The Palm Beach Macintosh User Group

First, in the interests of privacy, a few names will be changed to protect my innocence, wallet and/or freedom. I first joined the PBMUG somewhere around 1985 or 1986. The president was an interesting fellow who somehow felt he was "president for life". I will say he was a real Mac cheerleader and I believe that he meant well... We were meeting in a classroom in an older part of Palm Beach Atlantic College (now University). There were maybe 25-35 folks at any given meeting. Mac Pluses were all the rage, and the SE was just around the corner. Also at that meeting, and a member even longer than me, was Bill Stander.

Soon after I joined, the club moved to the Science Museum at Dreher Park in West Palm Beach. I'm not exactly sure how long we were there, but I believe less than a year. While we were there, the president added an amazing piece of technology to the meetings: an LCD panel that somehow interfaced with the guts of his Macintosh SE. It made it soooo much easier to demonstrate programs. Soon came the first schism of the PBMUG.

Enter Denny Lockridge, a Mac dealer/consultant, who worked out of his house in Jupiter Farms. He began ingratiating himself with the membership, introducing his famous "Gobs of Goodies" diskettes, loaded with shareware, freeware, and demo software (when it was still possible to load several programs on a 1 megabyte floppy disk). These disk, costing a few dollars, were donated by Denny to help the club treasury. He also took over much of the Q&A at the start of the meetings, though if it required a long or detailed answer, he would usually hand over his business card to the person asking the question. This got a few members a little upset, due to the commercial aspects of handing over a business card from the stage. Then the unthinkable (at least to the president who was used to running unopposed for re-election) happened. Denny threw his hat into the ring, to be president. In an effort to make it possible for seasonal members to vote, the board of directors voted to do the election by mail. The results were overwhelming. Denny won by a landslide. The president was so upset by this turn of events, he declared the election was invalid because the bylaws did not permit such an activity. He then personally destroyed and disposed of the ballots. The next meeting was, shall we say, rancorous. There was lots of yelling and screaming and carrying on. It took another two meetings to come up with a solution, which now included questions about family memberships and how many votes a family got (I don't remember that outcome), but finally things calmed down, and an election was held at the meeting, with Denny again winning by a landslide. It was also here that Denny first uttered those famous (and important) words: "It's just a club!" Defeated, the (now former) president, without saying a word, walked out of the meeting, never to return. The PBMUG under Denny was a different operation. First, the really nasty election and some of the comments that came from it seemed to have caused a big change in Denny's behavior, and he became a lot less "commercial."

It was around this time, a number of things happened:

• The former PBMUG president got with a few other disgruntled PBMUG members and formed a new club, the South Florida Macintosh User Group. It met at the Palm Beach County Fire Dept. Headquarters at the corner of Southern Blvd. and Military Trail. The former PBMUG president only attended one or two more meetings before he left that group, too. The SFMUG elected a local fire chief to the presidency, which may have caused the former PBMUG president to leave that group...
• The theater/auditorium at the Science Museum was going to undergo a major rebuilding, so we lost our meeting space. Fortunately, Palm Beach Atlantic College came to the rescue once again, and we moved into one of the larger lecture halls.
• I joined the board of directors.

The board members began the task of rebuilding the club, and part of that was a new set of bylaws. We met monthly in each other's homes, and part of the adventure was that whomever hosted had to provide food. Luckily for me (and them), I only had to do that once... One funny anecdote while meeting at PBAC was the meeting where a demo by a commercial software vendor infected the club computer with a virus. The anti-virus software was running, but the demonstrator hit the bypass item in the "virus detected" dialog box. It was at that moment that the software demo stopped, and a lesson in virus elimination started. I think Denny was able to eradicate the virus without too much damage, and the demonstrators were able to finish their show before they quietly left.

Somewhere around 1992 or 1993, we moved from PBAC to Palm Beach Lakes High School, where we remained for almost 14 years. By this time, our meeting attendance was typically between 80-100, and through member dues, donations, raffle earnings, and various fundraising activities, including an annual auction/flea market, we were able to provide a number of computers to the school. It was also around this time that Denny, no longer president, died suddenly of a heart attack. Our president was Bruce Ellis, who served for as long as the constitution permitted. He continued to bring in software vendors, as well as encouraging members to demonstrate software. By the mid 1990s, my job duties were such that I had to give up my board membership, so I lost track of a lot of the internal "doings" at the PBMUG. Jim Grimes served as president for several years in the late 1990s.

I don't remember the exact year, but I think it was somewhere around 2001 or 2002, Mike Procise, from the Stuart area, was elected president. As time went on, a number of members expressed their dislike for Mike's management style, and his ban of commercial demonstrations. It got bad enough that doing a recall was discussed openly. At the meeting where this was to be discussed, I was out of town on business, but I heard about it. One of Mike's cronies, a retired Riviera Beach police officer, got an off-duty cop to bar people that the president and aforementioned retired police officer did not want to attend the meeting. One of those individuals actually was not going to attend the meeting that night because he was teaching a class on that same campus. But because he was on the retired police officer's list of "troublemakers," the off-duty police officer banned that individual, at the risk of being arrested for criminal trespass, from proceeding any further, so he turned around and went home. The furor with the school administration was so bad that we almost lost our meeting place. Soon after, Procise was recalled, and the remainder of his term was assumed by the retired Riviera Beach police officer mentioned above. After that, Bruce Ellis returned as president for another few years, and I think Bill Stander may have served as president for a year or so. Finally, when Bruce, due to term limitations could serve no more, was replaced by Gary Kampel (who continues to distribute his monthly CDs, loaded with user group goodies, and shareware), who likewise served until, due to term limitations, he had to retire.

During this time period, the cost of holding meetings at Palm Beach Lakes High School kept increasing, while our membership was plummeting--to the point that often, we would only have 10-15 attendees. It was then that we began meeting at either the Palm Beach County library branch at Palm Beach Gardens or the West Palm Beach library, downtown West Palm Beach.

Gary was replaced by our current president, Brian Bahe in January 2007.

IMHO, the decline in membership at PBMUG is simply due to more convenient availability of much of the same information on the internet. There is no need to drive at night (a concern by many of our senior citizen members), and there are no parking hassles (an issue at the West Palm Beach Library). The PBMUG is not alone in this. Two user groups, the Berkeley (CA) MUG and the Washington (DC) Apple Pi had full-time paid staffs to manage their respective organizations' activities, including dozens of Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and publishing newsletters, hundreds of pages in length. All have laid off their paid staffs, and are back to all volunteer operations.

The future? Who knows. Brian and his board of directors are working hard to find a way to continue the PBMUG by making it relevant to its members and are learning to accept that with the current size of our membership, there will likely be fewer volunteers from which to choose. The PBMUG, which if memory serves, emerged from an Apple // user group, has been around almost from the very beginning. There's still some life left in the old girl--we haven't given up on her yet!

I welcome comments and corrections to this history, my first blog on the new and improved PBMUG website.