We tried some new things for our December meeting, SeaPUG's 6th meeting. With a couple new agenda items, and two presentations chosen for their range of interest, we hoped for slightly better attendance. Well, we did get some new people to attend, but the number was still about 15 people.

Welcome!

Greg Gaub sprung for the snacks this time, and brought a variety of items to please any palate. Jack H. also brought some home-made cookies for us all to enjoy. With refreshments a-plenty, we didn't run out of energy. ;-)

Introductions

We skipped the personal introductions this time, and went straight to the new business, after introducing the SeaPUG founders to the group.

New Business

This month we discussed the planning of a Saturday meeting in January. Many members have expressed interest in coming to a Saturday meeting, and with Palm devices being a hot gift this year, we expect some growth in membership. We also expect there to be a lot of "newbies" who would like some introductory information on using the Palm and popular applications. Logically, then, our first Saturday meeting will be something of an "intro to Palm" session. Some discussion over which day to have the meeting took place, and Frank Blau, who volunteered to present his "Palm 101" presentation had to confirm another class before dedicating to the SeaPUG meeting. This was then "tabled" for discussion on the eGroups mailing list later (which has taken place; refer to the Where and When and Meeting Agenda pages for more info).

Palm Games

After discussing new business, we broke any remaining ice by have our first "Palm Game." For our inaugural Palm Game, we did "Address Race" where the group divided into two teams, and relayed a unique contact from one end of their line to the other. Members were somewhat wary of playing at first, but as soon as Greg Gaub gave up trying to get them motivated, and went to show one member how to beam an address, everyone was ready to play. Greg beamed a contact to the "captain" of each team, and when everyone was ready, said "go" to start the race. Funny thing is, some of the "power users" got hung up in the beaming process because of things they had done to "juice up" their Palms. The team with the least power users won. hehe ;-)

HandyShopper2

Greg Gaub gave an informative (if a little long) presentation on the use and abuse of HandyShopper2 (beta). He ran the group through the entire process of downloading and installing the application, running for the first time, what all the preferences mean, and how to organize a shopping list with budgets and multiple-store items. It was such a long presentation (sorry!) that we decided to have a short break before the next one...

PalmSource

Peter Bohac ran us through his experience of attending the PalmSource conference the week before the meeting. He was able to take a bunch of pictures which he showed to us. His presentation was very informative, and gave members some insight into what Palm Inc is doing now, and what they'll be working on for the next couple years. Refer to the PalmSource 2000 page on our site for reports from Peter, as well as some of the pictures he took.

Giveaways!

We hadn't planned on any giveaways this month, but Peter managed to get some great stuff from the PalmGear booth at PalmSource shortly before the end of the conference. We had multi-function pen/pencil/stylus pens to give away, as well as some nifty software packages. To top it off, each member got a CD carry case with a CD-ROM from PalmGear full of shareware and other Palm software, and one of our members is a product rep for Palm (as well as some other tech companies) and brought Palm logo mouse pads for everyone!

Helping Palms

Some time had been set aside for people to ask questions of the group, but there didn't seem to be any.

Free Time

Even though the meeting ran later than expected, people still stuck around and chatted with each other, meeting the new people, and talking "shop."

Great meeting!

If you would like to add any comments or corrections to this report, please contact me at webmaster@seapug.com