HistoryHistoryAn Account Of This Group's History
by Dan Glading (former Chairman and founder member)
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The Beginning
It all really began with a notice in the Essex Chronicle in early summer 1982 asking anyone interested in the new BBC Micro to go to a meeting at the Broomfield Teacher Centre late one afternoon. There were about 40 people at this meeting. All but me and one other were teachers, and it was clear that what they had in mind was a group exclusively for teachers. However, the two non-teachers spoke up forcefully for the interests of other potential BBC Micro users, and the upshot was a more general meeting a few weeks later at the Bramston School in Witham.
If I thought hard enough and spoke to other people who were there, I might remember who spoke at the second meeting, but about four speakers described possibilities for the future. Towards the end of the general meeting, two groups, one from South-East Essex the other from West Essex, went off to have separate meetings in order to set up clubs for those two areas. Those that were left seemed to come from a much wider area, and we felt that if we didn't do something the others would have clubs and we wouldn't. So we formed a club from the remnants, and decided to meet monthly on the second Thursday of each month at Bramston School. Thus was NAMEBUG born - although it wasn't called that then.
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The First Committee
After the first meeting, Dave Watts was elected Chairman, Andy Purkiss Secretary, and Alan Fair Treasurer. I also was on the Committee. One of our first tasks was to decide on a name. Clearly it had to reflect the involvement with the BBC Micro and it had to be something that sounded good. After considering a number of alternatives, we settled for NAMEBUG:
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North And Mid-Essex BBC Micro User Group
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The Early Meetings
After the formation came the usual problems of setting up a programme of meetings, finding speakers etc. I remember one of the early meetings when I had one of the first floppy disc drives, people crowded round saying "How does it work, how do you use it?" etc. It was all new, and it doesn't now seem possible that we knew so little. Like many other members, I didn't have a machine to begin with, and bought mine from a firm in Ipswich. I had to ring up after I got it home to say I couldn't get it to understand how to boot a disc, ie put it in drive 0 and press Shift and Break. It didn't work!!! Although it turned out that I had a duff disc which had to be replaced, I was doing the right thing anyway.
After two years, meetings moved from Bramston School to Witham Library and increased in frequency to twice monthly, reflecting the popularity of the club.
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The Guest Speakers
We managed to get speakers fairly easily in the beginning. I remember Paul Beverley from NCS, Bruce Smith from ??? on more than one occasion, as well as Dave Atherton of ??? at least once. Acorn came and demonstrated the Master 512. Likewise, the BBC demonstrated their Domesday project to which a very large number of schools across the country contributed. Solidisk demonstrated their extended RAM devices. Mike Beecher from Electromusic Research provided a couple of enjoyable musical evenings with his stacks of MIDI keyboards and sophisticated software. On one occasion, Cumana came to give a whole day's course on disc drive theory and servicing to about 12 of us.
I think the thing was that at that time it was all new and adventurous, visitors were keen to come to our meetings to tell us about the new things they were making or doing, and there were more dealers selling micros to a newly-interested public. Nowadays, Computers have become familiar common-place items and have joined Toasters, TVs and Washing Machines in both the perception of consumers and their retailing.
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The Social Side
Alongside the technical aspect of NAMEBUG's activities, there was the social side. The Christmas meetings involved an elaborate quiz programme with multiple teams of contestants, all with fingers on electronically controlled buzzers, competing for honours. The progress of competition was displayed on multiple monitors. Even Humphrey Lyttleton (and maybe Chris Tarrant of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?") would have been impressed. All that, and sherry and mincepies too.
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The Marathon Program
In the past NAMEBUG provided a results service for marathon organisers. The first occasion was for the Chelmer Village half-marathon, where the Residents Association were apparently contemplating paying a computer firm, DEC if I remember correctly, quite a considerable sum to write a program. A project team, led by Alan Fair, wrote a suite of programs to record and recall the results. It has to be said the bulk of the programming was done by Alan and his wife Chris. We had to get involved in the administration of the race, and some of us still remember the organiser of the first race sitting on a pile of sacks in the corner of the room some hours after the race had finished, trying to work out the order in which the runners had finished, on the backs of envelopes !!! (Really).
The main Spring event we helped was the Great Baddow 10 mile race, but there was another in the Autumn for the Little Baddow Ridge Runners Guy Fawkes Gallop. The donations from the organisers of these made a welcome contribution to club finances, especially when membership numbers started to decline. Without these contributions, I don't think we could have balanced our books.
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The Relaunch
More than ten years after the group was formed, we fell on hard times. Circumstances had changed. There was no longer the hunger for that essential knowledge needed originally. Computers were becoming tools rather than new opportunities to explore the way things might be. The number of members dwindled away, guest speakers were reluctant to come because of our reduced numbers and publication of the monthly newsletter faltered and eventually ceased.
In spite of the in-roads made by WINTEL PCs into schools (with the connivance of Goverment) and most homes that have a computer, there is still a remarkably large number of users who have need for sources of knowledge about the computer they have chosen: Acorn and PC. A large proportion of PC users in the domestic field are basically users of office and games software, and are not necessarily "knowledge seekers". Whether you seek knowledge or simply need help, one of the best ways is to meet and talk face-to-face with others who might know the answers (or who "know a man who does").
Consequently, the club has changed its name to reflect the new times. The name Acorn is still used because that is the history of the principal platform of interest within the club. WINTEL PC users are certainly NOT excluded. Indeed, they are welcome. Inevitably a lot of members have considerable knowledge of these other systems because they use them at work and are "thinking people". The name reflects the fact that many more are simply users. Many of these experience problems or have that sneaking feeling that something could be done more efficiently. Come and talk to the members!
So, NAMEBUG has become EAUG:
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Essex Acorn User Group
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