SIG REPORT

By Merle Nicholson & Jenny Lind Olin
President & Treasurer, Tampa PC Users Group

A SIG (Special Interest Group) is an informal gathering of club members who meet to exchange ideas and knowledge of common interest. TPCUG has four SIGs, Genealogy, Internet and two new ones – Windows and Visual Basic.

In September the Internet SIG and the Genealogy SIG will have a combined meeting at the Genealogy SIG’s usual time and location—Monday, September 14, 7:00 PM at MOSI.

Internet SIG – Normally, the first Monday of the month at Reflectone at 6:00PM. For September, see above announcement. Contact William LaMartin at lamartin@ix.netcom.com

Visual BASIC SIG - This SIG will hold its second meeting Tuesday, September 15 at the Gateway 2000 Store on North Dale Mabry (just south of Columbus Drive) at 6 PM. Contact Merle Nicholson at merlenic@tampabay.rr.com

The first VB meeting on August 18th was well attended – we had to drag a couple of chairs in to accommodate the twelve people who came. The room came with the one item needed for a SIG of this kind—a projector—and William LaMartin brought his notebook. William did several demonstrations on software he has written, some large and some small. We discussed the various VB versions available, and Larry Anders did a short demo of the Learning Edition, which comes on CD with a very good tutorial with an instructor’s voice-over.

Next month we’ll start with a simple application from scratch to see where we all are in the learning process and to see if we can determine a good format suitable for everyone.

The next release of Visual Basic (version 6) will be out on September 2nd. Go to the VB web site http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic for more information.

Windows SIG – This is an informal discussion group led by Mary Sheridan during the half hour preceding the monthly meeting; 6:00-6:30PM. There is always a lively discussion on any topic of interest related to Windows. The emphasis is on helping each other by sharing experiences. Come to this SIG armed with all your questions about using Windows or any other software; someone will help.

The Genealogy SIG met 7:00 - 9:00 on the second Monday, August 10, at MOSI. Each of those who came had a different need, so Ford Bond, SIG Leader, was available for one-on-one help. Some are just learning to use Windows 95, some are just purchasing their genealogy software, while others are ready to scan their photographs for publication.

Ford Bond helps with the computer hardware and software questions as well as the genealogy related questions. New Web sites were suggested, then there was an opportunity to actually try them at the different computer stations.

Dr. Jay Reese brought in his/their priceless photographs to share and expressed his/their concerns about scanning the photographs and using them for publication.

There was an opportunity to share successful accomplishments. Subjects that have been covered have been selection of genealogy software, using the scanner, moving the scanned pictures into the genealogy software, search engines for genealogy and good web sites to visit. u