Comment by utexaspunk

It's sort of like the PC User Groups that were more or less rendered redundant by the internet. I remember going to the HAL-PC (Houston Area League of PC Users) monthly general meetings as a kid and there could easily be over a thousand people there when they'd do things like having Microsoft and Lotus come and present their latest versions of Excel/123 in a "shootout". There were great door prizes, too. The internet came and there just wasn't a need for that anymore. It's kind of a shame, though, just because it felt like a real community thing.