14th Annual Southwest User Group Conference

George M. Holloway
Southwest International PC Club

Doug & Rosie Agee and George & Mamie Holloway attended the 14th annual Southwest User Group Conference held July 13th to July 15th at the Town & Country Resort and Convention Center in San Diego Ca.
There were over 270 attendees from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Texas.

No conference is successful without sponsors and there were over 70 sponsoring vendors with 27 attending the Saturday Vendor Faire. I will be sending a thank you note to the vendors.

Smart Computing, Pinnacle Systems, AMD, Corel and Microsoft sponsored the meal and presentation events.

For the first time in the conference history a key note address was given by Andy Marken of Marken Communications. The subject of his address was Digital Rights Management (DRM) – How will the show End? The subject of DRM is the protection of digital property, i.e. music, movies, and digital images.

Between meals and presentations there were 20 workshops to choose from.
Of particular interest to me was the two digital photograph workshops presented by Cathy & George Margolin. The attendees at the first workshop were invited to take pictures on the grounds of the Town & Country property and submit them for judging and token prizes at the Sunday workshop.
With 60 entries yours truly won 2nd prize in the nature category.

Since it was impossible to attend all workshops, the hosts of the workshops provided Power Point presentations of their topics which were included on the conference CD. This will be a source of future SWIPCC presentations.

As you know, the winning entries of our local digital photo contest were submitted to the Swug digital photo contest. Winning entries were announced at Sunday’s breakfast. I am sorry to say none of our entries won in the available categories.
Judging is somewhat subjective. To illustrate, the attendees voted on their favorite photo to be awarded Best of Show. The voters did not choose any of the winners in the different categories. Instead they choose La Union Sunrise by our very own Garry Bentley.

Congratulations to Gary.

With Sunday lunch the conference came to an end and plans for next year began.
The 2008 conference will be held May 30, 31 and June 1.

Changes R A Coming

I can't spill all the beans yet but I can say the plans are big and the time is short so we will just have to wait and see how much gets accomplished.

The secret is out

After everyone left Sunday afternoon we spent the next 4 hours going over all the evaluation forms that were returned. We do this every year to see how we did and what we can do to improve next years' conference. Monday, at breakfast we had our first planning meeting for the 2008 conference. The meeting lasted several hours many suggestions & ideas were discussed and we think we are of to a good start.

We "R" on Our Way

Our Welcome bags are packed and we are on our way to San Diego. It is 4:45 am California time, I just finished loading the car and about to head out. Oooops I almost forgot my wife. I guess I had better wake her so she can go too.

San Diego

My wife and I drove for 2 hours. Patricia & Al Hill drove for 7 hours. Judy T rode the train. We all wound up in San Diego to do pre-conference work. For 3 days we met with the hotel people, conference room management, catering, and the media department working out one detail after another. We also chased leads for other participants from the local area, hammered out many problems and got Macy's to give each attendee discount coupon. The evening of the last night we even managed to spend a few minutes in the spa. The next morning after breakfast all of us headed home. Not sure about the rest but I am exhausted.