Heartland Regional User Group Conference @ Computerfest®

By Peter Hess, Co-Chairman. Heartland Regional User Group Conference @ Computerfest®

Held Back This Year-To Be Better Next
On Monday, March 3, 2003, due to the lack of sufficient advance registration, the DMA® Board of Trustees voted to cancel the Heartland Regional User Group Conference scheduled for Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, March 14, 15 & 16, 2003. Much thought and deliberation went into this decision. With the cancellation of the conference, it was thought that DMA® would be able to focus on providing much better and more extensive future conferences. It was also thought that vendor/sponsors would be less likely to return to future events if this year's conference was conducted with low attendance.

But There Is Good News
Even though the conference was cancelled, there is still good news to be heard about the benefits gained. Because of services offered to visiting User Group leaders, for two years in a row the Heartland Conference has brought people into Dayton for Computerfest ® who would not have otherwise attended. Last year we know of approximately 30 people who visited Computerfest® for the first time, and this year, even with the conference cancelled, approximately 15 people did the same.

This year, in addition to attending Computerfest®, people came to Dayton from Michigan, Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere in Ohio for an unofficial User Group Gathering (pizza party) on Friday, March 14. Had the event not been cancelled, User Group leaders would have come from Tennessee and Maryland as well (two new states to be added to the list of eight states already represented by Heartland Conference attendees).

The Heartland Conference volunteers all agree that with much more advance planning and much more support from other DMA® entities, as well as other User Group support, future Heartland Conference events will attract many more User Group leaders-not only to attend the Heartland Conference, but also to visit Computerfest®. In the future, we see User Group leaders coming to attend the conference and Computerfest® with many of their User Group members following them to Dayton just to buy at Computerfest®.

Even though the conference was technically cancelled, we still wanted to do something to welcome visiting User Group leaders to Dayton and to Computerfest®. The staff and facility of the intended Heartland Conference venue, the Dayton Airport Hotel, was much better than the venue of the previous year's conference and many User Group leaders chose to stay at the Dayton Airport Hotel-even with the event's cancellation. The Dayton and Montgomery County Convention and Visitors Bureau provided us with welcome bags to give to visiting User Group leaders. Free attendance to Computerfest® was offered to those who had sent in their Heartland Conference advance registrations. The Dayton Airport Hotel, OTAP, GEMAIR, and Heartland Conference volunteers all worked together to furnish a hospitality room with three computers, each with a phone line and Internet account, so User Group visitors could check their email through their ISP's web sites.

Next year, the Heartland Conference can have (because of a generous offer from visiting User Group officer Charles Isaacs of the Columbus Computer Society), on-line registration as well as a method to accept fees paid via credit card. The only cost to DMA® would be the low percentage fees charged by the participating bank. There would be no "sign-up" fee charged to us for this service. We have had individuals from other User Groups volunteer to make presentations, but this is the first time we have had an offer to participate in the improvement of the event's infrastructure.

This year's willing presenters from out-of-state User Groups were Susy Ball of the Fresno (California) PC Users Group and Dave Kindig of the York (PA) Computer Users. Willing presenters from Dayton were: Bob Esch, Carol Esch, Carol Ewing, Chris Fidelibus, Matt Scheurer, and Gary Turner. Chris, Matt and Dean Halladay set up the Dayton Airport Hotel's hospitality room computer network.

The key conference volunteers who proved invaluable at working to organize this event were Leah Day (Registration Committee Chairman), Robin Campbell (Webmistress), Paul Bullock (conference Co-Chairman and Vendor/Sponsor Committee Chair) and Jennifer Bullock, (Media Designer). Even though the full conference didn't take place (the unofficial User Group Gathering replaced it this year), a large amount of volunteer time, talent and energy generously offered by these individuals made the Heartland Conference a noble effort.

I am willing to advise the next event's chairman and, most importantly, look forward to working with these fine individuals again. Without their considerable efforts, we couldn't have provided services to User Group leaders nearly as well as we did.

Those hoping to participate as either attendees or as volunteers might want to set, as a favorite or as a bookmark, the Heartland Conference web site for news about future User Group events: http://www.heartlandconference.net.

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