Club Database

Regional user groups (UK)

 AAUG

Club name RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL)
Contact Neil Spellings ROUGOL logo
Address Flat 5
19 Normanton Road
South Croydon
Surrey
CR2 7JU
Telephone 07785 935497
Email info@rougol.jellybaby.net
rougol@aaug.net
Web site http://rougol.jellybaby.net/
Meeting place Venues in central London
Meeting dates Monthly
Members 120+
Subscription Free
Coverage Greater London and beyond

Further information

Note: details of ROUGOL's new RISC OS education resource services and the RISC OS 2000 Show are provided below.

ROUGOL was formed by three ex-MAUG committee members who moved to the London area. Suggesting that the three of us meet up for a drink naturally extended into inviting others, too, and things rolled from there; a great many people were keen to get involved, and a strong committee and membership soon formed.

The speed and enthusiasm of the response was almost overwhelming (so much for the RISC OS market being dead); ROUGOL overtook MAUG as the fastest-growing RISC OS user group within a week, and is currently the third-largest regional group in the country. As in Manchester, people had originally assumed that there weren't that many RISC OS users in this part of the country, simply because no-one had asked if there were!

ROUGOL remains committed to a MAUG-like way of doing things (if possible!), including free membership and free meetings. We seem to have achieved this so far, and the future looks good too; we hope soon to have venues large enough to accommodate all our members.

Meetings to date have seen a great deal of general discussion of RISC OS, plus an in-depth demo of the benefits that sophisticated custom-developed RISC OS software can bring to a central London business, as well as hearing how Risc PCs were built, from one of the people involved in building them!

With the membership already including RISC OS Perl and emulation gurus, and other potential speakers including a whole variety of people and companies from the RISC OS community in the southeast, our programme of events is likely to be extremely lively.

ROUGOL maintains close links with RISCOS Ltd, the Association of Acorn User Groups and The ARM Club, and was heavily involved in assisting with the RISC OS '99 show at Epsom. It also has an 'overlap' with the membership of a number of other groups near London, and of course we try to avoid having our meetings clashing with theirs!

One of our aims is to hold a wide variety of meetings at a wide variety of places and times, so contact us if you'd like to be kept informed of the details of our events.

Attractions

Over the last year, we have held meetings in Walthamstow (north-east London), Waterloo (south London) and Soho (central west London), as well as smaller informal gatherings in Cambridge and Witham. Many of our meetings are easily accessible to those who live some distance away from London, due to the excellent rail links.

Members have seen the unique DataSafe, available from David Holden's APDL, the market-leading presentation package, OHP, and graphics package, Photodesk, from Chris Hornby's Spacetech, and a similar variety of star showings from a number of other visitors. We can't even begin to describe the range of products and facilities available from these and other dealers and developers who have visited ROUGOL... so perhaps you too should visit and see what's what!

All of our meetings have free entry, and there is no formal 'membership' or 'signing up' scheme; everyone is welcome. Just let us know your email address, phone number or postal address, and we'll keep you informed of meetings as they are arranged.

RISC OS 2000

ROUGOL was closely involved in organising the RISC OS 2000 show, "the RISC OS show of the year". This annual show, a replacement for the popular Acorn World, is now in its second year: it is your chance to meet and talk to all of the most important RISC OS companies and small developers in one place, at a prestige venue in southern England, along with theatre presentations from the larger companies, club and charity stands, and more. The show took place on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd October 2000.

Education resources

In addition to all this activity, ROUGOL has also set up the RISC OS Education discussion list. This is a list dedicated to constructive and helpful discussion about using RISC OS in education, of the sort that is quite often not possible in other more emotional forums.

The Education discussion list in turn led to the formation of the RISC OS Education ReSources (ROSES) Web site. This site, again hosted and maintained by ROUGOL, draws on the enthusiasm of hundreds of RISC OS users in education in order to provide teachers and others with a huge quantity of valuable material in RISC OS format. Can you donate anything? Or maybe some of it is useful to you?

To find out more about ROUGOL, the RISC OS Education discussion list or the RISC OS Education ReSources site, visit our Web site or contact us directly.