SCOUG OS/2 For You - March 1998

Get Ready to Vote

Board of Directors Are Elected March 21

Candidates for SCOUG's Board of Directors have the opportunity to include a statement in this edition of the newsletter. (Those included here are as of press time; others may be nominated at the meeting.)

For President:

Steve Schiffman (current board member) - I am running for President at our elections in March. During the past year I have served as a Director and in previous years held the positions of Vice-President and Treasurer.

The focus of SCOUG is to provide support to our members and the community at large for the OS/2 operating system. User Groups are a vital resource for individual and small office/home office users as IBM has shifted its focus to a Network Computing stratgey. It is the challenge of SCOUG to meet this new direction of IBM's and contine to be a relevant resource for our members, doing for members what is not being done elsewhere.

SCOUG has had an interesting and exciting year in 1997. We held an OS/2 10th anniversary open house. We sponsered Warpstock. We have held monthly Installation and Help Desk workshops. We have 4 SIGS meeting each month. And we publish the OS/2 For You newsletter each month.

As President of SCOUG I hope to meet the challenge to keep the User Group relevant to our membership and lead SCOUG into the future. As an orginization, we need to continue to provide the activities and social environment that satisfy our current members' needs and also attract new members. We need to maintain SCOUG as an information resource for beginners and experienced users alike. And finally, SCOUG must continue to increase awareness of OS/2 in the computing community.

In order to do this though, I will need the active support of you, our membership. Please support your User Group through active participation. Let your Board members know what you would like. Is there a new SIG you would like to have? Would you be willing to lead a SIG? What other activities would you like? Would you be willing to chair a committee to carry out an activity?

I look forward to your vote and support.

Terry Warren (current Vice President) - For the past three years I have served on the board of directors, most recently as SCOUG vice-president. During this time I have actively participated in helping the club to achieve its primary objectives of promoting awareness and understanding of OS/2 through member benefits and activities and community education.

This year, 1998, will be the most challenging ever for SCOUG. We will be without the formal leadership of Rollin White, and will also be facing ever diminishing support from IBM for the consumer OS/2 environment. This means that we will have an increased burden for establishing and maintaining OS/2's role for our members and to the community at large.

To help achieve these goals, I am running for the office of President. If elected, I will try to focus the board of directors on several key issues: sustained membership; member education through classes, SIGs and other related activities; acquisition and use of additional club resources; and community projects. In addition, continuation of existing programs and enhancements to the club's website will also be important.

If you agree with these goals then I would appreciate your vote and whatever comments and assistance you can provide to help achieve them since the club's success is dependent on each member's contribution. If you don't agree, it is even more important that you make your opinions known to our newly elected officers whomever they may be.

For Vice President:

Paul Wirtz (current board member) - Hello again, I'm running for Vice President again this year. A lot of changes are taking place this year for SCOUG and I would like to be a part of them. As Vice President, I will be an assistant to the President to handle specific issues as he requires. Also, if (God forbid) anything should happen to the President, I will assume the responsibilities of SCOUG President.

This year SCOUG will need to provide more help to its members as IBM focuses on large corporate clients. SCOUG can be our interface to IBM.

If not elected as Vice President, I will be willing to serve as a general board member.

For Secretary:

Gary Wong (incumbent) - First, I would like to thank you, the members of SCOUG, for granting me the privilege to serve you as secretary last year.

I would appreciate it if you would elect me as secretary again this year.

This past year has seen a number of highlights for SCOUG, such as:

1. The Open House
2. SCOUG's sponsorship and participation in Warpstock
3. The OS/2 Museum appearing at the Open House & Warpstock
4. A number of member presentations in our general meetings, such as the e-mail shootout, and presentations by Herb, Terry, Paul, & Mark. I appreciate these members stepping up to do presentations as it demonstrates the club's resourcefulness and the effort they put forward in their preparation and their delivery of the presentation. It also shows us that we are not necessarily dependent on outside vendor presentations.
5. An addition of 2 machines to the SCOUG Warp Server domain to augment the SCOUG Thinkpad
6. The Java version of the raffle sign-in program, which is also networked and run on a mixture of client machines

As secretary, I have compiled the minutes of the board meetings, along with other documentation distributed at the board meetings, such as the treasurer statements that Tom has diligently prepared. I have published the agendas for the board meetings as well. Finally, I help advertise the club electronically thru announcements of club functions on Compuserve and OS/2 e-Zine!'s Warpcast service.

But being secretary doesn't mean you can't contribute ideas and other input regarding club business and activities! With your input, we can address some burning issues as:

1. Sustaining our membership and meeting attendance levels, while looking for ways to increase both levels (such as electronic advertising, flyers and other print advertising, and booths at Pomona, etc.)
2. Would you like to have another Open House? Should SCOUG put in another bid to host Warpstock this year, or in a future year?
3. Would you like to start another SIG or two? How about other workshops or classes in addition to our Help Desk and Java programming classes? Speaking of our OS/2 Help Desk, now that we plan to have prepared demos, what demos would you like to see?
4. Is there a specific vendor you'd like to see come to our general meetings? Do you want a mix of hardware-related presentations along with our OS/2 software-related presentations? How about more shoot-outs, and if so, what do you want comparisons on? Do you prefer member presentations vs. outside vendors/speakers?

Again, I would appreciate your support by voting for me to continue to serve you as Secretary. The Board would appreciate input from you, the members, on the items above or any other ideas you have. Thank you.

For Treasurer:

Tom Emerson (incumbent)

For Non-Officer Positions (in addition to the officers, there are five other directors on the board):

Mark Abramowitz (incumbent) - Hi, I'm running for re-election this year, and thought I'd take a moment to share with you why I think you should vote to re-elect me. No rhetoric here, just some of what I've done the last year: became program chair and brought presentations by Lotus on SmartSuite, IBM on VoiceType, a shoot-out, Workspace on demand, Embellish, OS/2 on a Mac with Virtual PC; helped bring Warpstock to SCOUG territory, as Steering Committee member and vendor co-ordinator; wrote a number of blurbs for the newsletter; obtained a large donation of magazines and hotel accomodations; co-ordinated the raffle (yes, I gave many of you great stuff!); and secured a number of software and other raffle contributions. I'm sure others could add to the long list of things I've done this past year, but I hope that this is enough to convince you that I deserve your vote.

Tony Butka - I've been a member of SCOUG for a few years now, and am finally becoming comfortable with OS/2. I can still remember trying to get software to run under OS/2 2.1, particularly Windows software (mostly it didn't). And OS/2 was very fragile too. Anyhow, SCOUG was around, and I've asked my share and more of dumb questions that were really important to me, like how to get the darn system running, and what is a Trap error (you mostly don't want to know).

I would like to be a Board member to give back some of what SCOUG has given me over time, and perhaps help some others. Recently, I've started to become more active in the group, doing some software/hardware reviews for the newsletter, and helping out at the Open House and WarpStock. Since I know that we have really depended on the same people to run the group for a long time now, cutting into their home lives, and it seemed that the next step would be to run for the board.

Greg George

Sheridan George

Doug Knowlin

Dallas E. Legan - I volunteer to run for a general position on the Board. I don't feel I'm particularly qualified, but am doing to express my support for OS/2 and SCOUG, and to express my gratitude also. (If that doesn't sound like political rhetoric...) People interested in my background can check out my Web page at: http://www.taygeta.com/fig/homes/dlegan.html

Dave Watson (incumbent) - I could recycle my statement from last year since I didn't accomplish all my promises. But I try to be efficient and creative so I'll ask you to review last spring's candidate statements on the web site and I'll add a little more here. I'm a little smarter than last year but it probably doesn't show. I enjoy supporting the club at meetings, the Internet SIG, and board meetings. But, I can't afford to spend as much time with you as I would like. I have some ideas for dealing with some of the challenges facing our club in the next year, but not all of them. Vote for me. I'll give you cookies at the next Internet SIG meeting.

Be Sure to Vote

The process is rather simple. At the March meeting the offices will be voted on in order - President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and then the five non-officer positions all together. Before the voting begins for each position, the candidates will be invited to give brief talks about their motivations and asperations for SCOUG. Any candidate that is not elected to one position may then be nominated for a subsequent position.

You Don't Have To Be at the Meeting - You can vote by proxy

If you aren't voting in person, get in touch with Gary Wong, SCOUG's current Secretary, before the meeting. He'll want a signed and dated statement of either who should cast your votes or who you are voting for. If you have questions or want a ballot in advance, you should contact the newsletter editor (and ballot maker), Carla Hanzlik, at Carla@SCOUG.com or 562-596-5121.

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