I started the "Oric User Group" in Perth, WA, in 1983. We met about 6 times, each time mostly spent trading tapes. I had a dual-cassette boombox that was seriously pushed into service, and we also had "type-a-thons" where the more competent keyboardists among us would type in magazine listings, which others read aloud.
Was pretty fun, but soon enough we all started meeting on BBS'es, and moved to other systems, and I got on the Internet and discovered ftp and gopher and usenet. The physical meetings didn't seem relevant at that point.
Then, in the 90's, I got the bug and started a few other user groups, mostly oriented around digital synths and other studio gear. We used mailing lists to keep everyone organised and for a while there were tens of thousands of us, on various lists, discussing all kinds of things. Lists seemed to work better than USENET - not everyone that could set up mail somewhere had the chops for NNTP ..
Some of the folks from these groups still meet up for a jam every few years .. its indeed been a situation that we've all grown up together.
And of course now its all been replaced by social media and the big guns. Some of our members went on to be quite famous and don't quite have the need to cahoot with the riffraff, others have gone on to do other things, and indeed .. some of us have passed away.
Was pretty fun, but soon enough we all started meeting on BBS'es, and moved to other systems, and I got on the Internet and discovered ftp and gopher and usenet. The physical meetings didn't seem relevant at that point.
Then, in the 90's, I got the bug and started a few other user groups, mostly oriented around digital synths and other studio gear. We used mailing lists to keep everyone organised and for a while there were tens of thousands of us, on various lists, discussing all kinds of things. Lists seemed to work better than USENET - not everyone that could set up mail somewhere had the chops for NNTP ..
Some of the folks from these groups still meet up for a jam every few years .. its indeed been a situation that we've all grown up together.
And of course now its all been replaced by social media and the big guns. Some of our members went on to be quite famous and don't quite have the need to cahoot with the riffraff, others have gone on to do other things, and indeed .. some of us have passed away.