To all at ICON: I enjoyed receiving the complimentary newsletter, and I just wanted to drop you a note and let those of you that used to know me know that I was still alive and kicking. I also wanted to say thank you for the newsletter, as well as tell you about how well I think you have been doing.

It has been quite a while since I have spent any considerable amount of time in Springfield. Since my parents passed away, I have had little opportunity or excuse to visit Springfield very often. My job in Texas keeps me pretty busy.

ICON was going quite strong before I left, so that shows how persistent it has been. I took a look at the bylaws that are posted on the ICON web site, and I remember some of the passages that I helped discuss and draft in the original by-laws. You have done well, since you have kept going, and really haven’t required any significant changes, except for those that were improvements.

My time with ICON was always helpful to me, and I hoped that it was helpful to others there as well. I was somewhat surprised, frankly, to see not only that ICON was still going, but that it was going so well. I supposed that I should not have been surprised, but in this day of the Internet, there are so many users groups that have gone by the wayside. I am pretty certain in my mind that I know why.

ICON was always based upon helping others. At the time that ICON was starting up and going strong, other users groups got big by legally distributing shareware and freeware programs on disk. These were, at one time, a very useful function of users groups. ICON also did this for its members, but it was not centered on that. Many other users groups forgot what they were really created for.

Hardware sales forums and shareware trading forums became the mainstay of many groups. This also became their downfall when the popularity of the Internet began to increase, because of the soon to be widely available methods of freely trading shareware. Competitively priced sales of hardware available now on the Internet also killed the “first Saturday” hardware sales events, such as I remember when I first got to Texas and went to one of the North Texas users group meetings.

As you probably already know from the users’ group association APCUG that ICON has long been a member of, the mainstays of users groups have to be dwindling. However, I would guess that if I am correct in my assessment, you will still find users group out there, but the survivors are likely service based type groups such as ICON.

I have always been proud to say that I was one of the first groups of officers and also a past president of ICON. Although that fact in itself never got me any points at work, the relationships that I made there, the experience in public speaking and such, and just learning about what was needed to help keep an organization going while getting along with everyone really did help me in my job.

Just being in the group and around others with the similar interests gives you new hints and tricks, no matter what you have a computer around for. So keep up the great job that you are doing by keeping the group going. Users groups might be something of a breed that is getting smaller, but they are far from dead yet!

There are new functionalities being developed for the personal computer every day, which always help to keep things fresh in what you can do. So, if you keep participating, you will always be able to answer that question when someone else asks: “What the heck do I need one of those computer thingies around for?”

Cheers!

Greg Rogers