SEPTEMBER 2014 MEMBERS' MEETING

Another happy crowd of 60 plus member attended our regular monthly meeting.

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John Moxon launched a video he created about St Johns Church, titled "Sounds of St Johns Parramatta"

Last year our Club received fiunding from ClubGRANTS for a number of our trainers to learn about video making by attending a course at ICE (Information Cultural Exchange) Parramatta, a Western Sydney community arts organization. The course was conducted by Ludwig, pictured left, who attended John's launch and was very impressed by John's film making effort.

Our club members were also very interested
 in John's video presentation!

Long-time club member Bill New enjoyed a coffee with Trainer Peter.

IT Specialist Lawrence Lam of Lawrence Computer Services was introduced to the meeting, and  is available to assist club members with their at home computer problems. 

He can be contacted by phoning 8812 2266 or 0418 602 338.

PICASA REFRESHED BY JON

Jon's one-day, two hour  Managing your Digital Photos - Refresher course attracted a roll up of six students today. All had  attended one of Jon's 5 week MYDP courses previously.

Jon re-visited Picasa, and following a request, delved into managing "people" albums. He explained that Picasa uses facial recognition technology to find and group similar faces together across entire collections of photos, and by adding name tages to these groups of faces, new people albums are created.

Another question on back-up pictures was asked, and Jon explained how to use cloud applications such as One Drive to automatically back-up pictures. He also demonstrated how to easily copy and paste all pics on your camera card directly onto a USB drive, and how to re-name the USB drive.

Student Beryl was so happy, she hugged our Secretary Silvia on the way out!

BUSY MEETINGS FRIDAY AT COMPALS

The Friday morning meeting was the Film Making SIG, with John Moxon playing his almost completed film "Sounds of St Johns Parramatta' featuring St Johns bells, clock and organ.

John's film will shortly be available for viewing at a members' meeting.


John also played the 2008 photo story entitled "Glenda masters the pc".  It was made at John's Photo Story course in 2008 and starred Glenda, who was at the meeting this morning. Glenda masters the pc will also be played at a future members meeting, you are sure to enjoy it.

Deborah then led the SIG attendees through the tuition manual for Adobe Premiere Elements 11 application.

Deborah near the end of the SIG asks "any questions?"





Then it was off for a bit of lunch before coming back for the afternoons Trainers meeting to plan the Term 4 Timetable of courses and SIGs, monthly members and committee meetings.

Training Co-ordinator Michael had his hands full to ensure that the Timetable met all parameters, including fitting all the proposed courses into the term schedule.

Each Trainer will be contacting people on the Waiting List this week, and then bookings will be open for all members from Friday at the Members meeting.

Deborah has since emailed all members with the finalised Course Timetable for Term 4 attached.
 So check your email and have a look to see if you would like to do any of the Courses. If so, check for availability at this Fridays Member meeting.

Another full day at Parramatta Computer Pals...................

eBAY SELLING IS RIFE AT COMPUTER PALS

Called into the office this afternoon to pick up the weeks banking documents, and was surprised to hear much talk from the training room. Poked my head in and found a room full of 6 students selling heaps of stuff on ebay, and having fun with trainers Deborah and Jan.

They were learning how to sell goods online at a One-Day course, mainly to help them downsize their furniture and sell other stuff.

For a one-day course the supplied notes totalled 27 pages, because there was a lot to cover in the course -- registering as an eBay seller and creating an accout; listing the item for sale;completing the sale; and learning how to set up a Pay Pal account.

Student Susan had to get trainer Deborah's
personal attention on "what price should I put
on my item?"



They weren't a bad mob though - they allowed me to join them in afternoon tea....with home-made cake!


So, if you would like to learn how to sell or buy stuff online, put your name on the waiting list for eBay Selling or Buying and join in the fun of Deborah and Jan one-day courses...you might even get some cake!

Android Special Interest Group

The Android Special Interest Group met on Friday afternoon and explored how Google Now works.  Google Now is the Android equivalent of Apple's Siri, allowing us to give our Android smart phones (and some tablets) instructions by voice instead of typing.  (The answer to the question "what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything" is "42" - in case you were wondering.)

It was lovely to see Glenda again.  Glenda starred in a digital photo story promoting Parramatta Computer Pals a few years ago, and has now rejoined the Club with Bobby.

The Android Special Interest Group meets each month on the first Friday of the month, from 1:15 to 3:30 pm.  All Android-using members are welcome.

SPECIAL WORKSHOP WITH DROPBOX AUSTRALIA VOLUNTEERS

Dropbox opened their new Sydney office in 2014.  The workers at Dropbox decided that they would like to donate their time to give back to the community, and Account Executive Emma King contacted Parramatta Computer Pals to ask how they could help our Club.  

As a result, on Friday Emma and her colleagues (Shing, Tony and Harry) came to Parramatta to run a workshop on uploading and sharing photos from smart phones and tablets using Dropbox and Facebook.  Seventeen members of Parramatta Computer Pals attended the workshop.  

 Emma took us step by step through how to set up a Dropbox account, download the Dropbox app on our devices and computer desktop, create a folder, upload some pictures to Dropbox, and then share them with friends.  At each step the Dropbox team moved around to help us individually (and it was quite a challenge, as we had many different devices, operating systems and levels of expertise).  


At the end of the workshop we thanked the Dropbox team and presented them with Club mugs in appreciation of their time and effort.

OUR CLUB'S VOLUNTEERS - 2014

     (Collage created using Picasa, as taught in Managing your Digital Photo course by Jon Bayley)

These are our very valuable volunteers who regularly help out in our club office and keep Parramatta Computer Pals running efficiently.

• Elizabeth Williams is the Office Assistant each Monday. She has also re-organised the office generally.
• Anne Howison is the Office Assistant each Tuesday.
• Aileen Williams is the Office Assistant each Wednesday. Aileen also balances and banks incoming monies each week.
• Editha Haarman is the Office Assistant each Thursday.

Our Office Assistants attend to members' personal and phone enquiries, course bookings and payments, and general assistance to the club Secretary. They also assist with preparation of morning and afternoon teas for  training courses.

• Silvia Vega is our Secretary and is often in the office carrying out her secretarial duties.
• Margaret Tucker is our Webmaster and Newsletter Editor and is always busy researching our members activities and photos for iuclusion in her postings.

Our Club would not function without the help of our wonderful volunteers, so please give each a personal thank you when next you see them......