Our volunteer of the Month this time around is Mike Espinosa.  I had only seen Mike's name in the PC Alamode, but had never met him until recently.  He turns out to be a friendly, enthusiastic guy, who obviously likes people and happens to be nuts about computers.  He helped out at the ITEC booth for Alamo PC, and persuaded several people to sign up for 10 year memberships in AlamoPC.  Just kidding! But he certainly is enthusiastic!

Mike is President of Technology Coaching, Inc., a technology training and consulting firm specializing in group seminars and in private coaching in technology. Specialty areas are Microsoft productivity applications (Office, etc) and the PDA/Handheld computer market (Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs).  PDA means Personal Digital Assistant, and is all the rage among the business-oriented crowd these days.  Mike was showing us at ITEC all the amazing possibilities currently available with his handheld.  His prediction for the future is that most of us will carry around handhelds, and then use a docking station in our office or home in order to plug in to a keyboard, larger monitor, and larger hard drive.  These will all link together so that essential information is available at both locations.

All that leads naturally into his current main activity with Alamo PC.  He shares duties with John Woody as SIG leader for the PDA SIG.  The course description on page 60 in PC Alamode says the class covers all aspects of PDAs and Handheld PCs - Palm Pilots, Pocket PCs, etc.  This SIG meets the 2nd Wednesday of the month from 7 to 9 pm in the Resource Center.

Mike says his first contact with computers was in the early 80s in a commercial real estate firm on an IBM PC.  He quickly scraped together enough money to buy his own PC.  He has worked in computer related fields ever since.  Now he even says can't imagine being in any other industry.  Along the way he earned a BBA and an MBA in Business Administration, and worked as a trainer for several major computer companies, and for several local schools and colleges.

Mike is a dedicated MS software user, especially with MS Office, Publisher, Internet Explorer, and Outlook.  He believes that Outlook is one of the most underutilized software packages in the Office suite.  He uses it for time management and for integration with his handheld.  I gave Mike a list and said do you use any of these: e-mail, fax, internet, games, handhelds? He said all of the above, but especially the handheld computers.  His home setup includes 4 AMD-based machines on a home network that's routed through a cable connection to the Internet.  His handheld is also connected in to his network.  The only glitch that I found in his training and setup is that he "really likes and appreciates the Macintosh".

Mike would like to see more community members involved in Alamo PC, and sees Alamo PC as a great organization for helping people learn to use technology.  Anybody want to volunteer to help in that process?