UGU SF ’04 Results

Our UGU SF ’04 Results are *in*! 

 

by topic:   1. Accessorizing Your Mac ***   9   2. AppleWorks ................  5   3. Astronomy .................  1   4. Best of the Net ...........  4   5. Conflicts & Crashes IV ....  1   6. Customizing Your Mac ......  5   7. Digital Cameras *** .......  7   8. E-mail ....................  2   9. FileMaker Pro .............  8  10. Fonts .....................  0  11. Gay MacJeopardy X .........  2  12. How to Buy a Mac *** ......  4  13. iMovie *** ................  2    14. Int'l Mac .................  1  15. Internet Roundtable *** ...  0  16. Looking for Love ..........  0  17. Mac Basics ................  1  18. Mac Books *** .............  1  19. Mac Games .................  2  20. Mac OS X: Panther *** .....  8  21. Making Money w/ Yr Site ...  3  22. Paper .....................  0  23. PDAs & Syncing w/ Them ....  6  24. Photoshop 7 ................ 5  25. Photoshop Elements ......... 4  26. Preparing for Disaster ....  5  27. Scanner Night .............  6  28. Speech Technology .........  2  29. Video Conferencing *** ....  3  30. Web Authoring VI *** ......  2

by interest:   1. Accessorizing Your Mac ***   9   2. FileMaker Pro .............  8   3. Mac OS X: Panther *** .....  8   4. Digital Cameras *** .......  7   5. PDAs & Syncing w/ Them ....  6   6. Scanner Night .............  6   7. AppleWorks ................  5   8. Customizing Your Mac ......  5   9. Photoshop 7 ................ 5  10. Preparing for Disaster ....  5  11. Best of the Net ...........  4  12. How to Buy a Mac *** ......  4  13. Photoshop Elements ......... 4    14. Making Money w/ Yr Site ...  3  15. Video Conferencing *** ....  3  16. E-mail ....................  2  17. Gay MacJeopardy X .........  2  18. iMovie *** ................  2  19. Mac Games .................  2  20. Speech Technology .........  2  21. Web Authoring VI *** ......  2  22. Astronomy .................  1  23. Conflicts & Crashes IV ....  1  24. Int'l Mac .................  1  25. Mac Basics ................  1  26. Mac Books *** .............  1  27. Fonts .....................  0  28. Internet Roundtable *** ...  0  29. Looking for Love ..........  0  30. Paper .....................  0

 

On Monday, January 5th, at User Group University right before Macworld Expo/San Francisco 2004, the “Plan Your Meeting Topics up to a Year in Advance” session leader taped four sets of 30 pre-printed topics on the walls, gave each attendee three star-stickers to vote for the topics of most interest to them, demonstrated a brief explanation of a few of them, asked if anyone had any questions, and then let everyone get up and vote and volunteer to present.

Checking the Results.  Of the four steps to take at one of your regular meetings to “Plan Your Meeting Topics up to a Year in Advance,” we clearly covered the first three — Explain, Vote, and Tally — so let’s take a moment to look at that last one: how do we check our results?  The total votes counted is 99.  At three star-stickers per person, that’s 33 people who voted.  How many people attended?

The session leader printed-up 100 sets of handouts and came home w/ 27, so at most 73 people attended, but that number may be a bit lower since a few people did take more than one handout home w/ them.  Even at 66 people, that’s a 50% voter turnout.  For your user group meeting, like we do for ours, you really want to get the percentage up above 90%.  Don’t hesitate to have officers walk around to help people vote.

Also worth noting is that topics w/ asterisks have people who volunteered to present them, so thank you Chris, Dan, John, Kevin, Pat, Steve, and Turtle-Bear!  If your group is like ours was, you now have nine topics w/ nine presenters and thus your calendar.  But moving from an officer- or presenter-centric mode to a members-centric one, you can see only four of those nine made the top 13, so now you have to find presenters for at most another nine topics.

Go ahead and schedule these 13 topics for the next 12 months, then clearly thank the people who did volunteer to present, give them first dibs on the nine most popular topics w/o presenters, and then start looking around, now that you have exact topics and dates, for other presenters, inside your group and outside, at local Mac consultants, developers, resellers, community colleges, printshops, even other user groups.