Our desire is to restore some of the services of the organization which have fallen by the wayside, and to open up a discussion of the value of COGS in the future. Geologists were, for the most part, not using computers in their work and did not know much about how to do so. The board of directors of COGS for the first several years was composed of people who knew something about computers, especially personal computers, and wanted to facilitate dissemination of that knowledge to others. By having regular meetings, educational sessions, publications and a bulletin board as well as by distributing public domain and shareware software, COGS helped spread the word about the values of using computers in the earth sciences to a skeptical world. The geocomputing landscape has changed radically in the last 11 years.
Most earth scientists have one or more computers.
They use them on a regular basis. The original message of COGS has been received and acted upon in spades. Since near its inception COGS has been an international organization. I have old newsletters with a whole page of local sections and section contacts around the US and around the world. But most of the volunteer effort to keep it running has come from Denver where COGS started.