Members present:Steve Sorbo, Peter Haigh, Matt Duett, Chris Dawe, Shelley Watson, Mike Ross (remote), Greg Ashworth, Jeff Widmer, Noah Patton, Alicia Pollock (remote).
Meeting called to order at 3:08 pm.
Steve started with intros, Noah Patton Advisory Council update, scheduling meetings & new form for NW Mac Pros. Depending on time, talk about Mountain Lion (10.8). Tech tips or favorite app. Wind up with most vexing problem with a client or a scenario you want to share.
Steve started intro by using Craig Swanson’s intro tip for your business: Action Verb, Ideal Client, Solve A Problem. Peter Haigh; home and small business Mac & PC users east of Redmond. Matt Duett; now a reseller for Mocha 5, has his own firm in Bellingham. Shelley & Chris intro by Shelley. Mike Ross gets a pass since he’s remote on the UStream chat. Greg Ashworth intro; new location, repair tech, video and audio, store opening soon. Jeff Widmer; consulting, ACN, likes to network with other techs, refer work out where appropriate, supports Mac business users, up to enterprise users. Noah Patton; Universal Mac, IT focused on business and enterprise systems, cross platform integration, AD domain integration, large scale installation, largest 1300 users, business systems our focus, 18 staff, based in Bellevue, iPad driving demand for enterprise consulting, one customer example running 300 Macs running Windows 7 under Boot Camp.
Review of March meeting: 2-3 core bullet points we wanted to focus on: Tech to Tech; Colleague to Colleague, Consultant to Client. Creating a public presence for NWMP with Google AdWords, growing NW Mac Pro brand, creating a searchable directory. One of the goals taking the focus and shifting it towards clients. Need for us to evolve and change, and come up with new avenues to build our business and bring in customers. We’ve refreshed the website, added the logo. Steve asking Mike Ross about meeting to discuss what it will take to build a searchable directory in FileMaker Pro. Also discussed using allied professionals directory, so that we can list folks we know with different resources. Individuals will also be either vetted or non-vetted; how will we determine who is on each list? Steering committee with work on getting a membership directory completed, added to the website.
Meeting day and time: Steve wants to get this addressed and on a schedule, rather than trying to set a plan that works around people’s schedules. This should make it easier to plan, easier to schedule around, etc. Our current Friday 3 pm-5 pm seems to work well. Steve would like to increase the number of meetings, including a meeting in September. At last meeting we did have some volunteers for managing meeting content: Peter Haigh, John Newhoff, Greg Ashworth and Steve. He would also like to try some different venues, including Noah’s new space when it is available. Suggestions to plan a year’s worth of meetings at a time, and plan around known holidays, and other difficult times. Some folks may like the idea of a scheduled day each month. Chris points out that with enough value in the meetings, and enough notice, people will find a way to make the meeting.
Discussion of tiered membership: free, “admin” and “root”. A paid member (in one of the two paid tiers) would have to provide content at a meeting, and would have to provide a door prize or raffle item. This would be in addition to the dues for that level. Paid members would get access to content such as the member directory, and affiliate meeting. To add to the content that Steve would like to see added, Tim Hannon is trying to get in touch with Gordon Davisson, Scott Neal and Craig Swanson to work on training options. What might it cost NWMP to use the studio for our meetings, and how we might work that into our meetings?
What will these membership tiers look like? Does this sound reasonable? Curiosity about the cost, what is the value, etc. What value added features would be worth paying for: expanded directory, SEO placement, web presence; resource pooling; would love to be in a directory to get the word out; workshops and training. Workshop ideas: improve our business as business owners, for example our social media workshop; technical knowledge; vendor input (could be less interesting if it’s a sales pitch), but recommendations from other consultants are particularly useful. Could be as simple as a list of recommendations from other members for us to evaluate. Command line knowledge, directory integration, deployment. Public events held by us, along the lines of the old ACN Business Day or Ronnie Roche’s expo in SF, where the public could be invited, with speakers, etc. Group should pay for UStream Pro account, or a Go To Meeting account, so we can broaden the group participation.
Discussion of membership, adding people as members, how to handle folks in different geographic regions. How to handle vendors who want to pitch to us, and how we can leverage their desire to participate to our advantage.
Next steps: steering committee will need to come back to the group with an idea for the meeting schedule, will announce remainder of 2012 and 2013. Will also come back with what the three tiers look like. Steve, Peter, Greg and John will find a time to meet and come back with meeting scheduling and content.
With Noah’s arrival, switch to Advisory Council update from Noah. Apple focusing on transition from Macintosh company to general technology company, particularly iOS devices. Apple market domination of market share. Apple computers down to a sliver of their revenue. Wants consultants to switch to where the revenue is going, which is iOS. Discussion of Mobility Technical Competency. Noah coordinating an MTC course here in Seattle. Will be sending out to the ACN mailing list, but you don’t have to be an ACN to sign up. Drop Noah an email to sign up, noah@universalmac.com.
Mountain Lion: various issues installing. Noah was able to successfully install 10.8 on FileVault 2 machines. CC’d email will be marked as read for both accounts, across users and computers. Replicated, then logged with Apple as a bug, and acknowledged by Apple.
Review of system requirements. Review of features dependent on chip sets. Does not support white MacBooks. Days of just looking at the hardware are over, now really need to look at internal specs to be sure.Discussion with the customer to answer the question, why should I upgrade? Features vs. value discussion. Not being left behind is often a value. Save As gotcha problem, posted on LinkedIn group by Tim Pritchard. Discussion of differences between Save as, Duplicate and Export. Installing a Wifi Brother multifunction device, used an AirPrint driver automatically, which bypassed the scanner. Had to manually choose the Brother driver.There will be 10.8 exams and most likely a delta exam for ACTC and ACSP. Would make sense to do another study group for 10.8.
