Four Years with Apple CHUG

The Apple Charlestown User Group also is known affectionally CHUG marked its fourth anniversary this month. It is hard to believe that I have been organizing programs, doing the website, and sending out notices for four years.

Our little group has grown from the first meeting with 25 people in attendance to a mailing list of over 100 people. It has been interesting to see the shift from computers to iPads and iPhones. The iPad users dominate the membership. I set up a website using WordPress.com as well as a Google Groups private email list used for meeting notices and communication between meetings. Meeting flyers are designed every month for posting on bulletin boards as well as announced on the closed circuit TV station.

Every month except for July, August, and December, we have  had programs for both the iOS group and then another hour for the MacOS group. Over the last year, the MacOS group is getting smaller with the iOS group getting bigger. I stopped programming for MacOS this year because of the small number of people attending.

The users are in the beginner to novice category with many “newbies” who inherited a tablet from a son or daughter. That means someone else set up the device. So when a new application is mentioned, the user cannot download it because they don’t know their apple ID or password. Or if they had a password, they wrote it on a scrap of paper which is lost.

I get phone calls from people asking for help. I can help most of the time. I even saved one resident a trip to the Apple store. She wanted the phone number of the Columbia, MD store because her iPad was “dead.” I gave her the phone number and suggested a few troubleshooting tips including leaving it on the charger for an extended period. It restarted and saved her a trip.

Here is a listing of some of the programs we had had over the years. An asterisk indicates a guest speaker.