President's Message

March 2008 (v1.12)
Rob Limbaugh - President

CALLING ALL MEMBERS!
March is here!  It is time for your Board of Directors to elect the Officers!  Anyone who is a member who would like to contribute their skills for the benefit of everyone is encouraged to put their hat in the ring!  The Officer positions are:

President
Secretary
Treasurer
VP of Marketing/PR
VP of Programs

Members interested should send an email to dacsboard@dacs.org.  Please indicate the role you're interested in fulfilling.  Elections will be held at the March 11 Board of Directors meeting.  There is plenty of room for additional candidates and it actually benefits DACS to have assistant officers to help provide additional coverage for vacations or when schedules get topsy-turvy.

Special Thanks
Former DACS President, Dick Gingras, joined us for our February 2008 Board Meeting.  For those unaware, Mr. Gingras is heralded with the accomplishment of DACS achieving over 900 members in the early 90s.  He shared with us some of his experiences and insights—for both then and now.  He filled in some history and it was good seeing him reminisce a bit with the others on the Board, some of whom Dick recruited some time ago.  He was truly one of the highlights of the meeting.  Thank you, sir, for taking time out for us!

Upcoming "General Meetings" (and a shameless plug)
I'm going to cut right to the chase...  Let's get that auditorium packed!  When companies are contacted for speakers and prize donations, they want to see a return on investment.  The higher our attendance, the more clout we have.  These companies recognize that our recommendations carry more weight with family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers than a magazine ad or commercial will.

Most importantly (ahem--this is the shameless plug), my much better half, Flo Ferrara, will be giving a presentation on how to give a small business or non-profit entities technology resources an enterprise class touch.  Her down-to-earth view of how technology should be is a refreshing change that I'm sure everyone will enjoy.  She's entertaining and quick-witted, too!  Anyway, there's great information in store for everyone.  If you know anyone who's got the responsibility of finding technology solutions for their employer, school, church, or other organization, then make sure to invite them!

Spring is almost here!  That brings to mind spring cleaning and maintenance, which of course should extend to your computer(s).  Jeff Setaro will update us on the latest tips and tools to keep up our machines running virus and mal-ware free.  This would be an ideal meeting to bring friends, neighbors, and relatives—especially the ones you have to keep giving the 'safe surfing' speeches to!

Last month we introduced name badges for SIG Leaders, Board Members, and Officers to wear during the General Meetings so people with questions know who to seek out.

Online Community Project
After taking a few months to identify our needs and browse through various solutions, we've decided to move forward with a test deployment of Drupal with the intent of running CiviCRM and some other plug-ins.  One of the great side effects of this project is that it will blend the expertise of several SIGs to create something we can all benefit from.  By the time you read this, the base installation of the test virtual machine environment should be completed.

Looking for some interested parties
Last month we had a few visitors that said they were interested in video game design and programming.  There have also been inquiries about working with video editing.  If anyone else is interested in these topics for a workshop or SIG, please send an email to input@dacs.org or dacsboard@dacs.org.  We have some leads for resources for both areas of interest for anyone willing to pursue them and get groups of like-minded people together.

Final notes
Don't forget that March 9th we move our clocks ahead an hour!  Your computers, if configured to adjust automatically, should do so on March 9th, NOT April 6th!

Invite your friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers to meetings!  The person confused about how to deal with spam or the person shopping for hardware or software at a local store might be looking for a place like DACS!

 - Rob

ROB LIMBAUGH
relimbaugh@dacs.org