2016 Don Singleton Volunteer of the Year Award
April is Volunteer Appreciation Month and it is our pleasure to announce the 2016 Volunteer of the Year recipients as well as the other nominees. Volunteers are the back bone of our clubs as well as APCUG. The below volunteers have made a difference in their groups and we thank them for that.
Thank you to the 2016 VOTY judges: Orv Beach, Linux SCALE 15x Trainer, Joyce Guasch, retired APCUG Administrative Assistant, and Rod Scher, former editor, Smart Computing magazine.
2016 VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR RECIPIENT
SUZY KEREKES, INSTRUCTOR/MENTOR
SUN CITY SHADOW HILLS COMPUTER CLUB, CA
Suzy has been a member for four years during which she has become the de facto expert on all Apple devices: iPad, iPhone, and Mac. Throughout the year, she volunteers the time and effort needed to share her knowledge with the members of our club through classes, individual sessions, and presentations. All Board members are delighted that she keeps coming up with new ideas for classes! What’s more, Suzy has a positive attitude and is a firm believer in the abilities of our members to learn. She often urges and encourages our members, who are primarily retirees, to integrate technology into their lives. She is willing to enthusiastically step in to any area where her help is needed. We consider Suzy our all-around “go-to” person.
Over time our membership has changed from about 70-30% PC users to about 60-40% Apple users. To continue to provide value to our members, we needed expertise in Apple products. Suzy stepped forward to take on this responsibility. As she expanded her knowledge of Apple products she was willing to pass that knowledge on to our members in the form of teaching Apple classes as well as volunteering her time for our Open Workshops, 2-hour sessions during which we provide one-on-one help to our members. We often receive positive feedback from her class attendees and those she works with individually. Her classes and one-on-one help have made a huge difference to our group in that we can now meet our user’s changing needs. Also, the club has a booth at our community Meet the Clubs event, during which the Computer Club “meets and greets” all interested community residents. Suzy volunteered to “work” our booth during which her positive attitude and advocacy for our club resulted in our recruiting at least eight new members.
In her role as instructor, Suzy develops and prepares 1-hour classes, which she teaches to club members. Her responsibilities include deciding on the topic and preparing the instructor PowerPoint slides as well as student handout material for these classes. For example, this past quarter she taught nine different 1-hour classes. She also uses her extensive Apple knowledge to be a mentor during the two or three Open Workshops we conduct each month. A third role is to be a presenter at our General Meetings, held once month. She is always willing to come up with a topic of interest to our general membership. Her most recent presentation was about Apple TV. Another important responsibility is writing one of the columns for our Computer Q&A page published every month in our community magazine, the View. Suzy always provides useful information and delivers her column on schedule.
During our Instructor’s meetings, when we plan classes for the coming quarter, Suzy is always first to volunteer to teach classes. During the meeting, she suggests other classes and inspires other instructors to teach them. She shows initiative by keeping up with the latest Apple technology so she can create new and worthwhile classes. She also shows leadership during our Open Workshops by triaging resident questions so the easier ones can be answered by other Apple mentors. If not enough PC mentors are on hand, she will even tackle PC questions. Finally, although not on our Club’s Board, Suzy attends Board meetings to help in the management of our club. Thus, she is preparing herself for a future leadership position.
2016 VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR RECIPIENT
VICKI WASSENHOVE, WEBMASTER, SIG LEADER AND BOARD MEMBER
QUAD-CITIES COMPUTER SOCIETY, IL
Vicki has been an integral member of our team for many years and is a very deserving candidate for this award. She is a key reason the QCS provides the level of quality of service to its 148 members. Her involvement in many capacities is paramount to the success of the QCS. She is energetic, enthusiastic, personable and a wonderful teacher. She is an ambassador for the QCS by personally inviting people to attend meetings and SIGs and follows up with offers to help people one-on-one. Her natural interest in learning new things and willingness to share that knowledge is impressive and the QCS reaps the benefits. Vicki is a person with rare talents and abilities, but most of all she is the kind of friend everyone is very lucky to have.
Vicki attends every Board meeting and what she contributes adds value. This year when leaders were struggling with burn-out, she developed a plan to continue the future of the QCS with a modified schedule. Some people had commented verbally about the QCS future, but Vicki took action and developed a plan which she articulated clearly and then defined on paper. Vicki took complete charge of our Member Appreciation Picnic, planning, arranging the menu and caterer and arranging the speakers for the entertainment. Vicki also did the work of the nominating committee when no one else volunteered. She contacted members telling them about vacancies that needed filled and encouraging them to participate. She and another Board member created a PowerPoint presentation for an open house promoting the benefits of membership in our group. This professional looking presentation complete with photos is now archived on a shared drive for future promotional events. Vicki took on one more responsibility this year during an absence of our Vice President. She contacted possible presenters and arranged 5 programs for the remainder of this year and into next.
Vicki is the QCS webmaster, Digital Media SIG leader and an active Board of Directors member. She is a self-taught webmaster and her QCS website is professional and loaded with information about upcoming and past programs with links to myriad of information for ease of use. Her Digital Media SIG is really a seminar in photography and photo editing packed with examples and information any photographer would appreciate. She researches and develops an interesting and informative presentation, provides a summary with hot links to websites and gives individual assistance when needed. She encourages attendees to learn and practice through involvement and special activities such as photo walks. Vick has led the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk in our area for many years.
Vicki’s initiative efforts are essential to the QCS providing the service it does and continues to offer. She cares about QCS, its members and its future. She provides useful and pertinent information on the website and keeps it up to date. One example of going above and beyond, from the recent APCUG photo contest, Vicki found and posted links to not just the winning photos, but all the entries so that others could enjoy and learn. She is a talented SIG leader and the effort she puts into the content of her SIG is attributed to her love of teaching and sharing. Her contributions as a Board member are invaluable. Her in depth research and persuasive communication brought in nationally known speakers Abby Stokes and Chris and Jim Guld (Geeks On Tour). These speakers have continued to present informative programs to our group and have become friends of APCUG and its member groups making Vicki an asset to the entire User Group community.
The below nominees received Certificates of Appreciation
DR. LEON CHAPMAN, PAST-PRESIDENT, INSTRUCTOR, TECHNICAL SUPPORT, SIG LEADER
GRAND COMPUTERS, ARIZONA
Dr. Chapman has long been part of our Computers Club. He was instrumental in starting the Club and has served as 
President. Though his term ended years ago, he has continued to attend all the Board Meetings and is involved in the major decisions the Board makes.
He has coached and counselled each one of us in the Club at one time or another. He is innovative and often makes suggestions on how we should do something different or how we might present a demonstration or class better. He encourages each of us to be creative while working together to make our Club better for us and for all our members. He is well-respected and appreciated by his peers and students alike!
Dr. Chapman teaches various classes in each of our annual three sessions. He has taught beginning classes as well as more complicated ones as our member become more advanced in computer technology. He constantly researches to keep up on all the updates, and he spends hours preparing PowerPoint presentations that he gives to his students so they can make notes as he plays the presentation on the projector.
He also helps during what we call our Tuesday “Tech Help” sessions. We have our members come in to ask questions and even bring in their desk or laptop computers and iPad or iPhone so that we can trouble shoot or answer questions on how they work. He is patient and knowledgeable and spends a lot of time with each person to be sure they get all the help they need.
Dr. Chapman formed and leads an “iDevices” SIG when members began purchasing iPhones, iPads, and iPads with monthly relevant topics and speakers so the members can attend and learn more about the devices they use. He set up a Yahoo account so the members could receive and send information online.
He has been the leader of the monthly Genealogy SIG for years and has worked to have current Club subscriptions available for the members to access information from all the major Websites and genealogy programs.
ROSEMARY LLOYD, PRESIDENT, 2009 – 2016
BIG BEAR COMPUTER CLUB, CA
The Big Bear Computer Club would like to nominate Rosemary for her seven years as President during which time she initiated many programs to help promote the Big Bear Computer Club and increase its membership.
Rosemary has made a difference to our club by providing interesting speakers and computer related topics at each of our meetings. She goes beyond the scope of president to make our meeting valuable to those who attend.
Rosemary takes her role as president of our computer club very seriously by attending all the Southwest User Group Conferences and some APCUG annual conferences over the years. She has even presented workshops at the S/W User Group Conferences. She brings back to our computer club information that most of our members would not have received otherwise. She provides a monthly newsletter Word Tips in our club newsletter the Bearly Bytes.
Rosemary has shown initiative and leadership by researching the latest technology and keeping the membership informed. She also does presentations at various User Groups on the latest computer technology. She developed several ongoing programs such as the annual Christmas in July potluck since we don’t have meetings in December. Another program she initiated were community computer workshops and small group computer training meetings.
ALAN RAUL, TRAINING OFFICER
SLO BYTES COMPUTER CLUB, CA
Alan maintains a high level of knowledge about software, hardware and operating systems and can explain, with both patience and clarity, what the all the details mean.
His ability to explain has kept the first two hours of our monthly meeting interesting to even the most jaded of our membership. He also leads our Linux Users Group in equally interesting forays into that special world.
Primary among the examples that come to mind are the meetings where a presentation for the Main Tent part of the meeting is not of general enough interest and the audience thins out measurably after we break for coffee and snacks. The discussion of technology and what is happening in the PC world which Alan leads is sufficient to attract an audience which is very picky about the subjects they are interested in and not too bashful to show their opinion.
Alan shows his initiative by constantly keeping up to date on what is happening in technology. He maintains a business supporting IT activity in small businesses in the area and maintains a computing environment in his home/office that keeps his skills at a high level. When something needs to be done, talked about, acted upon or tried out Alan is there to lead the way.