Thanks to exploring the Google calendar (when playing with public calendars related to Ottawa) I found the Ottawa Mac User group's calendar and discovered that

a) they exist

b) they hold monthly meetings in nice Irish pub at the Market

The group is actually named Bytown Mac User's group, for the reasons explained on the Web site or here.

So I decided to go there. I thought - what the heck, worst thing that can happen that I will have a glass of Guinness at the pub I never visited before, which is not a bad thing at all. And besides, the Rideau Chapters store is very close (the plan B). It turned out pretty well, though - meeting was interesting. The group is fairly small (I believe somewhere about 10-15 people) but nice, friendly, dedicated and interesting. It sort of reflects the Mac representation in the market. Unlike when attending Microsoft users events, where almost everybody is by profession tied to the software development of IT business, here larger percentage of people did something non-primarily computer related for living - like creative writing, art, video processing. Again - it represents well the real world situation. Not too many people that actually do software development (other than Web design) but there was one guy who is exploring the same path as I am looking for: Objective C and Cocoa development.

The presentation was focused on MAc based backups and was very informal, kind of cross between group discussion and presentation. No slides, just demo and talk, short and sweet. I have learned a cool feature that I was not aware of before: zooming feature of the OS-X. Just try - from any application - holding down Ctrl key and double-finger scroll, and see for yourself. This is so amazingly practical for the demo's and presentation - no font size changes, just zoom in/zoom out. Cool.

I will be back next month :-). Gabo/Milos - interested to join me ?