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Jan 25

AppleUsers.org Disc of the Month LogoThe AppleUsers.org Disc of the Month project has been running for a couple of years now and each year we continue to refine the process and 2010 will see a couple of minor changes.

Frequency of Disc Releases

With the changes to the frequency of the Spotlight release dropping to six issues per year, we also contemplated dropping the release of the Discs to six times a year, but upon consultation with a couple of User Groups, we have decided to remain with a monthly release schedule for the Discs of the Month.

They will continue to be released in the last week of the “previous” month to the issue date (ie February’s Disc will be released in the last week of January) and there are provisions for a couple of “bonus” Discs to be released during the year, including a special 2-DVD collection in March or April.

As the Spotlight will only be produced every second month in 2010, we will be looking at promoting TWO Disc of the Month titles full promo flyers in each issue… the “current” month’s release and the “previous” month’s title, except for the February issue which will only list February’s title. We may also continue to make a passing mention of previous Disc titles been available.

Promo Movies for the Discs

The major change to the Disc of the Month in 2010 will be that we will no longer be producing the Promo Movies for the Discs.

As much as the complier of the Discs, Nicholas Pyers, enjoys producing the Promo Movies (in fact it is the part of the project he gets the most enjoyment out of) the amount of time and effort required to produce them outweighs the time and effort to compile the actual Disc contents by a factor of nearly 3:1 (ie for every hour Nicholas spent compiling the Discs content, he would spend three hours working on the Promo Movie) and as so few User Groups are using them at their meetings, we felt that Nicholas’ time and energy would be better directed into other areas.

The Discs themselves, the Promo Flyers and Disc Labels will continue to be produced.

If you want to use something to promote the Discs during your “President’s Address” segment or similar, then we recommend you use the Disc Label or the first page of the Promo Flyer in your Keynote presentation. The Disc Labels in particular lend themselves to various animations and most of the Promo Flyers include a simple sentence summarizing the Disc contents that can also be included on the slide.

Changing the “About Us” file

Since the inception of the Disc of the Month project we have included a “empty” 5MB file with the name of ‘REPLACE THIS FILE with YOUR MUG “About us”‘ on each Disc with the expectation that each User Group would trash this file and place a PDF, QuickTime Movie or Folder with information about their own User Group on the Disc. However, feedback has proven that very few groups bother doing this.

So, effective of the February 2010 Disc of the Month title, we will no longer include this file on the Disc Images. Instead we will include the A4 sized advertisement we have designed promoting All Australian Apple User Groups.

This advertisement is supplied as a PDF and individually lists the active Apple User Groups in Australia, with each groups name acting as a hyperlink to their respective websites (if the group has one) and a central URL pointing the simple MUG Listing we maintain over at the AppleUsers.org website.

It is now a requirement that ALL User Groups wishing to continue participating in the Disc of the Month project leave this advertisement on the Discs they produce.

One Response to “Changes to the Disc of the Month in 2010”

  1. Web Developer Deluxe: February 2010’s Disc of the Month | AppleUsers.org Says:

    […] supports from the DotM Archive. If you need the User ID and Password, just contact Nicholas. Also, remember that as of this Disc, we won’t be producing the Promo Movies anymore and the new “Introducing Australian […]