NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
President's Column
by Dale Oliver, President, January 2002
d_oliver@swbell.net
(click to email author)


I hope each of you have had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday season. I had a fantastic one, and now I'm ready to get back to business!

The year ahead looks very positive for our club. We are fortunate enough to have retained most of our existing club officers, and we have added David Hinds as our vice president. David, as you know, is the moderator of the New User Round Table discussion group that meets after our regularly scheduled presentations. David has served as the NWA-PCUG club vice president and president in the mid-80s, so he brings a lot of knowledge and expertise to this position. Please congratulate and thank David for his dedication to the club, especially since his career and professional life demands are some of the most challenging of anyone in the club. You are definitely appreciated, David.

A possible new benefit to club members that the board has been tossing around is the addition of professionally trained, hands-on computer classes, hopefully at a discount to club members. This idea is only being discussed at the moment, but please let me know what you think about it when you see me at the January meeting, or e-mail your feedback to me at d_oliver@swbell.net. If there is sufficient interest by club members, we will invest the time and effort required to set it up. Any other ideas that you feel will benefit the club members are always gratefully accepted.

Joe Schork, our most recent past president, has done a marvelous job assuring that we continue to have a meeting place at the Jones Center. This is no small feat, since there is a substantial amount of competition for our meeting space. Due to the increasing demand for space at the Jones Center, not all of our 2002 meetings will be held on the third Saturday of the month. Specifically, the April meeting will be held on the second weekend, and June and July meetings will be held on the fourth weekend. For more details, be sure to check out the Meeting Schedule link on our club website (http://pcgroup.nwark.com) or watch the mail for your latest newsletter.

Alan Lantz, a very knowledgeable network engineer-who is also a nice guy and down-to-earth person-will be helping us understand what firewalls are and how they work at the January meeting. Firewalls are an increasingly important part of safe computing, especially now that so many personal computers are connected to the Internet via broadband connections such as DSL and cable modems. This is definitely a meeting you should attend if you have a broadband connection or are considering getting one.

Our February 16th meeting will be a general Q&A session, so bring your questions and we will supply the answers. I am looking forward to seeing each of you at the January 19th meeting. See you there!

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