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At the last monthly meeting on March 27th we initiated a new activity – a “LAN party”. It was the brainchild of the youngest member of the Board. Using the Ethernet hubs that PACS owns, he set up a truly local area network on a few tables in the cafeteria. He invited any and everyone to bring their computers to the meeting and hook into this LAN to participate in multi-player gaming. We publicized this event, taking it as yet another way to draw new people to the PACS meetings.

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Gaming may not be of great interest to many or even most PACS members. But we try to be a diversified user group, and gaming certainly occupies a significant niche in the pantheon of computing activities. Several small companies specialize in high-powered gaming computers, and even the big boys like Dell now offer gaming-configured PCs. Even more important than diversity – gaming attracts a young crowd. That’s what we got, and some of them joined PACS that very day! PACS has definitely become a graying organization, and I for one, the oldest member of the Board, very much want to see young people come in and become active in our club. We will all benefit from it.