Stanford Palo Alto Users Group (SPAUG)

History of SPAUG

Two Stanford students, Kevin Ohlson and Mike Van Waas organized SPAUG in early 1983. The original name was SPACL (Stanford Palo Alto Club). The first newsletter was dated April, 1983, but by that time, they had already had a few meetings and had made some decisions regarding the agenda, dues, etc. The original officers were Kevin Ohlson, president, Wes Danskin, treasurer, Mike Van Waas, Librarian and Linda DeSosa, Membership. Meetings were held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, with frequent notices in the newsletter of room changes. After a year, Polya Hall became the permanent location. Early meetings consisted of club business from 7 to 7:30. The guest came on from 7:30 to 8. From 8 to 8:30, SIGS I, which consisted of RAM, languages, graphics and Palo Alto Computer Cable. From 8:30 to 9, SIGS II, which included entrepreneurs, education, hardware and novice. At each meeting, Kevin gave a summary of the interesting and pertinent articles from all the computer magazines. The meeting ended at 9. Dues were $10 per individual and $15 per family. Emphasis was given to the acquisition and cataloguing of the club software library and the formation of a bulletin board. The informal planning meetings took place the Monday before the Wednesday meeting at Talbott’s bar and grill on California Street in Palo Alto. They ate, drank beer and planned. One of the big items was bulk purchases of diskettes. The boxes of 10 diskettes were $41 and sold out fast.

For the first several months, there was a cash flow problem, but with the $10 dues and about twenty members, they were soon in the black. There was never a membership drive; there were enough eager and confused new computer owners that a users group was a welcome addition to the local community. At that time, the Silicon Valley Users Group was already flourishing. Our new club was formed as a reaction to the large size of that club, with the intent of being smaller and more personal. At a point in time (perhaps after two years) the club had grown to over a hundred and there were discussions about when we would be too large and at what point to stop taking in new members. Several years ago, some of our members were seriously concerned when our membership was reaching 200. (Over the last few years, that’s one worry we haven’t had).

In October of 1983, the Newsletter became PRT SC and the format of the meetings was: 7:00 General Club Business, 7:40 Guest speaker, 8:45 Random Access, 9 conclusion of meeting. In June of 1987, the newsletter’s name evolved into PRinT SCreen.

A bit of SPAUG trivia: In November 84, SPAUG member. Becky Bridges was leading the novice group, in January, 1985, she was Vice-President, in March, 1985 she was Newsletter editor and in 1997, she acquired a SPAUG mother-in-law by becoming Becky Bridges Altman. Rick, in turn, became a SPAUG member, then became editor of PrinTScreen and then President.

SPAUG’s second year had an dues increase to $25, which included use of the club library disk and the ability to copy any part of the growing library of public domain software, copies of back newsletters and the use of the ever-growing bulletin board. The bulletin board had the same info as in our library, but many members preferred to download the software from our library computer. The procedure was to first check out the library disk, decide programs you wanted to copy, (there was a description and evaluation of each program on the library disk), make an appointment with the person who kept the library, and go over and he would copy the programs on your blank disks.

Early guests:

“Larry Blair, VP marketing of Fontastic, will present and demo their program which makes your graphics printer stand on its side. Graphics and words on the same page!”

Tall Tree Systems, Los Altos and the talk was entitled, “What Could Ewe Do With 512K of RAM!”

“DOS update 2.0 available for $60. This is said to be the best value in town. It increases disk storage from 320K to 360K!”