From the August 1995 Bits of Blue newsletter

By Harvey Bruneau

I certainly hope that each of you weathered hurricane Erin without any major problems. In the aftermath of this storm, it's easy to for many individuals in the Tampa Bay area to say the storm was a wimp. Nevertheless, the center of the storm came less than forty miles from Tampa. It certainly could have been worse. Personally, I thought it was going to be, based on information coming across from the news media. We should all be prepared for these storms and not chance a disaster. Ask the people in the Florida panhandle how they liked Erin. I am sure they have a story that is 180° different from ours.

After the storm, the story, The Little Engine That Could, came to mind. Two events happened that caused me to think of this. One was the backups I created for our small data center the night before the storm was to hit, and the second was Erin itself. My nightly backups are usually performed on a 4Gig Mountain tape drive. Unfortunately, it had failed the week before, and I was waiting for a replacement from Mountain. While waiting for the replacement drive, I purchased a 4Gig Conner tape drive from Computer City to ensure that I would have daily backups. At this point Erin was not even a tropical storm. After conversations with tech support from Arcada and Conner it was determined that limitations of the Arcada software that was included with the Conner drive was not going to allow me to properly backup my Novell server. By now Erin was a hurricane and bearing down on Florida and still no replacement drive. Well on Tuesday it was finally time to put plan C and D into action. Plan C was the use of Colorado Trakker 250Mb tape drives. Fortunately I had two. It took a lot of tapes and some time to backup four gigabytes, but it worked. This was a case of the little tape drives that could.

The second reminder is to look at the damage caused in the Pensacola area. Who thought that Erin, that little bitty storm could do over $200,000,000 worth of damage. I guess it was the little storm that could.

I mentioned in my column last month, we are looking for early candidates to fulfill officer positions of the Tampa PC Users Group for the 1996 year. Elections will be held in December. Let’s not wait until the elections to realize that we have no volunteers to run the business of the Tampa PC Users Group in '96. Following is a list of officers needed to run a PC user group and their associated brief job descriptions. I have added some positions which do not currently exist but are important. Additionally, I have placed the names of those individuals currently assuming, in whole or part, the responsibility of each position.

• President (Officer) Harvey Bruneau Duties: Ensure the delivery of the group's mission to its members. Lead meetings and provide overall direction. Serve as overall representative of the user group to the public.
• Vice President (Officer) William LaMartin Duties: Act as president during president's unavailability and chair key committees. Fill other key roles as determined by group needs.
• Secretary (Officer) Bruce Register Duties: Manage correspondence and records. Records minutes from group's general and board meetings.
• Treasurer (Officer) Tom Cone Duties: Oversee financial resources, recording, and reporting.
• Director/Chairperson/Committee Head/Task Leader Tom Cone Committee/Task: Membership Duties: Coordinate new member recruitment and existing member retention. Manage database and membership communication.
• Committee/Task: Program Director Harvey Bruneau Duties: Handle planning and direction of speakers, presentations, demos, special events, and other programs. Periodically query members to identify speakers and programs of interest, satisfaction, and dissatisfaction.
• Committee/Task: Vendor Relations Harvey Bruneau Duties: Responsible for communication with vendors (hard-ware and software; local, regional, and national) regarding working with the group, special events, obtaining review products and door prizes, and other activities.
• Committee/Task: Volunteer Coordinator All officers Duties: Coordinate volunteer recruitment, management, and recognition.
• Committee/Task: Equipment Manager Bruce Register, All officers Duties: Manage inventory, transportation, availability, and storage of equipment owned by group or used by group.
• Committee/Task: Marketing/Public Relations Connie Kincaid, All members Duties: Direct publicity, including media relations, community relations, and special event promotion.
• Committee/Task: Advertising Marylee Bruneau Duties: Manage advertising sales in user group newsletter and advertising placements for group activities. Committee/Task: SIG Director William LaMartin Duties: Assist special interest groups with program development, publicity, membership, meeting arrangements, and other tasks.
• Committee/Task: Newsletter/Magazine Editor Marylee & Harvey Bruneau Duties: Oversee editorial development and submissions, design, production, and distribution of newsletter. Prepares and sorts mail according to bulk mail postal regulations. Creates electronic version, Adobe Acrobat, of newsletter. Selects and distributes articles to be published in Tampa Bay Online via Prodigy.
• Committee/Task; Bulletin Board Sysop Kevin Sheridan/Al Poole Duties: Maintain and operate group bulletin board system.
• Committee/Task: Librarian/Resource Center Coordinator Larry Anders Duties: Coordinate shareware, public domain software, and other resources for group.
• Committee/Task: Software Review Editor/Coordinator Harvey & Marylee Bruneau Duties: Get review software from vendors, coordinate getting software to review writers, and follow up on reviews.
• Committee/Task: Legal Counsel Tom Cone Duties: Advise group on legal issues.
• Committee/Task: Finance Tom Cone/William LaMartin Duties: Advise and oversee financial management. Committee/Task: Development/Fund-raising All officers Duties: Plan and oversee fund-raising events and activities.
• Committee/Task: Community Relations/Outreach Harvey & Marylee Bruneau Duties: Manage community services activities and serve as contact person with community at large.

In conclusion, if you are interested in serving your group in any one or more of the above positions, share those thoughts with the officers in person at the monthly meeting on the BBS or by phone. The future and the success of the Tampa PC Users Group depends on volunteers committed to leading the group. u