President's Notes (04/08)
President's Message
Florida Association of Computer User Groups
– Little known facts
by Phil Sorrentino
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
The Florida Association of Computer User
Groups or FACUG, as it is typically referred to,
is an umbrella organization for many of the Computer User Groups in the
state of Florida. FACUG has historically held its functions in Orlando, but
it has its roots in Sarasota and its headquarters actually are at 935 North
Beneva Rd., Suite 609 #4, Sarasota FL, 34232. FACUG is the successor
organization to the Florida Suncoast Conference of PC User Groups. Suncoast
was one of the early regional groups having been started in 1989 in Sarasota
by our own Webmaster and Past President Gary Schweinshaupt.
FACUG was founded in 1993 to assist user groups in the
performance of their managerial and educational activities, to promote
communications among local user groups, and to facilitate relations between
user groups and the computer industry. Currently there are about 55 member
user groups that belong to FACUG.
Similar to our Website, the FACUG Website can be found at
www.facug.org. Their Website describes the organization as follows, "The
Florida Association of Computer User Groups is the leading regional
association of its kind in the country. It is a southeast regional,
non-profit, tax exempt association of independent computer user groups
including PC and MAC groups."
FACUG has two conferences each year, a three-day conference in the spring
and a one-day conference in the fall. The ’08 Spring Conference was March 7,
8, & 9, and the Fall Conference is scheduled for October 25. The conferences
are open to all member user group officers, directors and active volunteers.
The conferences are an opportunity for user group officers to meet with
other user group officers, and to interact with some computer industry
representatives. Some of the companies represented at the Spring Conference
were Microsoft, Corel, Smart Computing and Verbatim. The SPCUG officers
that attended the conference returned with an increased knowledge of the
computer industry and better idea of how to improve the operation of our own
organization from learning about other user groups’ positive and negative
experiences. The ideas brought back by these officers will be used to
improve SPCUG’s administration, operation and education and technical
offerings made available to the general membership. :
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Copyright 2008. This article is from the April 2008 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL
34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit
computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and
our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication
the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For
further information about our group, email:
admin@spcug.org/ Web:
http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members
and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User
Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are
members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC
Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.