Portland Macintosh Users Group

MacCamp Fall 03 was a great event! We had lots of surprises for the Campers. The first surprise was that every camper got the $49.95 program by Circus Ponies called Notebook in their packet for free. The second big surprise is that the Mac Store of Portland gave MacCamp three prizes to give away (a Wacom Graphire2 tablet, a .Mac account, and an iSight camera). Loren Leed then donated a DVD of the Cathedral Park Jazz festival he recorded, produced and edited in Final Cut Pro.

We had two campers from Bend and three from Corvallis. About six campers were attending for the first time and some had as many as 34 Camps under their belt. Remember that MacCamp has been happening twice yearly since the Fall of 1985. Many of the campers come year after year to refresh friendships and work on personal projects. This time the weather was sunny and warm; and all campers could get free day permits for parking at the falls if they want to hike rather than Mac all day.

The network consisted of four hard-wired 16 port 10/100 switches, plus four Airports, one in each cabin. About 38 of the Campers had notebook computers of some kind (out of 46 campers). Classes consisted of Converting Music, Panther introduction, InDesign introduction, Final Cut Express, Making a Magazine with Photoshop, and Software for Hardware. All I can say about the gaming cabin was there was lots of death and destruction on the gamers' computers. Three G4 towers and one G5 tower were the gamers' machines of choice.

The Magazine with Photoshop class started on Friday night with a meeting in Alder Lodge and ran all of the time until the printing of the magazine Sunday morning. I hear that some of the students worked until 2:00am Sunday to make sure the deadline was kept. We have the product they produced in the PMUG office for members to take a look at. Most other classes were standard three hour classes with the students able to question the instructors after class and get extra questions answered in the evenings.

Saturday night was the drawing of the prizes; the winners were Norma Leistiko the Jazz Festival DVD, David Gix the .Mac account, Bill Custis the Graphire 2 tablet, and Anne Hiler the iSight. I would like to thank Erik Rogers and Matt Navarre who already own iSights for giving up their winning tickets so that a lucky person who did not own the product could win it.

I’d like to thank Erick Laabs from the Portland Mac Store for setting up the network and managing it. Also for loaning PMUG the four Airports with external Dr Bott antennas. Another thanks goes out to Meg Grace and Peren Bjork for managing the equipment and setting up for all the classes. And to Circus Ponies for supporting MacCamp with the copies of NoteBook for all the MacCampers. Last but not least, a big thanks to all the MacCampers for making the 37th MacCamp another success.

MacCamp happens twice yearly on the third weekend of April and October. You have to belong to a Apple User Group to come. The cost is around $165 per person. Instructors who teach class are not paid other than they get to come to camp for free. Camp is based on the idea of users helping users and that we all want to learn. Many times I am reminded that having people around you asking questions is worth more than taking many classes.

Charles DeVore
Portland Macintosh Users Group
MacCamp Co-ordinator