Talk:Berkeley Macintosh Users Group

Notability Concerns (resolved)

Hmmm, Notability concerns? I think we can find some good citations. I'm probably too closely tied to much of BMUG's history to edit it directly without it seeming self-promotional, so (pending a closer read of Wikipedia's policies in this regard) I'll focus on supplying info here to make the finding-citations job easier for anyone who feels inclined to work on the main article.

• Start with 1985 articles by John Dvorak in InfoWorld and NY Times... each of those was good for 1000 members. Plus a late 1984 Macworld article. Members in dozens of countries.
• Apple product manuals starting with HyperCard in Summer, 1987, listed BMUG as a national/global user group contact
• The book "The Cult of Macintosh" talks a bit about BMUG, IIRC.
• A movie coming in 2008 does, too.
• There's a Computer Chronicles (KCSM-TV) national show (80's or 90's... on Google Video) that featured a BMUG software library exploration.
• I seem to recall a BMUG "newsletter" (400-page book) appearing in a movie or TV show.
• The BMUG PD-ROM was the first announced commercially-sold CD-ROM on the Mac - 1988.
• It was the largest independent Mac user group.
• Weekly meetings made it unusual... as did publishing the newsletter only twice a year. And various books (Zen and the Art of Resource Editing, The Tao of AppleScript)
• don't forget the hardware: MacRecorder, BMUGNet kits (later PhoneNet from Farallon), keyboard cables (by convicted killer/America's Most Wanted star Enrique Zambrano)
• MacWEEK magazine cited BMUG folks some number of times
• Quite a few ex-BMUG-staff-and-core-volunteers ended up working at Apple, Microsoft, or Farallon/Netopia - some may have credited it in their bios or articles.
• BMUG had a booth presence at every domestic Macworld Expo (SF/Boston/NY/DC) during its run.
• Gates and Jobs both did live presentations at BMUG meetings in Berkeley
• It spun off meetings/chapters in Cupertino, SF, and Tokyo, and eventually a Boston branch

Raines (talk) 07:13, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your sources; sounds like there is no doubt about its notability. -- intgr [talk] 09:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Founders

I'm too closely connected to this topic to edit the main article under Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, but I believe the current opening statement on the founders mischaracterizes the roles some played.

Reese Jones was the founder and leader of the group, identified as such in hundreds of citations over the years; Tom Chavez and I had made inquiries at the campus computer store at about the same time and joined forces to support the fledgling group. Once meetings began, many others emerged and shared the leadership, including forming Special Interest Groups (SIGs); for example, Fred Huxham, Dave Burnard (sp?) and Jim Takatsuka published a developers' guide through BMUG (and later co-authored a book with similar material, possibly published through Wiley) and ran the Developers SIG.

A small core group (later called "The Core" or "Team BMUG" in online forums) of trusted volunteers got to know where Reese lived and hosted BMUG in his home office in South Berkeley; a subset of those got house keys; active volunteers played a key role in selecting board members and determining which projects to pursue.

At BMUG's weekly meetings in the early years, Reese was most often the meeting organizer, host and M.C. and I frequently did technography, live-scribing of notes projected on the screen behind.

I am often introduced as BMUG's founder, and I take pains to identify myself as merely a co-founder, although I appear to be the only one who maintained involvement for most of the group's history.

The BMUG Newsletter (Fall, 1984 and Spring, 1985 issues) should be a relevant source providing more history in this regard; I believe there was also a Macworld magazine article published in late '84 or early '85; I don't recall whether the group leadership was identified by name in the NY Times and Infoworld (Dvorak) articles in early 1985 that led to BMUG's rapid growth into the thousands of members.

Raines (talk) 18:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

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