It's Not Unusual...
By Sean Graham (grahams@bedev.org) and Cristina Luis (cristina@bedev.org)

A Hydrogen atom and a Helium atom walk into a bar. The Helium atom looks depressed, so the Hydrogen atom asks him what's wrong. The Helium atom says, "Well, I think I've lost an electron." The Hydrogen atom asks, "Are you sure?" and the Helium atom replies, "I'm positive."

Moral of the story: When you are stuck for ideas on how to begin the first BUG article, use a bad chemistry joke. Once you get past the beginning, the rest is pretty easy. Since this is the first BUG article, we thought it might be a good idea to share some of the things that make BUGGER, the Be Users' Group of the Greater Entirety of Rochester so damn cool. Without further ado, our combined cranial efforts bring you the...

Top 16 Things to Remember when Running a Be Users' Group

F) Demos -
	Every meeting should include a demo.
E) A Cool Name (Bonus Points for Sexual Innuendo) -
	Sorry, BUGGER's already taken.
D) Industry Recognition -
	Work closely with Be and 3rd party vendors.
C) Tom Jones -
	It's important to have a theme song.  It helps build BUG
	camaraderie. (See title)
B) Quality Meeting Location -
        Our room has a projection screen, white boards, sound system,
        and 200 seats (with matching ethernet jacks).
A) Fanatical Devotion -
        Between the two of us, we own every possible piece of Be
        merchandise. Twice.
9) Seminars -
	'Nuff said.
8) Demos -
        Don't just demo the OS, demo other neat products (if you
        want to demo 3rd party software, contact them, they will
        usually hook you up).
7) Food -
	Next to free stuff, free food usually draws a crowd.
6) Projects -
	Work as a group on projects to benefit the Be community (keep your
	eye out for bedev.org and freshdot.org)
5) Effective Leadership -
	You don't have to be as cool as we are, but we encourage you to try.
4) Communication -
	Keep your website up to date, and use mailing lists to keep your
	members informed and enthusiastic.
3) Advertisement -
	Put ads in newspapers, signs in local businesses and college
	campuses, and remember, sidewalk chalk is ineffective in Seattle.
2) Free Stuff -
	The easiest way to draw new people into your group is to give
	them things.
1) Meetings -
	Get together at regularly scheduled intervals (once a month, at
	least) for a well-organized meeting.
0) Demos -
	Catch our drift?

There really isn't much to it, just a little common sense and a lot of effort will take you into the upper-echelon of BUGness. Of course, don't limit yourself to just this list. One of the methods BUGGER uses to further its assimilation of the Rochester community is the annual IT Expo at the Rochester Institute of Technology. After the previous year's popular, yet minimal presence at the Expo, we spent a good part of the year planning for this year's event.

From the very beginning we were in frequent contact with Victoria and other members of the Be staff. By staying in direct communication with the good people at Be, we were not only able to benefit from Be's experience with similar events, but we also had access to their cool banner and the enormous generosity of Be's Marketing Department.

One of our power plays was arriving early in order to choose the best table. In fact, we also acquired the second and third best tables. In line with many of the points we brought up above, lots of free stuff magically appeared in our mailboxes for our raffle. We also chose to give away, rather than sell, tickets to said raffle. While this significantly reduced the BUGGER revenues, it made many happy customers (Note to selves: Raffle tickets make a fine fund raiser, don't be stupid).

BUGGER also held a one hour auditorium demonstration of R4, which was very well received. While Sean was giving this demo, Cristina and other members manned the table, giving away raffle tickets and answering questions from the teeming masses. At the table we had two machines running R4, and hundreds of people came by the booth to receive personal demos, ask questions, and take advantage of our obvious lack of foresight regarding the raffle. Many people had never seen Be before, and all were quite impressed. Since the Expo, BUGGER has received many inquiries about Be, and also many new members. We usually do a few events like this throughout the year, and after each our membership increases accordingly. Remember: it's all about the demos (see numbers 0, 8 and F above).

If Cristina had another horrendous chemistry joke to share then we'd insert that here. Fortunately, she doesn't, and even if she did it wouldn't matter because we wouldn't want to expose you to more of her so called "wit". We hope this article will help BUGs out there to get going, and will encourage other members of the Be community to get involved with their local group (or start one if one doesn't exist). We invite you all to check out the BUGGER web site at http://www.beos.org/bugger/, where you'll find meeting notes, BUGGER projects, and pictures from the IT Expo. And please, if you have any questions feel free to contact either of us. We'd love to help other BUGs enjoy the success that we have so far with BUGGER. That's it. We're done. You've just finished reading the first BUG article.