From The President August 2019

John Hall

Supporting your local Interest Groups

Our Interest Groups (otherwise known as “SIGs” – for “Special Interest Groups”) have long been the life-blood of our organisation.

On Saturday the 7^th of September we will be holding our annual “SIG Leaders Meeting” at Moorabbin where the leaders and helpers at those local Groups can provide us with feedback on how the attendees at their Meetings judge the work that we are doing in Head Office, so if you attend one of these Groups please be sure to talk to your SIG Leader if you have any concerns at all about the way our Club is being run and they will feed those concerns back to us.

If you do not attend your local Interest Group and you are fit and healthy enough to do so – please go along to one of their Meetings and I am sure that you will be surprised at how friendly and sociable these gatherings are.

One excuse that I hear from Members who do not attend an Interest Group is that they are “Too Technical” for them to participate. If you have read the PC Update Magazine Report of George Skarbek’s talk at the July East SIG Meeting you will see that he talked about a “Fitness Tracker Watch” that he had recently purchased.

We also have Groups that talk about Genealogy, Android Phones, Video and Photography plus of Course more Technical Subjects such as Linux or Windows.

As an example – after 3 years of concentrating on the running of our Moorabbin headquarters I am very much looking forward to getting back to being more involved with the Interest Groups that I attend at Wadham House, Mount Waverley.

These meetings take place on a Friday morning and on the first Friday we talk about “Multimedia” (which even includes evaluations of TV Sets etc.) then on the second Friday we talk about Computer Hardware (including Tablets and sometimes Mobile Phones), then on the 3^rd Friday I attend Ian Bock’s “Digital Images” Group which looks at how you can improve your photos AFTER you have downloaded them to your PC and on the 4^th Friday I run the “Raspberry Pi” mini Computer Group which is now officially being touted as a replacement for a traditional “PC” .

To add to this, we also have the “East Workshop” which runs on the Second Sunday of the Month where you can take your PC and our Members will try to fix any problems that you are having as part of your Membership entitlements (i.e. at no charge).

We are very hopeful that we can establish similar “General Interest Groups” in our Moorabbin rooms and if you have a particular interest that you would like to see being supported at Moorabbin please write to Committee@melbpc.org.au so that these can be discussed at the next Committee Meeting.

If you would like to go along to one of the local Interest Groups in your area you can find a full listing of them on our Web Site at https://www.melbpc.org.au/sigs/about/sig-list .