Another star has vanished in the Apple User Group sky. And sadly it is over the skies of Oregon, too.
The Corvallis Macintosh users group (CMUG) has decided to shut down after a stellar and active 38 years. The official closing was August 31, 2022, according to CMUG president Chris Kent who published the announcement story in this month’s MOUSE TRACKS magazine of PMUG.
CMUG was born in 1984 in Corvallis, home to Oregon State University, located in the mid-Willamette Valley next to the Willamette River. One of its founders was a retired Navy public relations genius, Phil Russell, who lived in the coast town of Waldport and drove the hour to Corvallis each month. He did so because Corvallis had the closest Apple-sanctioned chain retail store. Phil christened CMUG’s newsletter with the unique name of MOUSE DROPPINGS. It became quite famous over the years up and down the West Coast, and was known even in Apple‘s headquarters in Cupertino. Phil even managed to have an issue of the newsletter printed on the yet unreleased Apple LaserWriter, at the dawn of desktop publishing in the mid-80s.
CMUG grew to a peak of over 1,000 members in the early 90s, and was often a key presentation stop for such big Apple names as Guy Kawasaki, Mike Boisch, author Danny Goodman and even 2 of Apple’s worldwide user groups heads from Cupertino. Several key and big-name technology company representatives also made sure they had Corvallis as a key presentation stop over the decades. During its peak, CMUG met on the campus of Oregon State University in the LaSalle Stewart Center in a 200-seat auditorium with a stage.
Kent mentioned that the reasons behind the shut down of CMUG was due to the pandemic and dwindling membership. Sadly, this comes just months after the Eugene, Oregon MUG also shut its doors for the same reasons. Current CMUG members were encouraged by Kent to join other active Oregon user groups or beyond, even if remotely, and a specific mention was made for PMUG.
CMUG members have actively supported and participated in other Oregon Apple user group activities over the years, such as MacCamp, and OMUG‘s annual statewide user group celebration event. CMUG, like OMUG, PMUG, EMUG, and roughly 8 other Apple user groups across the state are nonprofit, community oriented user groups.
We join many, many others in the Apple user group universe who will miss the twinkle in the sky that was the memorable Corvallis group.