Who
are our thousand members? – August 1995 Newsletter
by Lowell
M. Goldman
My first appointment is
to see Vincent La Bash, currently vice-president of the Sarasota PC Users
Group, and potential president. His wife cordially set the time and date at
their Country Place Boulevard home in Sarasota, where they’ve lived since
1988. Mrs. Joan La Bash proudly boasted of her husband’s unusual
accomplishment, studying Japanese mathematics and also teaching English to a
Japanese University’s students.
Vincent La Bash ushered me into his beautiful
home. Originally from West Babylon, Long Island, New York, “Vinny” was a
Systems Engineer, transferred to an International Business Machine Branch in
Sarasota, Florida. Later, in 1993 he retired from IBM. Now he’s teaching
computer science and related subjects at Sarasota County Technical Institute
(formerly VoTech).
He got involved with the Sarasota PC Users
Group about four years ago. As a member, he contributed software reviews and
found many members were former students, who still call him. He said, “This
is something good to occupy my time.”
His wife, Joan, sings for retirement
communities and nursing homes, at about twenty-two different facilities.
For both of them, “It’s fun stuff!”
As a possible future president of the
organization, he’ll be even busier. Vinny considers the group to be largely
philanthropic, devoted to education and computer literacy. “Anyone who can
sit down at a computer and do something useful” draws his interest and is
his definition of computer literacy.
While soul searching into the world of
computers, Vinny continued his remarks. “Look to where games are, since they
create the pattern for development the software manufacturers copy. Their
style of graphics used to introduce their software and presentations become
the password for the giants to follow. The frontiers are the games, including
animation and video, now showing up in multi-media applications. What
you’re going to see in the future from the major software applications are
what the games have been doing first.”
“For instance, the next major change in
WordPerfect, you will see cut and paste completely animated. The help function
will show you a full screen video doing the cut and paste. Now, what you see
in games is voice response. Here’s what I see appearing now, especially in
fantasy role playing games—’walk through the arch, pick up the stone and
throw it at the fence’. You can say that, and the game will respond to it.
Two years from now, that probably will show up on the screens by major
software publishers.”
He repeated, “I watch games to see where
the industry is going.”
And the message he sends out to our members
is “Look what an outstanding job is being done by all the volunteers in all
aspects of our organization”.
He confessed, “I teach Windows, WordPerfect
DOS, Lotus, Excel and Microsoft Works, and probably advanced Windows and
communications next year.”
“I
think the teaching helps me to understand the needs of the group. My mission
is to take the mystery and fear out of computers."
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