Northwest Mac Pros

September 2011

In attendance: Jim Emery, Steve Sorbo Tim Hannon, John Newhoff, Mike Ross, Jeff Widmer, Peter Haight, Shelley Watson, Chris Dawe

General Business:

• Let’s brainstorm on what we can do to improve attendance. Want to get more people to RSVP
• Steve spoke with Chris Smithco, U Village Apple Store manager, he learned that they consider OnForce as their primary place for referrals.
• Should NWMacPro do some marketing?
• Maybe we’ll make this a conversation topic at our first meeting in Jan 2012.
• Shelley will ask other ACN regional chapters how they market themselves where OnForce is also active.
• Shelley explained why ACNs are now required to have $1M in business liability insurance. Apple requires this of all sub-contractors, that is, everybody to whom they refer customers.
• Small Business Pro Hotline phone number – intended for small business sales. We can still use direct phone numbers for Oman Morales or any other SBPro team member.
• Would you be interested in a mobile technical competency? Shelley will try to see if we can get the course offered locally.
• Meeting was available via UStream which included screen sharing but no remote attendees used it.

Presentations:

• Joined the WebEx presentation by Nuance’s David Popovitch. He demonstrated Dragon Dictate version 2.5
• Command Line Presentation by Shelley Watson of Wheelwrights
• Discussion about changes in Lion by Tim Hannon of Sound Support and Steve Sorbo of MacSOS.

In Attendance: Steve Sorbo, Tim Hannon, Mike Brogan, Shelley Watson, Chris Dawe, John Newhoff, Mike Ross, Steve Singhose and two new perspective members — Kirk Godtfredsen of KKHE Consulting and Luis Giraldo of  Monkey Mac Consulting

Via USTREAM: NW MacPros provided provided its inaugural USTREAM broadcast of our meeting. Jim Emery of Port Townsend and Alicia, in Oregon took advantage of this broadcast

Presenters:

• Dave Peck and Peter Sagerson of Bourgeois Bits makers of Cloak
• Sean Costello IronGate Server Management and Consulting and maker of Background Backup,
• John Chaffey of Busy Mac makers of BusyCal

General Business:

Membership dues are being considered to cover incidental costs like lunches.

Positions: As NW Mac Pros grows more formal positions are emerging. Steve Sorbo currently serves as meeting coordinator. Tim Hannon is our secretary. We’re looking for a volunteer to step forward to be the lunch coordinator. This could be a person who is able to attend in-person or only participate via USTREAM.

There was a brief discussion of the new ACN Review system. Tim Hannon and Mike Brogan are the first to use it. Mike gave a bit of feedback. He solicited reviews from his customers and heard that it was fairly easy for his customers to create an account and enter their review of Mike’s services.

Steve Sorbo proposed that for future meetings each attendee bring a product recommendation to share with the group. This could be either a hardware or a software product. The recommendation would include the product’s name, manufacturer, price and the products pros and cons. These product recommendations could be tracked on the NW Mac Pro web site. A request was made to have a reminder about this be including in future meeting announcements sent out via email.

Mike Brogan unveiled the new NW Mac Pro web site. It includes a logo built by Kate Rappe of CMYKate. Mike Brogan built the site using WordPress. All members are asked to review the web site and send feedback to Mike Brogan or Tim Hannon. If you’d like to be listed in the Member Directory please fill out the Contact form on the site or contact Tim Hannon directly. Tim Hannon proposed adding an Affiliated Professionals section which would list vendors recommended by NW Mac Pro members such as CPAs, bookkeepers, designers, wiring vendors and other service providers commonly needed by NW Mac Pro members or our clients. UStream links will be added to the web site.

Presentations

• Sean Costello spoke about Background Backup. It is a simple, powerful data protection solution for any small or medium-sized business. Reliable, consistent and secure, it backs up your company files invisibly and automatically—over your corporate network or while you’re travelling. It is built on CrashPlan Pro. They have both referral and reseller programs available. We soon hope to post a copy of Sean’s presentation for your review.
• John Chaffey of BusyMac spoke about BusyCal and how it’ll interface with iCloud as Apple migrates from MobileMe to iCloud. John Chaffey and his partners were the original developers of Now Up To Date in the 1990s.
• Dave Peck spoke about Cloak an easy to setup and use cloud-hosted VPN service for people who want secure wireless connections when they are working on non-secure wireless networks such as those found in coffee shops and libraries. Dave Peck highlighted the need for VPN connections by showing a YouTube story about FireSheep

Our meeting this quarter brings three speakers who will be presenting their company’s solutions:

• Sean Costello of Background Backup comes to our meeting all the way from Ottawa. Sean will be demonstrating Background Backup, and discussing opportunities for ACNs. Background Backup is a simple, powerful data protection solution for any small or medium-sized business. Sean is a long time ACN, and is currently serving on the ACN Advisory Council.
• John Chaffee of Busy Mac will be demonstrating Busy Cal. BusyCal is the award winning desktop calendar that combines personal productivity features for individuals with powerful calendar sharing capabilities for families and workgroups.
• Dave Peak of Bourgeois Bits will present their new Mac OS X application, Cloak, an easily configurable VPN client for the Mac. We are very excited to have these terrific vendors joining us!

Meetings are held at the Wheelwrights office in the SODO neighborhood of Seattle. If you are an ACN/NWMP member that would like to host a meeting, please email Shelley or Steve Sorbo <macsosguy@mac.com>. Take the opportunity to introduce your colleagues to your business and offerings by hosting a meeting!

Our meeting runs from 1:00 to 5:00 pm, followed by a social hour at a local watering hole.

Location details: http://www.krtriggerbuilding.com/location.html
Parking is available in the lot next to the Trigger Building, and at the rear (west) of the building.

Please RSVP to the LinkedIn Group to let us know you’re coming.

Hot off the heels of our last meeting comes the schedule for the rest of 2011. Don’t miss out!

Dates:

Friday, June 24th
Friday, September 23rd
Friday, November 11th
Holiday Party TBD