June 91 - President's Letter - Conference and Election Plans
President's Letter - Conference and Election Plans
Anthony Meadow
MADA's 1991 MacApp Conference in Phoenix was a success, with over 200 in attendance
for a full program of outstanding tutorials and presentations. Based on feedback gathered
from Phoenix, we have a few improvements in mind for next year's conference.
At the 1992 MacApp Conference, Apple-primarily the MacApp team-will have an
entire day for their presentations, with no competing sessions. The overall format for
the conference will be two days of tutorials and workshops, the one day of Apple-only
presentations, plus one and a half days of other presentations-tools, interesting ways to
use MacApp, etc.
The conference will end on Friday around noon so that everyone has time to get to the
airport. The entire conference area will be non-smoking since the majority of our
members don't smoke.
As much as we'd like conference presenters to turn in their materials so they can be
duplicated for the conference, it's not going to happen. Many presenters work on their
materials right up to the last minute. Literally! This is the same problem Apple has with
the Worldwide Developers Conference. Our solution in Phoenix was the Conference CD-
ROM, made possible due to many hours of Arvid Jedlicka's "spare time." Please send us
feedback on the CD-ROM so we'll know what to do in future conferences-link MADA with
your comments and suggestions.
UPCOMING CONFERENCE LOCATIONS
The 1992 MacApp Conference will be held in a very nice hotel in Orlando, Florida,
thanks to Kurt Schmucker of Apple's Advanced Technology Group. The 1993 MacApp
Conference will be in San Diego, California. We'll be negotiating with hotels soon; we
hope to get a lower room rate and avoid the problems we had in Phoenix.
We are investigating the possibility of an additional MacApp Conference in Europe. To
minimize the financial risk to MADA, it would be only 2 or 3 days long and would be held
just before or after the 1992 German Apple Developers Conference. If it's successful,
we could try to alternate between France and Germany each year.
UPCOMING ELECTIONS
The board of directors met during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in May. We
decided that elections and the installation of the board of directors should be
synchronized with MADA's annual MacApp Conference. This means the term of office for
the next election will be only six months. Following this election, the term of office will
revert to one year.
We'd like to encourage people to run for office. The board does not meet in person very
often; in fact, the meeting in May was the first time that every board member was
present at a single meeting. Most of the board's business is handled electronically over
AppleLink.
NEW PRODUCTS
MADA's latest products are the FrameWorks Disk subscription and the '91 MacApp
Conference CD-ROM. Please let us know what you think about them. We'd also like to
receive suggestions for other products that you think MADA should create.
