Kitchener Waterloo Internet Users Group

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"A Fun Place to Learn About the Internet"

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The History of KWIUG

KWIUG had its beginnings in July 1995 in a public meeting arranged by Pete Dixon.

The Internet was at that point just impacting the public consciousness. Pete saw the opportunity for helping people learn about this new medium and the chance of meeting like minded people, as he had seen with a FoxPro user group in London and a database user group (dBUG) in Waterloo that he had been instrumental in forming.

The first meeting for KWIUG (a name yet to be coined) was advertised only with a few posters placed in drug stores and the local computer bookstore. Approximately 30 people showed up at that first meeting at the Kitchener Public Library. At that meeting Pete's ideas were listened to and expanded by the group. John Zinger, an important contributor to the group, attended that first meeting as did several other long-term KWIUG attendees.

It was decided to attempt to find use of one of the large rooms in the Davis Centre by using a contact that Pete already had thru the dBUG group. This excellent room with full audio and visual facilities has been provided free to the group since that time and has contributed much to the group's success.

The group's initial formula of individual member presentations has served over the years to present an array of interesting speakers and topics to the local Internet-interested community. What's in the the future for KWIUG? Hopefully more of the same, as the Internet grows in scope and functionality so should KWIUG.

Written by Pete Dixon
May 16, 1998

  From: "Zolly" <zolly@zolltec.com>
  Subject: KWIUG History
  Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 18:43:04 -0400
  Organization: Zolltec Computer Consulting
  I was also one of those first few people at the Library in July of 1995.
  In fact I was the first guest speaker at the new location the following
  month. (William Davis Centre)
  I spoke on FTP. We had a dialup connection to Hookup Communications.
  John Zinger (a very good friend & mentor to me today) supplied the
  computer & I did the lecture on FTP. As you may know the TCP stack was
  very unstable in those days and caused the computer to crash often.
  Needless to say, I was left to imporvise durring my lecture because the
  connection was lost or crashed or we were re-bootingJohns computer
  often. ....If we were connected I would click here and download the
  index of files ... It was rather funny and subtly realistic as many
  people in the audience experienced the same crashes at home. The
  audience was filled with amazement with the internet so the crashes
  didn't have a bad effect at all. In fact we were hailed as gurus back
  then so everyone was glad that stuff happened to us also. It somehow
  made them feel better.
  That is my bid to add to the history of the KWIUG
  Zolly Simon  A+, Net+, MCP
  www.zolltec.com

We are looking for a volunteer(s) to provide further historical information regarding KWIUG to publish on this page. If you are that person, please forward this information directly to the KWIUG Webmaster.

Thank you.

Kitchener Waterloo Internet Users Group

"A Fun Place to Learn About the Internet"

The History of KWIUG

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