The Oregon Apple User Group Leaders Summit, 2024

General theme: “Mind Over Matter.”

Veteran Oregon MUG Leaders who attended The UG Leaders Summit at the annual You Don’t Know Mac! (YDKM) statewide events in the early 2000s recall this was a 2-hour in-person roundtable. What we quickly discovered was that 2 hours was not enough — but we could see the greater potential of more in-depth leader brainstorming at least once a year.

In an effort to recharge our batteries and reconnect once again, OMUG will be reaching out soon to all active Oregon community user groups and their leaders to pick a day for a Zoom version of the UG Leaders Summit sometime this year. Because traveling from all points of the state to one location would take time, effort and a little bit of money, it may be a good thing that the next UG Leaders Summit is a Zoom meeting — not to mention for pandemic safety reasons.

Initial agenda topics to start with might include whether we should meet as leaders twice a year instead of annually, especially if the summit would last only 2-3 hours. Or, if we keep it an annual event then consider the extending the length of the event. We would of course pitch out various topic ideas, and request your feedback on important issues affecting user groups in the 2020s.

One current hot topic is “Re-Branding” or “Doing Business As …” (DBA), which the Portland MUG is considered early in 2023, and then acted upon such — hence the new moniker “Apple Users Northwest.” The purpose or reason behind this strategy is to choose an ADDITIONAL name of the group that better attracts Apple users outside of Oregon’s or the Pacific Northwest borders, thus growing membership. So far so good. Stay tuned!

We have additional interesting ideas to personalize or regionalize the atmosphere for our Zoom get together. We will ask your feedback on some of these ideas later.

Sharpen your pencils, Leaders, and … spread the word!