The March meeting of the TI-Chips was opened by Fred Ialacci. The reading of the February minutes was waived. Lin Shaw gave his Treasurer’s report. Lin reported that he had received newsletter billing for the period from July, 1998 to the present. (I couldn’t help wondering why we weren’t billed concurrently as the newsletters were published. The costs would be the same, but smaller "bytes" are easier to swallow.)
After giving the rental and security deposit for Spang Mansion to Ada Markus, Lin reported that the Chips would have just enough in the treasury to cover additional TIMUG '99 up front costs. This will include such items as table rentals, conference foods and beverages and purchase of the TIMUG '99 grand raffle prize, an Epson Inkjet Color Printer.
John Parken said there are several "March/April" membership renewals due. Fred suggested that John send out postcard reminders. John replied that he would.
Les Kee said there was no report from the disk library this month. There was a small, but enthusiastic discussion on the possibility of Les archiving the entire software library on CD-ROM or 120 meg Super Disk. It was offered that specific, requested files/programs could be ‘pulled’ from the archived library and converted to TI format with PCTransfer. This suggestion was made in case Les had found the storage of all those 5¼" disks became a problem at home. Les replied that it wasn’t much of a problem at this time.
TIMUG '99 preparations and publicity were reported to be right on schedule. The only things to be taken care of will be direction signs, User Group signs, published speaker schedule, and conference support equipment procurement. Carol Shaw has volunteered to make up the directional signs and welcoming banners. I will print up the User Group signs and speaker schedule. There will be at least two video cameras working during the conference. It was recommended that the cameras be placed on a tripod and rotated, where possible, to include shots of audience members speaking. Les said he didn’t think he could get a shot of everyone who talked, but he would give it a try. The Chips authorized John Parken to purchase 50 VCR tapes for this endeavor. The TIMUG '99 videos will be sold for $5.00 per tape.
Demo monitors were also discussed. We found that we didn’t have either a 19" color TV (for the TI-99/4A demos) or an analog RGB monitor (for the Geneve demos) available at this time. It was suggested that we ask TIers, who plan on attending TIMUG '99, to let me (Glenn Bernasek, 13246 Harper Road, Strongsville, Ohio 44136 or e-mail to GBBasics@aol.com) know if someone is willing to bring a 19" TV and/or a RGB monitor to the conference for our speakers to use. There are two meeting rooms at the conference site. Therefore, one room will be dedicated to TI-99/4A seminars while the other room will be a Geneve seminar room. This should eliminate TI-99/4A & Geneve system tear-down and set up problems.
This brought up another interesting point. Quite often, conference guests are unable to attend every seminar and demo because of conflicting schedules. This problem comes with the territory I’m afraid. Therefore, I will be asking if any of our speakers would like to put on their talks twice during the conference. This would make it more possible for all of our guests to attend the seminars of their choice.
The 1999 Jim Peterson Achievement Awards votes were reported to have been coming in nicely. Voting will be completed on April 15th, and the results will be given to Fred Ialacci for ordering of the award plaques. The TI-Chips discussed their future intentions for the awarding of the 1999 Jim Peterson Achievement Awards. It was agreed that, so long as there is a TI community and TIers who deserve special recognition (whether or not Ohio MUG conferences are being held), the Jim Peterson Achievement Awards will continue to be given. We have decided, by unanimous vote, to have future awards be in the form of a special award certificate rather than plaques. This is necessary because of the financial burden the plaques will eventually place on the Chips’ resources over the long haul.
John Parken suggested that the TI-Chips consider gathering or purchase at garage sale prices peripheral PC hardware such as keyboards, mouse, joysticks, speakers, CD-ROM drive, color printer and monitor. This would help Chips members who would like to bring in their PC systems for demonstrations, but balk at all the equipment they have to pack. The idea was discussed. The Chips decided that it was a workable concept and should be tried.
John Parken demonstrated a method of personalizing a message screen saver to the Chips. While doing the demo, John was able to show us how to get around and do interesting things with Windows 95. Thanks, John, for the very interesting demo.
There was no raffle this time in that Jack Koryta was unable to attend, and Jack is our raffle man.
The April meeting will be the "sweep-the-corners" meeting for TIMUG '99. All equipment and support material for the conference will be in place at the April 17th meeting.