WatRMUG was starting in October 1986 by a couple students and myself. We started meeting the Psychology Department at the University of Waterloo. We grew fairly quickly and expanded into the community. We outgrew the room in Psychology and moved to Waterloo Collegiate Institute. We met in the auditorium there. We did this for a number of years and our numbers at some meetings approached 150 people.

We ran a 2-line BBS (FirstClass) out of my home. We got a deal from Bell Canada on the phone lines. The BBS initially had about 30 active members. The school board gave us lots of hassles about using the WCI auditorium. Mike offered the use of his school so we moved to New Dawn.

At the same time the internet started to become very popular and a couple of the big needs satisified by user groups became less important. Tech support became more readily available through E-mail and News Groups (eventually the web) and file sharing and distribution became easy with web-based file servers. Companies started dropping their user group programs and no longer would come to meetings to present. The numbers at meetings dropped to below 50 and the number of users of the BBS dropped to 4 or 5. We abandoned the BBS to save money.

Over the years we have re-invented ourselves to what we are now, a smaller, fun group that likes to learn and help each other out.

Richard Crispin
WatRMUG Founding Member