here

Board of Directors
President David Steward	Vice President Marie Vesta	Secretary Patty Lowry	Treasurer Sandra Hart
Board of Advisors
Chair Judy Taylour	Vice Chair Bob Vance	Secretary Greg West

O’Reilly and APCUG have partnered to offer member groups the opportunity to have 5 ‘books’ sent to them each quarter (2 books and 3 eBook certificates). These books may be used as door prizes, a volunteer thank you, etc. The first set of books will be sent sometime in January. To take advantage of this new membership benefit, groups need to complete the Google form at tinyurl.com/apcug-oreilly.

Here are a few Kudos from member groups:

• Thank you APCUG and O'Reilly. The Temecula Valley Computer User Group signed up for this amazing and generous offer and can't wait to start getting books. What a great way to learn and share information. Every group should take advantage of what APCUG brings to our technology groups! President, Dana Stallings
• Just signed us up! Another great reason to be a member of APCUG! Jon Mazur, President, CPUser Group, PA
• Thanks for sending the heads up on this new offer. I will follow up on it. Barbara Kreiss, Webmaster, APCUG Rep, Amador Computer User Group, CA

APCUG is pleased to announce the results of the recent election for Directors and Advisors whose terms will begin January 2012. Directors: Don Singleton, Patty Lowry and Hank Feinberg. Advisors: Gabe Goldberg, Judy Taylour, Bob Vance, Sam Wexler and Greg West. Thank you to all of the member groups that voted.

Thank you to everyone who attended the beta test of the virtual conference. Don Singleton and Hewie Poplock spent a lot of time putting the conference together and, in my opinion, it was very successful and could very well become a part of APCUG's benefits line.
David Steward, APCUG Vice President

Congratulations to Hewie and Don for a job well done on their virtual conference. I don’t think I truly understood the magnitude of their endeavor until today after attending one of the virtual sessions. I truly believe this could be an opportunity for APCUG to reach out to their membership without any cost to the user groups. Not having to travel and spend monies for registration, hotels, and travel is definitely a plus. The opportunities are there for the taking.
Marie Vesta, Tampa Bay Computer Society

APCUG will hold a beta test of its new Virtual Conference in Cyberspace on November 12. Click here for more information.

APCUG is interested in its member groups’ opinion on what they expect from APCUG for their $50.00 annual membership fee. The organization offers a variety of benefits; it is important to APCUG to know whether it is meeting member groups’ needs. The purpose of the survey is to measure member group’s satisfaction with the quality and timeliness of APCUG’s services. Feedback from the groups is very important to the organization. The results will be used to benchmark levels of satisfaction as well as identify areas where APCUG can better assist member groups. If your group did not receive information about the survey, please send an e-mail to Bill James at bjames (at) apcug.org. The survey will end on Friday, November 4, 2011.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month is a joint public - private partnership between the Department of Homeland Security (goo.gl/SWpW9), the National Cyber Security Alliance (staysafeonline.org/), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (msisac.cisecurity.org). For more information click here.

Membership is open to all non-profit, independent technology and computer user groups, defined as formal or informal associations of a non-commercial nature whose principal purpose is to help their members learn about technology. The APCUG membership renewal dues amount is $50. Click here for the renewal form.

Groups may pay by credit card through PayPal or send a check to: APCUG
13940 Cedar Road, #447
Cleveland, OH 44118-3204

APCUG Reports Q4 is online and available here