14th Annual
Southwest Computer Conference 

The 14th Annual Southwest Computer User Group Conference was held July 13-15 at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center. Over 270 attendees registered for the event. The conference was sponsored by 70 vendors, with 27 attending the Saturday evening Vendor Faire. Smart Computing, Pinnacle Systems, AMD, Corel and Microsoft sponsored the meal  and presentation events; the Keynote at the Saturday morning breakfast was by Andy Marken, Marken Communications. His topic was DRM – How will the show end? And Microsoft sponsored the Vista Lounge where attendees had the opportunity to test-drive Vista!

Attendees had the opportunity to attend seminars by Trend Micro, Heritage Makers, Migo Software, Nibbin, AMD, Pinnacle Systems, Data Drive Thru, Marken Communications and User Group Relations. The User Group workshops featured topics such as: Bringing the fun back into user group meetings; How to create a PowerPoint presentation that will wow your UG members; Equipping your user group for meetings; Working with Word - mail merge for labels, invoices and more; Skype - How to get that presentation when others can’t!; a brainstorming session for officers; Hackers: Changing the face of identity theft; Podcasting and Web 2.0; and Contrasting and Comparing Macs and PCs. New this year was the Face of SW Digital Photo Contest conducted by Cathy and George Margolin for the attendees of their workshop, Digital Photography with the Margolins.