Escapade

The last rally of the month! The Escapees RV Club. It's called the Escapade and it was held in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to our normal seminars during the rally, we taught a two day pre-rally class on smartphone photography and Google Photos. This is a hands-on class, limited to 16 people so they can really use their phone and learn to manage the photos on their own device. We pair people up and give them exercises to complete so they learn by doing.

This was a busy rally, with nearly 1,000 RVs, and 2,600 attendees, many were walk-ins from the local area. We gave 5 seminars and all were very well attended. They had to close the door and turn people away for the Google Maps session.

By the time we got to the last seminar, many of these people had seen us several times and they were open to playing with us. I loved that Jim reminded me to turn on the video camera for this one:

Jim set up our "Geeky Tiki" in the marketplace where people could come talk to us and sign up for membership. Thanks so much to Joyce Ackley who helps us out in our booth - otherwise most people would have just seen an empty booth since we were in class so much. Thanks Joyce!

We not only worked hard, but played hard this week as well. I won't post the video of me dancing :-) But here we are with friends that we only see at these rallies, we were so glad it worked out one night to gather for dinner, drinks and stories! 

Jim remodeled the Geeky Tiki so it now has wheels. When it was time to tear down, he just rolled it home!

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Geek Week at Palm Creek

Palm Creek is a huge, amazing, RV resort in Casa Grande, Arizona. We have a long history there, starting with supporting Coach Connect Wi-Fi back in 2004-5. Our official work at the park was over then, but Sue Hepler, a year-round resident who is very active in the computer clubs, keeps in touch with us and arranges our visits any time we're in the area. You can read more about Sue because she is our member spotlight this month.

This year she arranged a "Geek Week" where we taught a couple classes that she put onto the main park activities calendar, one for the Computer Club, and one for the Android club. Yes, there is a computer club AND an Android club! We taught Smartphone Basics, Blogger, Google Photos, and Android Tips. Sue wrote about it in her own blog here. You need to scroll down quite a ways to get to the Geek Week part.

Back in 2007-8 I used Blogger to set them up with a website to be an index of club websites. I taught several people at Palm Creek how to use Blogger so that each activity club could have a place of their own to keep track of club events and photos. I'm amazed that, ten years later, it's still a very active website with 19 clubs listed. Check out the Pickleball club! Palm Creek boasts 32 dedicated Pickleball courts. These guys are serious!

We're happy to teach at Palm Creek anytime we're in the west. Thanks so much to Sue for making it happen!

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Leisure World and Silveridge Computer Clubs

If you want to be someplace where you get help with your computer and can learn anything you want, then find an active senior living community like Leisure World or Silveridge in Mesa, Arizona! We know of many such communities all over the country where people with like interests get together. You can find quite a comprehensive listing of these computer clubs at APCUG.org. That stands for Association of PC User Groups. The "PC" is not limiting - they teach Apple products, mobile devices of both Android and iOS flavors, and even Chromebooks and sometimes Linux.

We meet a lot of people as we travel the country, present at RV rallies, and do our weekly online show. Two of those are Chris & Edith Wrzenski who live at Leisure World and Ron Brown of Silveridge. They all got together and arranged for us to give a couple of seminars to a combined meeting of their two computer club groups. We loved how they put up signs at every turn to show people where to go:

Our Google maps presentation was one of the biggest groups all month. We also taught a session on Google Photos. At the end of the day we counted 34 new and renewing members to Geeks on Tour!

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FMCA - Family Motor Coach Assn Rally in Chandler, AZ

A great rally. It was well attended - I think I heard 2,400 coaches. It was a fun venue with the old western town theme. We had a nice room for our seminars. It held about 350 people, it had a permanent stage and good Internet connection. And, we had the same room for all 5 seminars - that is SO much nicer than having to haul all our stuff to a different part of the fairgrounds for every class!

The best part of rallies is getting to hear directly from our followers, people like Sally who says she never would have used her smartphone for anything but a phone ... but then she learned from us!

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We made it to Arizona in time for our first class.

We completed our commute from Florida to Arizona on February 27, just in time to check in to the Leaf Verde RV park and get cleaned up and rested for our first "gig" at the Sun City Grand Computer Club where we were scheduled to teach Google Photos on March 1.

We chose this park, and even made reservations before leaving Florida, because we knew it had really good Verizon Internet service. There is a cell tower right on the property. Even with that excellent service however, the place was crowded enough that live-streaming our show that week was not as good as we hoped.
What Does This Button Do? Episode 112: How to Learn from Geeks on Tour

Then we just drove the car over to Surprise, AZ where the Sun City Grand Computer club was all set up for us. We so enjoy teaching Google Photos.

We still had a few more days before we had to leave for Chandler, so Jim took the opportunity to fly his new drone. This happens to be the exact same spot where he first flew his first drone 2 years ago.

We also took advantage of the entertainment at the park and saw a tribute to Johnny Cash.

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Further your computer education**Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletters**

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