 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla |
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Hooray for All of Us!
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Last December you read the headline "Hooray for Us!" referring to the three
BIX awards PC Update won at the Comdex User Group Summit. Well, we did it
again! While we missed out on quantity, we certainly made up in terms of quality. What am I talking about? PC Update - thanks to Peter Smith, our authors and supporters, and the editorial team - has been awarded Best Publication Overall, Masthead Winner of National and International Awards. Last year we won the Best Feature Articles plaque; we were runners up in the Best Publication and Best Coverage User Group Events and Meetings in the Over 36 Pages category. This year your magazine was the overall winner in all categories. Congratulations to all of us. The occasion was the 5th Intergalactic Regional User Group Officers Conference on 27 June, where the BIX Newsletter Awards were announced by Frank Bolton of NYPC. We did not win any other award, but there were not many Runners Up. We congratulate our fellow user groups and hope to repeat our performance next year. I am proud to be associated with this fine publication and the great team that managed to scoop this unexpected bonus, as our main objective has always been to bring you the best. |
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Meetings Department
At the monthly meeting on 5 August you win not only hear about OS/2 2.0 from the experts but you might be lucky enough to take a copy home. Gene Barlow, Manager of IBM User Group Relations, Atlanta, will be sending some goodies to continue the tradition established at our meetings.
I seriously doubt that Borland will give you all a copy of some weighty package on the 14th, but I hope you have registered to attend Philippe Kahn's presentation at the Town Hall.
His company's products are certainly user friendly but it is the premier
user-group-friendly corporation, and Mr Kahn is a very interesting speaker. Hope you can make
it.
The Customer Is Paramount
In mid June I had the pleasure to have lunch with Gary Jackson, the new Managing Director of Microsoft Ply Ltd. I am pleased to report that Microsoft customers can expect to see even better service in the future. That is because Mr Jackson is undertaking various initiatives that will achieve that goal. For instance, he will have by now met each of his employees individually. In the service industry there is no room for employees who do not have the customer's interests in mind, and I am sure that message will be conveyed to his staff in a pleasant but no uncertain manner.
If these words seem trite - something you've heard before-think again. In these recessionary times nobody can afford to be
complacent, and many companies are revisiting these old cliches with increasing conviction. Pleasing the customer spells survival.
We spoke about users perceptions of Microsoft, and the world-wide complaints about being put on hold forever when trying to get telephone support (from any company). That is a no-win
situation - at Borland headquarters last year they explained it quite simply: a company might have x million customers but there can never be enough support lines to enable every customer to reach them immediately. At least Mr Jackson, like a few other enlightened
CEOs, telephones his own support lines occasionally to form his own opinions.
The customers at my place of employment are other divisions of the same company, yet we are constantly reminded about them.
The user group is the membership, and is therefore the committee's customer. Ask yourself what you want from this group and cast your votes for the people who will give you what you want, You are the customer.
Good luck to all candidates!
Reprinted from the August 1992 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
