Alan Fedder Joins UniForum Board

Local user group involvement is his top priority


Click here for a biography of Alan

Alan Fedder is serving his first elected term on the UniForum Board of Directors, but he's not new to the board. For the past three years, Fedder, executive director of the Washington Area Unix Users' Group (WAUUG) has served an apprenticeship of sorts as a non-voting board member representing affiliate groups. Now, after taking his seat as a regular member, Fedder is hoping to use his vote to encourage stronger affiliate ties.

"Time will tell and the other board members will also tell," Fedder says. "I have one out of nine votes. I would like to strengthen the affiliate program and have closer ties with the affiliates." Specifically, he wants more members of affiliate groups to be joint members of UniForum, as well as for the association to have affiliated organizations in all major cities.

"We have to attract new groups," he says. "We have to go out and let them know that we're interested, but we have to find them first. We need to let them know that we don't bite and that we can do some things together better than we can do them apart."

A Baltimore Native

Fedder was raised in the Baltimore area, where his father and other family members had printing and advertising businesses. Alan graduated from Baltimore City College, the third oldest public high school in the nation, and went on to the University of Maryland. After receiving his degree in English and marketing, he took a job as direct mail advertising manager for a local department store. After five years, he joined the Newhoff-Blumberg advertising agency in Baltimore, where, among other things, he was a producer of "Dialing for Dollars," a syndicated radio and television show.

In the late 60's, Fedder became marketing director of Fedder Data Centers, a family-owned computer service bureau serving accounting firms. He handled promotion, seminars, workshops, training sessions, and advertising until the company went out of business. Then he spent five years with coat-maker London Fog, still in Baltimore, as advertising and sales promotion director.

In 1973, Fedder started his own consulting company in graphic arts. Eventually, he added human resources consulting, staffing, training, and out-placement services to his business and found himself dealing more and more with companies in the computer industry. He joined WAUUG because his customers were porting applications to Unix. "It was affecting the way my clients did business," he says. "Most of them, at some point, sold entire turnkey systems. Then they started to port to these Unix boxes and stopped becoming hardware vendors. Instead of selling a $20,000 system they were selling a $1,000 piece of software. That changed the way they had to do business and it changed the way they did business with me as well."

Built Up WAUUG

In 1988, Fedder began looking for new work and found it helping WAUUG build itself up - looking for corporate sponsorships, building membership, and putting together a newsletter. "I had a strong graphics background and I knew how to sell advertising," he says. "Within a month of starting that, it was obvious to me that this was a growing market and that this group could be successful. I found myself putting more time into WAUUG and less time into my own business. Within a few months, it became a full-time job." WAUUG hired Fedder as its first full-time executive director in 1989 and he soon became president of the group as well.

Fedder finds satisfaction in working with Unix industry people. "It's a very smart, dedicated, motivated group. Life is very interesting these days. As confusing as the Unix marketplace can be, heading up a user group can be just as challenging because you have to be on top of those changes. I don't have to know my 1s and 0s, but I do have to know the issues affecting the industry. But those issues are constantly changing. You're never quite walking on solid ground. The ground is always shifting beneath your feet."

Fedder is convinced that UniForum members need a local group to check in with in order to feel part of the organization. "The successful international organizations have local chapters," he says. "You have to have a place where people can go and talk together. They've got to see something monthly like a local newsletter or a local meeting, with a local telephone number to call so they feel a part of something. I'd like to see a local user group in every large and medium-sized city. It's a goal, and it would be one step to take."

--Don Dugdale