Affiliates Meet at UniForum '94

Representatives from 20 UniForum affiliates met with the UniForum staff and members of the UniForum Board of Directors in San Francisco during UniForum '94. Separate meetings were held with U.S.-based and International affiliates, along with a joint lunch and reception at which representatives met and shared ideas on common concerns such as membership development, building revenues, producing publications and creating new services for members - especially on-line services such as Internet access.

After a presentation to the affiliates by UniForum Executive Director Richard Jaross and UniForum Director of Marketing Corinne Moore, which covered the activities and support services from UniForum available to the affiliates, the meetings were turned over to the affiliates for reports on their own initiatives.

Several common themes emerged from these meetings:

Most if not every affiliate publishes some kind of newsletter, magazine or directory. All these efforts are accomplished by hard-working volunteers.
Providing Internet access to members is a reality for some affiliates such as WAUUG, the Washington Area UNIX Users Group, and DKUUG, the Danish affiliate, both of which have sophisticated arrangements to serve their members. Others voiced a strong desire to offer Internet access. The extent to which affiliates have implemented this goal varies.
Membership growth was a continuing challenge for all affiliates, who often faced softness in growth attributable to slowness in local economies.

From the U.S.-based affiliates were representatives from Ohio!UniForum, Southwest! UniForum, UniForum Central NY, michigan!/usr/group, DFWUUG, Seattle Unix Group, UniForum.Okc.Forum and WAUUG. At the conclusion of the U.S.-based affiliates meeting, Glenn Schulke, representing Southwest!UniForum, was selected by the group as liaison to the UniForum International affiliates, with the goal of bringing the two groups even closer through the sharing of information.

There were 13 International affiliates represented at the meeting from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom.

UniForum actively seeks relationships with new affiliates and urges groups that may be in formation to contact the association for more information on how to become an official affiliate of UniForum. E-mail may be sent to corinnem@uniforum.org.