Back in June 2004, I sent a letter to the PC Update editor and Melb-PC committee titled, "New Ways to Implement the Melb PC Vision". Unfortunately, the "powers that be" decided not to publish the letter, though you can read it for yourself online at https://lloyd-borrett-insight.blogspot.com/2004/06/new-ways-to-implement-melb-pc-vision.htm.
One of the suggestions in my letter was the need for Melb-PC to establish online discussion forums on the Melb-PC website, thereby significantly improving interaction between members and providing them with timely access to information. Well, it seems that idea, along with many others, has been put into the "too hard basket", or the "sometime later basket". I've come up with a way that Melb-PC can have all the online discussion forums it needs today!
I'm now able to provide Melb PC with access to a powerful online discussion forum setup, for free. I'm offering the Melb-PC management, the SIGs, PC Update, each Dial-Help topic, and any other parts of Melb-PC that they want, as many free forums as they like. The appropriate people will be given complete control as moderators of their forums.
In late June 2004, I switched web hosting providers and gained access to a significant amount of bandwidth and disk space for a fraction of what I'd been paying previously. (Try $140 for the year as opposed to $1200 for the previous 6 months!) Additionally, I now offer server-side scripting and MySQL database services. I proceeded to update my personal website to utilise these new features. This included setting up a phpBB-based discussion forum (see https://www.borrett.id.au/forums/). It will cost me nothing extra to host any forums for Melb-PC.
Consider this an offer for a free, no strings attached, trial to see if online discussion forums can really be of real benefit to Melb-PC members.
What's in it for me? Simply the satisfaction of helping Melb-PC to take another step forward.
Should the use of the forums prove successful enough for Melb-PC to desire to host the forums itself, I hereby pledge that I will gladly help Melb-PC to do so. I will provide free time and advice, a dump of the PHPBB forum MySQL database from my website, and shut down the Melbourne PC-related forums on my website once Melbourne PC has its forum hosting running.
How do we get started? Well, if you are a SIG coordinator or some other Melb-PC functionary who thinks it would be nice to have an online discussion forum, simply contact me (details at https://www.borrett.id.au) and we'll set it up. Then just let your people know where your forum is via your meetings, magazine reports and/or website links. It really is that simple.