SNUG is DEAD! Long LIVE T/SNUG!
If you feel as I do,.. READ ON!
If a doctor saw no life in a body for six months he would presume that body was dead! If our user group doesn’t hear from another user group for six months we presume it is dead and we cease to exchange newsletters with it. We have waited long enough for the leaders of SNUG to MOVE but they haven’t! Do you all remember “Lead, follow or get out of the way!”?
The folks at the helm presently must not be thought of as BAD, they just don’t have the time to devote to this undertaking. Therefore, let us not chase them away as we will need their help, let’s just ask them to step aside and let us get moving. As Larry Kenny points out all the time “being negative causes destruction and lose. The SNUG officers are fine men, they are just overloaded.
Since SNUG was supposed to be US, the SINCLAIR community, WE must be the ones to get it MOVING!
We have a MAN WHO IS WILLING and HAS the SPUNK to motivate OTHERS who will MOVE. That man is Don Lambert of AUBURN, INDIANA, formerly of CRAGIST, the newsletter of the CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA group. T/S user groups, let’s give Don his head, as you would let go of the restraints of a horse, and LET HIM TAKE YOU HOME, that is, to a place that gives you a warm feeling!
What I am proposing here is that WE allow Don to be the CHAIRMAN of a NEW organization called T/SNUG, the Timex/Sinclair NorthAmerican User Groups, and then, ask each T/S users group to motivate a VICE-CHAIRMAN from their group to add their names to the list of vice-chairman for the purpose of maintaining activity in T/SNUG. The present conventional officer set-up of SNUG makes no sense! The president has to call meetings and have the other officers present. For a continent wide outfit, HOW? How can you vote them out?
A good number of T/S users are retired and have talent. Let’s get this show on the road and use that talent!
If Don took the reigns as Chairman, and other men took a vice-chairmanship for other tasks, Don would not have to wait on others to get an OK to move from a few officers, he could move on his own from what he gets from a pool of about 20. Also, Don has most of the equipment. What say we give him a try? At first he will be the whole thing, but as each member group adds to the list of vice-chairman willing to do some task, this thing can grow.
Don would put out a newsletter at least four times a year.
Don would see to it that software libraries were built up and listed in the newsletter periodically.
Don would build a list of every known T/S user in North America and make it available to all user groups.
The T/SNUG newsletter would always be available on BBS so that all the INFO(could be downloaded.
The T/SNUG newsletter would also include printings of vender catalogs FREE to the VENDERS.
CATUG did offer SNUG newsletter help and SNUG did not take it, we offered BBS help and SNUG did not take it. Don will accept help from all of us.
How do we give this a try? Find someone in your group who is retired and willing to send copies of your newsletters to Don in hard copy and 5 1/4″ disk in one of the formats he mentions in his letter and see what he does with it. A small check of encouragement would be nice to get this moving. As for FUNDS? They would be in the future the same as for SNUG and if SNUG has any left on hand now, they could forward those funds to Don eventually. Don must not do this out of his own pocket, for sure, his wife would kill him!
As for a mailing list, if Don can’t obtain a list from SNUG, he can build a new list from the user groups.
If you feel as I do, talk this over with your user group, find a vice chairman for T/SNUG and have him or her get in touch with Don.
Many thanks to Al Feng for the newsletter name, ZXir QLive Alive! It expresses the wish of many to keep the ZX/TS/QL family of computers going for decades to come.
Bob Swoger, Representative
Chicago Area Timex Users Group