Gerrards Cross Computer Club was originally created as a self help group in the late 1980s and holds regular meetings in Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, UK.
As time went by, and the Internet was becoming a rapidly growing source of information, the club created a web site in around 2004 to both, act as a reference source of information for members, and to specifically to promote the club’s activities to prospective new members by adding initially summaries of the topics discussed at the club meetungs, and later, the Microsoft PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress presentations to the meetings. John had joined in 1992 and regularly presented technical subjects at these meetings. He also actively participated in discussions with the committee leading to the decision to create the initial club web site. John always created his documents, in common with other presenters, with public publication on the website in mind.
The unwritten club policy of providing public access to presentations, and other support material, via the website continued from 2004 until recently when the committee decided to completely redesign the club’s web site and reimplement it using WordPress. As part of this “improvement” they intended to create a member's only area where the previously publicly accessible material would be hidden behind a member’s login. The committee apparently believe this would provide an added benefit for members and that would encourage new members to join.
John had always designed his presentation, and other supporting material, carefully so that it could not only be used as reference material for club members but also demonstrate to prospective new members that the club did have significant technical expertise to benefit new members. John had always made it crystal clear that all material he created must be published in a public area and must never be placed a paywall (i.e. members only).
The committee however was not prepared to change their view. It should have been easy to create a public access space as well as having a members only area. The new GXCC web site was launched but all public links from it to John’s site have been removed. There is now no technical content, visible to the public, on the GXCC website! All links back to this site have been removed.
As a direct consequence, and with great regret, John is therefore no longer a member of GXCC but however continues to support many of the GXCC members who have now joined his new support group which is not restricted to (ex) GXCC members. This decision could be reviewed if the club changes its position.
John continues to publish, and update, his tutorial material as Guides in PDF format rather then giving presentations in PowerPoint and then publishing PDF versions. All of his recent material has been transferred across to this site and rebranded, where necessary, with his own logo. New guides are added regularly.
John hopes that visitors to this site will find the published material useful. Comments and suggestions are welcomed. Contributions from other authors are welcomed!
The link to the “controversial” GXCC web site is https://gxcc.org.uk/