My interest in computing came when I left the RAAF after 25 years service, most of it as a navigator. The discipline I learned there channelled me towards computers as a hobby that I am still enjoying now. My first schooling was with the Micro-80 Users Group in the early 1980s, where the philosophy of users helping users was a basic tenet of our existence. As I progressed I found I could repay my learning and make life easier for others by writing articles for the newsletter, and I have been doing that continuously since February 1985.
Then came the PCUG that subsumed much of the Micro-80 group and many other small discrete computer groups that were vibrant at that time, and espoused the same users helping users doctrine. So in 1986 I joined the PCUG as well. I have two people to especially thank for getting me active here. Mike Gellard was hosting a radio presence on Radio 1RPH and I became a presenter for the last stage of its life before we ran out of volunteers to maintain it. But that is a familiar scene isn’t it? Anyway I started to write for the Sixteen Bits magazine along with the Micro-80 newsletter in January 1988. I still manage to produce an article in most months that I am not enjoying retirement, generally in the winter, back in Queensland where I was born and bred. I don’t know how long ago it was that Gloria Robbins formed the Coffee and Chat Special Interest Group, because it took me a long time to realise its worth. I am an active member of Coffee and Chat now and see this as the strongest element of the PCUG apart from TIP. And, of course, it epitomises the philosophy of users helping users.
Times are changing, and the PCUG as a body is in danger of disintegrating unless a new vitality can be injected into it. Coffee and Chat and TIP are two healthy elements that can serve as an example of what the PCUG can be once again with a vigorous, active, new committee.
I support the manifesto of the LMS Team and I am nominating to be an ordinary member of that committee.
Telephone : 0414 293 675 Contact Hours : 0830 to 2030 Email : tbibo@pcug.org.au Home Page : www.users.tpg.com.au/bib063