A new Mac film festival, a user group community icon, ideas on encouraging Switchers, vendor deals and more are featured in this week’s User Group Report, the Internet radio show hosted by Chuck Joiner, editor of The MUG Center the online resource for Mac User Groups (MUGs).
Bob McLaughlin of ApplePickers discusses the group’s recent Small Dog/ApplePickers Film Festival, how it helped bring their group together, and the decisions they made while planning the event. Carmela Zamora-Robertson of All By Myself talks about her career, and how user groups have always been part of it. She also discusses her new company and how it relies on Apple technology for everything.
Lynda Fudold of the Silicon Valley Macintosh Users Group serves up some thoughts on how to attract and encourage Switchers — and why it’s a good idea to do so. And Chris Wronski of The MacUsers User Group discusses why, at age 15, he wanted to found a user group — and how it happened. You can listen or download the MP3 file of the User Group for use on, say, an iPod.
In other MUG news, Andy Ihnatko, Macworld magazine and Chicago Sun-Times columnist, will be the special guest and master of ceremonies for Oregon’s fifth annual “You Don’t Know Mac!” statewide MUG event day on Nov. 1.
MUGs are good places for making new friends, finding Mac-loving buddies, boning up your technical expertise, finding solutions to technical problems, and sometimes finding a good deal on used hardware. For more info on MUGs, and to find the location of the one nearest you, go to Apple’s User Group Web page.