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
