Maybe some stuff for SCN to think about?

[Steve]

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PC-User Club Thrives By Using an Old Trick: Frequent Upgrades

by Mary Flood
The Wall Street Journal


In the high-tech world, yesterday's hot concept can be today's yawn. 
Just ask the nation's largest personal-computer-user club.  

The Houston Area League of Personal Computer Users, or HAL-PC, 
started in 1982 when personal computers were still exotic devices 
and people were nowhere near as computer-literate as they are 
today. Starting with 20 members, the group taught novice PC users 
about software and hardware, and later offered discount Internet 
access. It's membership today: 13,000.  

It hasn't been easy staying on top of the PC-club world. Indeed, now 
that PCs are no longer the province of geek hobbyists, some wonder 
if there is any need for user clubs at all. Many clubs, such as the 
once-gigantic Boston group, burned bright in the '80s only to die in 
the mid-'90s.  

But the Bayou City cyberphiles have managed to thrive. How? The 
club's leaders credit Houston's size and geography, a high level of 
volunteer spirit and their own adaptability. Reinventing themselves 
by jumping from popular niche to popular niche, the group has done 
nothing but grow. But knowing the fate of other user groups, they are 
desperately looking for ways to stay relevant and vibrant. They've 
even put a public-relations firm on retainer to help promote special 
events.  

Most important, HAL-PC is on the hunt for youth: It has installed a 16-
year-old on its board of directors, hoping the high-school dropout 
will be an evangelist to a new generation of teens and young adults, 
whom it hopes to attract through computer-game parties and 
recruitment.  

"We want new blood," says HAL-PC President Ray Morris. "We want 
to bring in more kids."  

Little wonder. The group's aging membership was plain to see at the 
club's December meeting in the George R. Brown Convention 
Center, where more than 600 members gathered seeking bargains 
from a handful of vendors and to listen to a program about software 
innovations. Most of the members were men, and most appeared to 
be more than 50 years old. Members of other user groups around 
the nation say it's a common phenomenon for the clubs, which tend 
to attract retired men with time on their hands.  

But HAL-PC isn't taking demographics sitting still. Carla Cawlfield, 
the group's vice president for communications and overseer of its 
slick monthly magazine, says the group needs young members to 
stay big. And, she says, its needs to stay big so the $40 annual 
dues will maintain the 11,000-square-foot Galleria area 
headquarters where the hobbyist subgroups meet, and to continue 
supporting low-cost Internet access. It also offers help-line support 
and classes in the use of hardware and software.  

"Computers are still not truly user-friendly machines you can just 
plug in out of a box like a refrigerator and you're ready to go," Ms. 
Cawlfield says. "The 50% of households that are about to get 
computers are the people who need us most."  

Change is nothing new to HAL-PC. It started 19 years ago with only a 
handful of members, mostly men then in their 30s to 50s. It grew 
rapidly in the late '80s by selling then-popular five-inch floppy disks 
at a 73% discount -- once selling 70,000 of the now-obsolete disks at 
one meeting.  

In the mid-'90s, when other such groups began to shrink, it 
continued to expand by offering members Internet access for $9.95 
a month, about half what commercial providers charged. HAL-PC 
was the third Internet-service provider established in Houston, and 
membership in the group jumped to 12,000 from 8,000 families in 
about a year because of the service. (This year, it added high-speed 
digital subscriber line service for only $5 a month.)  

These services helped make HAL-PC the largest user group in the 
U.S. by 1996, when the former title-holder, the Boston Computer 
Society, dissolved into a collection of smaller special-interest 
groups.  

HAL-PC's membership now overwhelms all others. The next largest 
user club is in San Antonio, with fewer than 5,000 members, and the 
third largest has about 4,000 members in Washington, D.C. HAL-PC 
has survived partly on its own ability to change, but also thanks to a 
local population thick with engineers -- in the energy industry, at the 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the medical 
industry -- not to mention the local computer industry.  

But engineers, like mere mortals, get older. "Even though our 
member numbers are good, we're probably dying, too," says 
President Morris. "After all, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center came to do 
a prostate screening at one of our meetings because we're such a 
target-rich environment."  

So the club is looking to 16-year-old board member Matthew Castillo 
to help bring in a new generation of computer users. Mr. Castillo, 
who has been playing around on computers since he was nine 
years old, came to his first HAL-PC meeting about two years ago and 
quickly became involved in the group because he was impressed by 
the backgrounds and technical knowledge of the group members.  

Mr. Castillo dropped out of high school last year, although he is 
taking courses at Houston Community College. He was added to the 
board in July, even though he is too young to enter into contracts 
and has to abstain from board votes on contract matters.  

"Eventually the older people will stop coming," Mr. Castillo. "But 
we're doing things to bring in younger people."  

In part, Mr. Castillo intends to do that by playing to the group's 
existing strength: classes in the use of popular software. He also 
advocates the use of so-called LAN (local-area network) parties, in 
which game-playing teens gather in a large room to compete against 
each on networked computer games while eating junk food and 
listening to loud music.  

To expand the game program, the group wants to hook up with 
residents of Walden Internet Villages, three Houston apartment 
complexes that target computer-savvy tenants. The three complexes 
have a total of 600 units offering super-high-speed Internet access; 
two more complexes are planned for next year.  

Walden tenants are just the kind of people HAL-PC wants to attract. 
"It's not uncommon here for someone to knock on your door at 3 
a.m. to see if they can borrow some RAM or see if you have some 
extra CDs they can burn," says 26-year-old Alan LeFort, chief 
technical director at the complexes. "That's more likely than 
someone asking for a cup of sugar."  

Messrs. LeFort and Castillo want the two groups to sponsor game 
parties together, enabling HAL-PC to bring in new members from the 
complex and the complex to attract new tenants from the club. Says 
Mr. LeFort: "I think we can play to each other's strengths."

Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.





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