Email User's Group 96/97

 

David Lam

On the 6th & 9th May 97, the first Email User's Group meeting was held in Cantonese and English respectively. A group of staff with great enthusiasm for email joined our discussion on the use of Eudora Pro 3.0, the new standard email client in our campus. In roughly two hours, many useful tricks of Eudora Pro were covered after a brief introduction to its basic functions. Interesting issues brought up in the meetings include "Using Eudora Pro at Home", "Automatic Responding to Mails matching specific criteria", "Using Eudora with Multiple Email Accounts", "Using Address Book and Mailing Lists" and many others. We also investigated why some of us received warning messages about exceeding disk quota in our email accounts. At the end of the meetings, we all had our puzzles solved.

Our second meeting was also a success. The focus of the meeting was on the sending and receiving of Binary Attachments using Eudora. The secrets in Encoding and Decoding binary files was also covered in great detail.

The aims of the Email User's Group, formed and organized by the CSC, are threefold: to Promote the use of email to staff; to Assist staff in all email related technical difficulties encountered and to serve as an additional Channel to collect staff requirements for an email system which will be useful in our planning of the University's email direction. To achieve these goals, we will hold regular meetings to discuss commonly encountered email problems and illustrate them by case studies. We will also introduce good users' practices and tricks which are useful in preventing and getting around email traps.

Instead of another formal, fast-paced and lecture-like function, each User's Group meeting will be informal and full of discussions. Each participant can share his/her email experience with others and at the same time enjoying a cup of coffee. Even if one does not have anything in particular to discuss, listening may also be beneficial.

Normally, each meeting will have three parts: the "Hotspot" which focuses on the hottest technological issues, the "Novice" in which less technical or general usage topics will be discussed and the "Forum" which is the most stimulating and exciting part where participants are encouraged to talk about their practical difficulties in using email.

Subsequent meetings will be held in the months to come. Stay tuned for the announcements. Hope to see you there!

Computing Services Centre City University of Hong Kong ccnetcom@cityu.edu.hk