ICON became a reality in 1990.  With tremendous effort and dogged determination, the original organizers began reaching out within the community to find potential members and providing benefits of membership that encouraged them to join.

We're still reaching out to the community, working very hard at finding ways to better serve our current members and to attract new ones.  I believe that if we expand our support for the broadest possible range of members at a broad range of skill levels, ICON will provide potential members with more appealing reasons to join our organization.

Implementation of our hands-on classes is well under way, although we still have to do some tweaking to maximize the effectiveness for you.  The next step is to provide follow-up support for those who take advantage of the skills we're teaching in these new classes.
 
In a computing and Internet-enabled world, meeting the needs of all our members is a huge, multifaceted undertaking.  We must find ways to simultaneously offer a broad-based curriculum of basic proficiency skills, as well as highly focused curricula for those who want to learn specific skills.  In order to retain members who possess advanced knowledge and skills, we must also provide opportunities for them to share ideas and experiences closer to the cutting edge of technology.

For example, consider a person who buys a computer expressly for the purpose of writing.  Unless she has prior experience, she will need some broad instruction in basic skills – and even if she is a highly skilled writer, she'll need some focused support in word processing.  As she becomes more proficient, she will most likely develop some additional interests, such as publishing her work, adding photos, etc. and will need support from others who are willing to share their own knowledge about her new interests.

I don't pretend to have answers to every issue we face, but the world of technology has grown and changed dramatically, and the needs of users have changed right along with it.  In order to maintain and build upon the strengths of our user group, we must continually reinvent ICON on the fly.  

See you soon,
Terry