to an MTAG meeting, that you are going to wonder if it is all worth while. In fact, if you've been around for a couple of years, you'll wonder if the membership THE FOLLOWING IS BY RICHARD CLEE OF METRO-TORONTO AUG and while it is directed to the members of his group much of what he says is certainly applicable to ALL ADAMITES. 
 
It makes good reading as does all of Rich's writings.

   There comes a time, as you wade through snow up to your armpits in -20 cold to get to an MTAG meeting, that you are going to wonder if it is all worth while. In fact, if you've been around for a couple of years, you'll wonder if the membership itself is even worth it any more.

   After all, you've been to the meetings and gained an awareness of what your ADAM can do. You've bought all the software, PD and commercial, you can see any present or future use for. And you know what the sources are. The same is true of the hardware. You know who fixes ADAMs, and who the suppliers are. What has the club done for you - lately?

   Are there any real reasons why you should squander the price of a tankful of gas for two dozen meetings, half of which at least you won't attend, and thirty pages of newsletter chatter every second month? Or is there more to club membership, something you're overlooking?

   Maybe you just bought the ADAM because it's the best typewriter ever made, and have no ambitions beyond using Smartwriter. What are you going to do when you run out of printer ribbons? Sure, the club will sell them to you - if the club still exists, and if you can find it.

   People and institutions aren't eternal. The club executive exists at the pleasure of the membership. The whole executive, or any member, can be dismissed at any meeting. Suppose the members decide on a change, and you aren't there? Suppose a population shift makes them decide to move to Mississauga? Suppose your regular, possibly only, contact quits or moves? 

   Then - who do you turn to when you need a ribbon? Where's a buddy to ask why your printer has suddenly taken to trying to beat its way through its side panel? Who might guess what subtle change in your style has caused the line marker to go into a terminal death spin and eat all your text, every time you try to save it?

   Perhaps you gave the ADAM to your kids. They're doing fine - using it for homework, doing drills, playing games. If you're not there, who will tell you where to get SmartLogo when the youngest starts computer training in school? Where will you get the notice of new games, reviews that tell you which to buy (and which not to waste your money on), and hints on how to solve the mysteries and build scores on the action types?

   Perhaps you're a serious hacker, and bored out of your skull at meetings because explanations you've heard a hundred times still have to be repeated for novice members. You know everything in the newsletter and more; maybe even wrote part of it. But won't you miss the regular contact with Syd and Gary and Wade and Joseph, and the visitors from other ADAM groups who so often favour us with their presence? Won't you miss (let's be honest) the ego trip of seeing your work in print, especially now that with the developing ADAM News Network the good stuff is likely to be reprinted - with your by-line - all over the continent? Where will you find the corner flea market where you can dispose of your old printer to subsidize a colour dot-matrix, dump your early colour monitor for one that takes full advantage of the A.I.M. board, pick up a hot-rod EPROM for your second disc drive?

   It's easy to say that though members may come and members may go, the club will continue. It ain't necessarily so. In Ontario, the Kitchener club is failing fast. In big cities, such powerful groups as the Montreal and Houston, Texas are history. Where, now, can their former members turn for support?

   Your ADAM is an orphan computer. You know from bitter experience no dealer or commercial computer outfit wants to know you. You also know, from your MTAG membership, that you have a number of ADAM-enthusiast buddies, in your neighbourhood, in your city, and in hotbeds all over North America, who will fall all over themselves (sometimes at a price) to cater to your every need and whim. You have a very well-supported computer, the envy even of some equivalent model computer owners whose makers, while still in business, have long since abandoned their roots.

   The ADAM support system will continue to exist as long as there is a demand for it. But for the demand to exist in reality, there has to be a way for developers to economically get out word of their new products, and for ADAM users to locate and communicate with suppliers who can't afford to advertise except by the most direct, specialist channels.

   It's easy for Reedy or E&T or The Software Factory or M.W. Ruth to meet your needs when one catalog sent to MTAG will notify a couple of hundred users of their offerings. If you're not a member, how do they find you? If they don't find you, how will you find them? Somewhere out there is someone desperate to sell something you are desperate to buy, that last completing touch needed to bring your ADAM to perfection. As long as you are a member of MTAG (or of course any similar club) the contact is there. What happens if you walk away?

   As long as all ADAM users stay as a tight community, tied together within and between their clubs, the visible market is there to keep everything from the smallest supplies to the most grandiose add-ons available for you. But when the clubs decline, the market dies too, and support dries up.

   Yes, ploughing through the snow is tough. Many activities can be boring; the club has to serve every member, not just you. But in behind the scenes, in opening and keeping open the channels of communication, in making visible the mass of known interested users, your name on MTAG's membership list keeps available the support you count on. Because MTAG is you. Every new member helps you; every dropout brings nearer the day you will call for help and find "that number is not in service". If you value your ADAM and all the rewards it can bring to you, stick with the people who are working to support you. 
 
se any similar club) the contact is there. What happens if you walk away?

