Here we are into July — winter temperatures and only 25 weeks until Christmas. Time is flying and we really need to think ahead, each to create our own future.

Five Years Past, Five Years Ahead?

One of the key roles of your committee is to plan ahead — not only a short term budget for each financial year, but also ahead for maybe five years. The committee recently devoted a full Saturday to such planning, and to set the scene, we pondered "relative to our Group, what has changed in the past five years?" Let me share some of the items discussed, and how we have (or could) respond to those changes.

1. For those in the workforce, there is increasing time poverty. These days, not only are they looking after children, but many are looking after parents. In contrast, retirees have more time but less money as inflation overtakes their savings. Our answer has been to move our main facilities closer to the membership "centre" and have more distributed activities. Being closer to where people live reduces their transport time and cost. Maybe "virtual" meetings via the Internet are the next step.
   
   
2. The younger generation has become very comfortable using PCs — having grown up with them, and now widely used for both learning and recreation. As such, they have less need for the "Users Helping Users" cornerstone of our Group's offerings. Therefore we need to set up different activities, maybe "LAN parties" or "computer gaming" that would interest these people.
   
   
3. With the exception of New Users and Genealogy groups, we are seeing a decreasing percentage of women attending sessions. Therefore we need to better understand their interests and how we can offer appropriate programs to meet their needs.
   
   
4. There is a move away from understanding "how PCs work", to "how to best use the applications" such as information searching, genealogy and image editing. We are seeing this shift in the increasing attendance at our newer Interest Groups covering Digital Photography, Video Editing, Genealogy and Affiliate Marketing. What next?
   
   
5. There is expanding use of high-speed (Broadband) Internet connections, now that there is better coverage and increased competition. Many services at the lower end are offered "below-cost" to attract home consumers, relying upon subsidies from business users or long term loyalty to get profitability. This change presents a particular challenge for us, as we do not have the size to obtain big volume discounts, nor the business users to enable cross subsidies.
   
   
6. With the wealth of information available today via Online newspapers and Internet search engines, increasing numbers of people are now using these facilities many times each day — especially in a broadband setup where the home PC is often left running dawn-to midnight. Some members have requested instruction on Internet searching, and this is planned for both a coming monthly meeting, and at some of our Interest Groups.
   
   
7. Expanding take-up of mobile devices (or PDA, personal digital assistant) now including functions such as digital camera, mobile phone, wireless Internet and GPS (global positioning system) navigation. We will be having a demonstration of the latest units at the July main meeting (see below), and this may be an area where we could expand the scope of our existing Palm OS group.

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