Talk:Berkeley Macintosh Users Group
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Hmmm, Notability concerns? I think we can find some good citations. I'm probably too closely tied to much of BMUG's history to edit it directly without it seeming self-promotional, so (pending a closer read of Wikipedia's policies in this regard) I'll focus on supplying info here to make the finding-citations job easier for anyone who feels inclined to work on the main article.
- Start with 1985 articles by John Dvorak in InfoWorld and NY Times... each of those was good for 1000 members. Plus a late 1984 Macworld article. Members in dozens of countries.
- Apple product manuals starting with HyperCard in Summer, 1987, listed BMUG as a national/global user group contact
- The book "The Cult of Macintosh" talks a bit about BMUG, IIRC.
- A movie coming in 2008 does, too.
- There's a Computer Chronicles (KCSM-TV) national show (80's or 90's... on Google Video) that featured a BMUG software library exploration.
- I seem to recall a BMUG "newsletter" (400-page book) appearing in a movie or TV show.
- The BMUG PD-ROM was the first announced commercially-sold CD-ROM on the Mac - 1988.
- It was the largest independent Mac user group.
- Weekly meetings made it unusual... as did publishing the newsletter only twice a year. And various books (Zen and the Art of Resource Editing, The Tao of AppleScript)
- don't forget the hardware: MacRecorder, BMUGNet kits (later PhoneNet from Farallon), keyboard cables (by convicted killer/America's Most Wanted star Enrique Zambrano)
- MacWEEK magazine cited BMUG folks some number of times
- Quite a few ex-BMUG-staff-and-core-volunteers ended up working at Apple, Microsoft, or Farallon/Netopia - some may have credited it in their bios or articles.
- BMUG had a booth presence at every domestic Macworld Expo (SF/Boston/NY/DC) during its run.
- Gates and Jobs both did live presentations at BMUG meetings in Berkeley
- It spun off meetings/chapters in Cupertino, SF, and Tokyo, and eventually a Boston branch
