Working in Chicago

Not everyone would call it "working" but it is what we do. We had 2 live appearances scheduled during our Chicago stay and one YouTube show.

A morning class

On Saturday morning, we presented a "What does this button do?" seminar to the CAEUG computer club. It is a very small group, in fact, they didn't really believe we were coming to such a small group. But it turned out to be one of my favorite meetings of the tour. Maybe the personalities, maybe because it was in the morning (most are at night, when I'd rather be at home in my PJs with a glass of wine) - for whatever reason, it was a lively, fun, meeting. They say they learned a lot.

Live-Streaming our YouTube show

Next we delivered episode 176 of our "Button" show on YouTube. The topic was How to make a map with Google My Maps. We live-streamed it from the back of our Van - "Studio R" for Roadtrek!

A few days off

We had a few days to kill before our next presentation, so we needed to find a comfortable place to stay. What are the odds of finding a pleasant campground in the metropolitan Chicago area? Slim and none I'd say - so we were very pleasantly surprised to find Camp Bullfrog Lake on the west side of Chicago, right where we needed to be. What a pleasant respite.

40 Years later ...

With all its problems, I still love Facebook for how it keeps me in touch with old friends. Even friends I haven't seen for 40 years. Randy and I went to High School together in Florida. She moved to Chicago area some time ago. Because of Facebook I saw that she was cruising in Italy and returning to Chicago right now - while we are there. She asked where we were and, when I told her, she made arrangements to drive over and visit. How cool?! We had to talk fast to catch up on 40 years!

The last Chicago gig

Our final computer club presentation was for the Westside Chicago Computer Society. They had a nice turnout for our Google Photos seminar.

Now it's time to head south!

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What Does This Button Do?

Computer Clubs and Blogger

Our first stop in Ohio was the Canton computer user group and they asked us to give our seminar on how to use blogger.com to make simple websites, aka Blogs.

This is one of our favorite topics since our life story since 2003 is here on our blog and we use blogger to make it. We also use blogger too make our LearnGooglephotos.com website. Blogger is drop-dead easy and it is completely free. We think it is a wonderful option for clubs.

We had a small group, but they were really interested. I have every expectation that we will see some published blogs from this group in the near future.

It's interesting to note that I am creating this post with the recently updated Blogger Mobile app for Android. It has very few features, but at least those features (typing text and adding photos) work. For quite some time the app has been unusable because it insists on crashing every time you use it.

I am also thrilled to see an updated app because that signals that Google is not abandoning Blogger.

Geeks on Tour ... For Sure!

We left Cherry Hill on Saturday morning in order to get to Fairfax VA where we were booked to do a Google Photos seminar for a joint computer club at 1pm. They did a nice job of promoting us:



They had a large parking area marked off for us:

It was a good group - we thought the seminar went quite well. It was also live streamed over the Internet using something called Zoom. If we get a link to a recording, we'll post it here. And here's some comments we got afterward:

We really got a lot out of your presentation.  I intend to use Picasa and Google Photos.  The others, iPhotos, Aperature and Apple Photos didn’t stir up my interest enough to really put the time into learning them.

 Today's presenters were terrific!  Both my wife and I found their presentation to be extremely helpful and very current.  Jim and Chris could not have been any better!

We left Fairfax about 4:30 headed to our next stop in Raleigh, N.C. to do our weekly streaming show, "What Does This Button Do?" We were scheduled to do this week's show at the home studio of Martin Brossman about 270 miles away. We just needed to get on down the road, so we stayed in a Walmart parking lot that night, got our grocery shopping done, and made it to Martin's by 11am on Sunday. He has a nice big driveway!

This is a live show ... aka STRESSFUL! You have to wait until showtime to click the button that reads "go live" and, guess what! The button simply wasn't there! This was our 52d show and we'd never had this problem before. Jim had to quick set up an entirely new show stream. But, he did it! And Martin was great for rolling with the punches. We got started about 12 minutes late, but continued on with a successful show. The topic was the Amazon Echo and Martin runs a community on Google Plus about it. Click the image below to go to the community and learn more.

Here's the whole show (we cut out the first 10 minutes!) You can see all of our shows by viewing the Youtube Playlist for What Does This Button Do?


After the show, we went out for dinner and had a GREAT time with Martin. We are definitely "Geeks-of-a-Feather." He shared with us his expertise on Social Media for Business - and gave us a copy of his book. We shared with him our expertise on Google Photos and gave him our library-on-a-drive of all our videos and eBooks.

Then we got back on the road again sometime after 5. We really don't like to drive at night, and had no place we needed to be for a couple of days, so after a couple hours, we just found a rest area and pulled off. We cranked up the generator for power, threw something in the microwave for dinner, read emails for a while, and went to bed.

Home for the night - 9/13/15

Next stop, Hilton Head, where we are booked for several events. First off, a sold out hands-on class teaching people about using their smartphone cameras.

Then, a presentation for the Hilton Head Island Computer Club (click the image to view their website):

And, the next 2 days we have presentations for the Sun City Hilton Head Computer Club.

Thus is the life of the Geeks on Tour!

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What Does This Button Do?

Golden Gate Computer Society and Petaluma Elks

Our next ‘gig’ was to present one seminar and two hands-on classes for the Golden Gate Computer Society. They are located in San Rafael, CA and there are not a lot of campgrounds in the area, especially not affordable campgrounds! So we took advantage of our Elks membership and stayed at the Petaluma Elks lodge – the same place we stayed when we spoke to the Golden Gate club last year.  50amps and full hookups, we really like the Petaluma Elks lodge for RV parking. And, there’s a large park with good bike trails just down the street.

The seminar for GGCS was on the topic of smartphones and tablets, we give an introduction for people who don’t know what they are, then we demonstrate specific features. It went well. Many people said they were amazed at all that these devices can do – they had no idea! If you're interested, here's our class handout.

The next day, we held 2 hands on classes; one for Android phones and tablets and another for iPhones and iPads. We had about a dozen people for each class. We said we would take up to 20, but I was glad for the smaller number. Unless we have teaching assistants who can help people – a dozen is about as much as Jim and I can handle in a hands-on situation. One guy took both classes and told us he would travel many miles to attend anything we taught! He’s been a member and following our teachings for several years. We like people who like to learn!

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Riverside RV Park, Port Charlotte

We love it when RV parks ask us to visit and present our seminars!  This visit to Riverside was especially successful.  Thanks to John Goodrich, who attended several of our seminars at the Good Sam rally in Daytona, we were invited to stay at Riverside and present our Smartphone seminar to their computer club at the park. 

John introducing us to his computer group

 

He must have done an awesome job at promoting us because they usually have 35-40 people at their meetings and our audience was around 150!

 

We were warmly welcomed around the campfire in the evening

A friendly group and a great fire at Riverside RV campground!

 

And a nice paddle on the Peace River with the kayaking group in the morning.  Whew!  These retired folks wear us out!

Paddling with the Kayakers at Riverside RV Park in Port Charlotte

A Week at Hilton Head

A very nice week at Hilton Head.  I could get used to this!  We came at the invitation of the Sun City Hilton Head Computer Club, and specifically Catherine Tracy.  Catherine has been a follower, and a member, of Geeks on Tour for several years.  We gave our Smartphone presentation both at the Sun City club, and at the Hilton Head Island Computer Club.  We didn't charge anything, but both clubs paid us a little anyway :-) in addition to feeding us several meals!  And we also sold a few of our DVDs/membership combos at the presentation.  It really is true - do what you love and the money comes!  Several people also signed up for memberships online this week - we assume that at least some of them were as a result of the seminars we presented.

Delightful people, beautiful weather, and a relaxed time.  A very nice week indeed.

We started the week by attending a class!  This is the Sun City Computer Lab
and they let us use Macintosh computers while Catherine taught a Picasa class.

We stayed at the Sun City resident's RV storage lot where they have a few sites with hookups.
Good 4G and we had the place to ourselves.

We even took advantage of the Sun City Fitness Center.
The swimming was great, but we enjoyed the hot tub even more!

Jim demonstrating smartphone use to the Sun City Hilton Head Computer Club

Jack Wilfore introducing us to the Hilton Head Island Computer Club

Showing one of our smartphone tutorial videos at the Hilton Head Island Computer Club

Getting a tour around the island before the meeting.

We even had a couple days unscheduled where I was able to get started on a new tutorial video series on Organizing your Pictures with Picasa.  This has been on my list for quite a while.  The hardest part is the foundation, setting up a computer with the right folders of pictures to teach the techniques I want to show.  That takes a lot of thought and quiet time - something we get little of in this lifestyle.  I also uploaded a new smartphone video that's been on my list for a while - it's about how I mark whatever RV park we are currently in using Google Maps, so that I can easily navigate back there from wherever I am.  When we started this lifestyle, my greatest fear was driving to a grocery store and not having a clue how to get back 'home.' Not a problem anymore.

Today we plan to take advantage of the RV washing station here, then hit the road and head towards home .. Fort Lauderdale.  We will be stopping for a couple nights at Anastasia Island Florida State park.

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