User Groups have meetings –

Meetings need topics –

Members like substance –

Presenters are difficult to find –

So how do you plan interesting meetings with good presentations on important topics?

While industry presenters are desirable, most compaines can't come to your meeting, especially if you have a smaller user group


  • Plan a meeting with other local user groups
  • Invite other user groups to attend your meeting
  • As the presenter to do a virtual presentation
  • Look for tutorials and podcasts to show to your group.
  • Use your own experts


Sources for virtual presenters:

  • Book authors
  • Magazine editors
  • Macintosh Luminaries
  • Smaller developers
  • Larger developers
  • The Macintosh Ecosystem


But sometimes you have to rely on yourselves. Then the problems are different:

  • Same old presenter
  • Boring presenters
  • No one knows the topic


Choose a topic that interests your members. Do some research, both on the topic and on what your members might be using.

Break the topic into smaller sections and then get your members to do short, very targeted presentations that become a cohesive part of the whole.

Topics that can be presented in this manner:

  • A new operating system
  • How to use Inspectors
  • How to tackle fonts
  • What to do to keep your hard drive working at its best
  • System requirements
  • How to prepare to install Leopard
  • Finder features
  • Mail and Address book
  • What's new in iCal
  • Time Machine and how to use it
    • General overview of what an Inspector is
    • How to use the Fonts inspector
    • How to use the Colors Palette
    • How to use the Document Inspector in Pages
    • How to use the Text Inspector
    Some General Tips
    • Choose people who seem to be ready to help at meetings
    • Help the presenters find materials (Take Control Books, Apple Technical Info Library, Macworld, MacObserver and Macsimum News articles
    • Remember, even the top experts don't know it all. If a question comes up and the presenter (or you) does not know the answer, throw it out to attendees. If you still don't have the answer, suggest places to look – Apple Forums, Google it, the developer's forums.

    Thank you for coming today and let me know how your meetings go!

    Pat