We've got special features on the amazing Growing Digital Network and how it's responsible for the explosive growth of rural broadband in Danville, Virginia by Terry McGhee; an overview of the Hawaii Unified Telehealth Project by the medical team at the U of Hawaii School of Medicine; and a piece on Community Technology Leadership Development by Greg Laudeman at the Georgia Tech Economic Development Institute. There's special policy coverage by regular contributors Bob Cannon (the CAN SPAM Act) and the Children's Partnership team, and "Lessons Learned from the Very First (but definitely not last) Ohio Community Technology Day" by Angela Stuber.

Our VISTA and Technology Assistance to NonProfits (TA to NPO) sections are combined in this issue since most of these stories involve AmeriCorps VISTA members, present and past, doing work in this arena: Ohio VISTA Gabe Gloden interviewing fellow VISTA Chet Davis on program evalution; "Making VISTA Work in Community Technology in Austin" by Zafar Shah; and "Interactive Web Design for the Technically Uninclined" by Lisa Smith, a former Teaming for Technology VISTA. George Gundrey on Compumentor's recent CTCs as NTAPs (NonProfit Technology Assistance Providers) study rounds out the section.

And, of course, there are regular updates from CTCNet and AFCN, including Anne McFarland's "Community Networking on the Nightshift," and new developments in the UMass Community Media and Technology Program at the College of Public and Community Service, where we're housed.

CTC VISTAs Saul, James, and Caroline

You can't see a lot of the reason we've been a while. This issue marks the transition of the Review's electronic production and support from the system evolving since 1999 to a new online publishing system designed in-house in the Community Media and Technology program over the fall and winter, by CTC VISTA Saul Baizman with additional contributions by VISTAs James Fishwick and Caroline Bennett, the Review's Assistant Editor. You may notice some changes at www.comtechreview.org, but what's primarily new that you don't see is behind the scenes and makes the sophisticated practice of database publishing all that much easier, once the very laborious tasks of system development, troubleshooting (bugzilla!), and testing and implementation have been completed.

We're still in process—bear with us as we finish up. Note the interactive features for readers in terms of submitting comments on articles, letters, and resources as well as abstract and article submission—and let us know what you think. ––pm & rc

The University of Massachusetts Community Media and Technology Program has just received final approval to begin offering a liberal arts degree [Bachelor of Arts]. As part of the College of Public and Community Service [CPCS] at UMass/Boston, the CMT Program is founded on a vision of activist education and learning in pursuit of social justice. Like the community media and technology movements the program takes from and informs, the CMT educational approach is grounded in the strong democratic philosophies of people like Paulo Freire, John Dewy, and Antonio Gramsci.

The core of the academic program is a self-paced, competency-based, outcomes-oriented curriculum in which prior learning is validated and collaborative socially and politically active projects are developed through partnerships with activists, community media and tech organizations, non-profits, unions and others. Because our curriculum is competency based we can award academic credit for prior learning and independent, project-based leaning initiatives taking place in community organizations. We are also able to deliver a free-standing certificate in community media, on-line, through a web-based curriculum. The six course/competency certificate program is focused in the advanced areas of the curriculum and is designed for those who already have a BA and want to certify or gain specialized competency or those who simply want an abbreviated concentrated academic experience.

The program is thus positioned to play a unique role in identifying best practices and broaden the dialogue in community media and technology practices as well as provide valuable research, professional development, and training.

The Curriculum

The CMT developmental curriculum has a career focus and is built on four Levels. To complete the baccalaureate degree, a student must earn 120 credits. Of these, 81 credits are in the Core Knowledge and Skills basic level application to all CPCS students and includes competencies in Media Literacy, Exploring Culture, Exploring Community, and Public and Community Action. Of the remaining courses/competencies, students are also required to complete "Communication and Computer Portfolio" and work in the CMT Major which begins at Level II. Work culminates in a Level IV "Capstone Project," designed as an exit level project in which students synthesize their educational experiences. As with other majors in the new CPCS curriculum, CMT students have the option of combining their major with a related concentration in an area such as Management, Organizing, or Training and Development. Advanced levels are as follows:

Level II

• History of Mass Communication — Students will be able to discuss the invention and development of the major mass communication technologies—print, sound recording, radio, television, film, and computer-assisted communication—and describe their corporate structure and ownership patterns with a special emphasis on how they affect content and cultural development.
• Converging Technologies —Affordable digital recording equipment, non-linear editing, photo editing and presentation software, the Internet, and Broadband are creating a new digital environment for community-based organizations and activists. Students will demonstrate an integrated understanding of the converging digital media environment, using information technology and computer-assisted communication as one interacting system.
• Analyzing Media — Students will demonstrate a systematic knowledge of the operations of selected communication media, be able to provide close readings of texts, and critically analyze such variables as image selection, framing, lighting, camera angles, newsworthiness, reliance on experts, and use of statistics, as these affect perceptions of social issues, public policies, and cultural groups.
• Media and Community Building — Students will be able to compare and contrast a range of existing models and best practices in the use of communication media and information technologies as tools for education and community organizing, and discuss the application of such uses to local projects and/or organizations.

Level III

• Writing for Media — Students will demonstrate the ability to write leaflets, press releases, letters to the editor, news stories, instruction manuals, story boards, proposals, curriculum packages, and other documents related to public and community issues and groups.
• Using Technology — Students will choose two of these technically-oriented competencies, demonstrate technical proficiency in a particular communications medium or information technology, and apply these skills to a project related to public and community service.
  • Using Technology — Video and Audio Production
  • Using Technology — Multimedia Authoring
  • Using Technology — Computer Networking (to be developed in year 2)
  • Using Technology — Database Management (also in year 2)
• Media/Technology Policy — Students will analyze and discuss the relevant legislation, regulatory guidelines, and rules of access regarding the mass media and communication technologies with a particular emphasis on community responsibility, public and community access, and the development of community-based alternatives.

Level IV

• Developing a Media/Technology Strategy — Students will identify and research a relevant public or community issue, organizational need, or social goal, describe its fit with larger organizing goals and strategies, and design an effective media/technology project to build capacity, mobilize a constituency, and or influence key stakeholders in the area selected.
• Implementing a Media/Technology Strategy — For the particular community issue, organizational need, or social goal chosen above, students will implement an effective media/technology project and reflect on the effectiveness of the effort.

At the Boston EITC Kick-off at Roxbury Community Center on January 17: AJ Tavares from I-CAN, EITC TOP Proect Co-PI Terry McClarney, and UMass/Boston CPCS graduate and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.

Many people are unaware that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is available to individuals who earn marginal incomes. It provided over $30 billion dollars to 18.4 million low-income families in 2001. Yet every year millions of these dollars go unclaimed. The tax credit returns can be over $4,000 per family, and for those who have not filed before, three years of back eligibility benefits are available. This project recognizes the need to supplement the city's existing efforts to return the EITC dollars to the public, and builds on an existing EITC coalition of agencies. It does so by working with other partners: Boston area Community Technology Centers (CTCs) affiliated with CTCNet, the Commonwealth Broadband Collaborative (CBC), community agencies such like Survivors, Inc., and UMass/Boston CPCS students to reach out to those people who are eligible, by providing online access to forms and filing and additional follow-up financial literacy programs.

The Community Resource Center at the University of Massachusetts/Boston is partnering with the existing Boston EITC Coalition to set up a CTC network for outreach, referral, and processing in addition to the city's existing 18 sites.

The Legal Society of Orange County will provide training and applicant processing support as well as expanded and updated filing processes through its I CAN! online filing system. I-CAN efile, in contrast with the more complicated system used by full-service tax centers, is ideal for CTCs and can help expand EITC accessibility for those most in need (see the article about it in the spring issue of the ComTechReview). Forms are being made available in several languages and will enable applicants to file for their state and federal returns online at their local CTC, saving them time and money.

The project will launch a major outreach effort that will include assistance from the project's partners. CTCNet New England will coordinate CTC involvement; the CBC network will provide outreach and publicity. Survivors Inc., a grassroots welfare-rights advocacy organization, will train several of its members to conduct outreach and to offer online assistance. Because of its large membership base, history of community organizing, and recognition in the community, the efforts of Survivors Inc. are expected to yield significant numbers of new applicants for the EITC.

The Community Resource Center is designed to change the way the university responds to community needs and to enhance its urban mission, while providing students with meaningful service-learning opportunities. Thus there are opportunities for student engagement. Five low-income students majoring in Community Media and Technology will conduct outreach, recruitment, training and online support for eligible members of the University community, as part of their course work.

Once eligible applicants have been identified and assisted in filing online, they will be surveyed about additional needs for financial literacy. Based on their responses, the EITC coalition, working with the CTCs and the CBC network, will design a curriculum and training program which will be available to participants through a team of traveling troubadours at each site. It is likely that financial packages from banks supporting economic independence initiatives will also be available. With this additional component, Boston area low-income residents are likely to receive added financial benefits.

By coordinating with the CBC partners in Cambridge, Somerville, Malden, and Lowell, the project will develop a statewide component and impact potential state applicants. The CBC network provides information and programming that can reach untold numbers through innovative cable and web broadcast and interactive communications and information systems. Through I-CAN! national outreach, CTCNet, and publicity vehicles such as The Community Technology Review, there will be a national impact as well. This is hoped to result in an overall return of more than $1,500,000 in federal and state taxes, including $500,000 in Earned Income Tax Credits to low-income residents and neighborhoods across the state and country. The CBC components, as well as the central EITC program and its use by the CTCs, demonstrate innovative uses of network technologies to underserved populations while fostering communication, resource sharing and economic development.

CTCNet & Four Affiliates TOP Winners in 2003 According to former AFCN President and current TOP Program Officer Amy Borgstrom, eyeballing the current TOP grants, of the 28 grantees in 2003, awards to CTCNet affiliates include those to the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago, Technology for All in Houston, and TINCAN in Spokane, WA as well as the UMass/Boston.

]]> 2005-06-14T09:00:00Z 2005-06-14T05:00:00-05:00 tag:comtechreview.org,2005:/winter-spring-2004//8.168 2005-06-14T09:00:00Z

Kavita Singh

2003 saw many changes for CTCNet, as the organization restructured under a new Executive Director, Kavita Singh, and moved its headquarters to Washington, DC while retaining its satellite offices in Cambridge, MA; Chicago, IL; San Diego and San Francisco, CA. What follows details some of our accomplishments as well as recent developments and plans for the 2004.

Ryan Turner Joins CTCNet as Director of Policy & Communications

Ryan Turner is joining the CTCNet staff in Washington, DC, as Director of Policy and Communications as of February 17th, 2004. Ryan brings unique experience and knowledge from his six years at OMBWatch where he was responsible for research and outreach around nonprofits' use of technology for policy and advocacy, and the policy issues surrounding their use.

Ryan's work at OMB Watch was marked by his creation and leadership of the NPTalk email list and his involvement from the beginning of the Digital Empowerment Campaign. He managed NPAction, OMB Watch's online resource for nonprofit advocacy, and monitored policy issues relating to the digital divide, electronic government, technology assessment and evaluation, the identification of emerging trends and model practices of nonprofit technology, and worked on research projects with OMB Watch's Community Education Center.

Prior to joining OMB Watch, Ryan worked as a research specialist with the Washington, DC-based Police Executive Research Forum, reviewing and analyzing information for a federally funded homicide investigation improvement and model-development program. He also served as projects coordinator and editor for the Character Education Partnership, a national nonprofit coalition of organizations and individuals providing resource information on moral education programs in the United States. Ryan holds a BA in Politics with a certificate in American Studies from Princeton University.

As announced by CTCNet Executive Director Kavita Singh, "Ryan has been a close friend to the network for many years providing guidance to the CTCNet staff on several issues. We're looking forward to his work with us to shape activities that will support members at the federal level, and assist members to advocate at the state and local level. His significant knowledge of and work with policy and non-profit advocacy efforts will help continue the groundwork that John Zoltner and our Policy Committee have begun. Welcome Ryan!"

Note: John Zoltner, who has been CTCNetÕs Director of Policy and Programs, moves into a new role directing CTCNet's Strategic Partnerships and Development activities.

CTCNet: Transforming Communities

As CTCs continue to provide digital access to people and communities to improve lives, programs are increasingly focusing on the use of technology for community-wide development. Understanding the need to think more broadly about CTC services and impacting communities, CTCNet has started shaping its own programmatic objectives around these themes. These projects include:

• Connections For Tomorrow (C4T) provides grants and professional development to organizations serving at-risk youth and homeless people in California, Illinois and Massachusetts.
• The Wireless Project has piloted the provision of Internet access in housing communities in the Lower Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.
• CTCs as Catalysts for Community Change is helping CTCs nationally take on a broader community agenda, position themselves as stronger community centers, and develop into better public spaces.
• The new Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods (YSVN) Learn & Serve America project focuses youth on community needs and engages them in research and service to develop new young leaders at the grass roots.

"Building Connected Communities: The Power of People and Technology,"CTCNet's 13th Annual Conference will be held in Seattle June 11-13, 2004. As always, we look to the CTCNet membership and other support organizations to provide the content that will help demonstrate the work of CTCs and their relationship to community development.

2003 Success Story Contest Winners Announced

To date CTCNet has collected fifty CTC Success Stories from members around the U.S. All these stories help demonstrate and document the successes, challenges, and importance of CTCNet's collective work.

The most recent contest held in the fall, requested stories highlighting regional organizing, intergenerational programs, and new residents. It was difficult to select three from among the 14 submissions, but the selection committee finally settled on the following powerful stories:

"The Ghosts Behind the Story"
Cambridge Community Television, MA
Written by Maurice Anderson, a retired elder, 69-going on-65 senior citizen. Maurice tells us about trading in his Brother word processor, learning how to use a computer, writing and publishing a book of poetry, writing a script, and shooting and editing his own digital video memoir.

"Lower Roxbury TGH"
Madison Park Timothy Smith CTC, Boston, MA
Written by Nyvia Colon, the story transports us to Madison Park Village, Timothy Smith CTC, a place where "[e]veryone shares their learning; the facilitator facilitates the learning process, while students share what they know with each other. The room is filled with laughter as the kids take center stage to teach their parents how to insert a clip art or work on the Internet. At times you hear, 'Ma, just move the mouse and click, don't be nervous.' And at times you hear: 'Sandra, stop playing games, we need to finish the class work.' All in all everyone is working together to ensure they learn what they are there to learn, because no one wants to wake up on Saturday morning, spending 4 hours in a learning environment, just to go home the same way they came in. They learn that everyone has something to offer no matter his or her age.

"The Way My Life is Going Now is Just Perfect"
Korean American Community Services (KACS), Chicago, IL
Written by Mario Argueta, a participant in the Youth Community Technology Program (YCTP) at KACS. The YCTP combines technical training and life skills development with particular emphasis on the value of civic life. Mario shares his experiences at his internship and his future goals. "[He has] work experience to put on [his] resume, and [is] also giving something back to the community. [His] long-term goals [are] to get a degree from a college and make the rest of [his] life comfortable."

All stories from all five contests are accessible on the Success Stories web site.

CTCNet Reaches Out Globally

This past Fall 2003 CTCNet emerged onto the world stage of the community Information and Communication Technology (ICT) efforts. In December, Executive Director Kavita Singh, along with Board members Felicia Sullivan and Felicia Davis, attended the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference in Geneva, Switzerland. CTCNet was invited by Microsoft to be part of their Partners in Potential exhibit showcasing 15 Microsoft-supported (either through software donations or funds) projects from every continent. Kavita was also invited to present on a conference panel.

At the WSIS in Geneva: CTCNet board member Felicia Sullivan with a group of high school students from Singapore.

As Felicia Sullivan described it: "This international gathering of government, business, and civic sector representatives was like a gigantic working group seeking to create some sense of collective work on how to effectively use information and communication technologies (ICT) within the context of development in all senses: economic, social, cultural, political." The event provided a fertile environment for discussion about CTCNet's role in the international digital empowerment movement, discussion that continues here at home.

Some of the main points of interest that the CTCNet team gained from the conference:

• The importance of sharing our work with other similar international organizations and in turn, learning from them
• Potential global control of the Internet through the U.N. or another international organization rather than through ICANN
• Understanding basic limitations outside the U.S., such as the availability of electricity
• Intellectual property and copyright issues
• The potential of open source material in the democratization of technology globally
• Ensuring that our technology resources are used for social and human development solutions, relevant to our various constituents
• Considering our services in the light of social entrepreneurship or microenterprise
• The importance of assessment and evaluation of projects
• The need to collect data on the efficacy of our domestic work
• The need to combat perceptions that there is no digital divide in the U.S.

While at the WSIS, CTCNet and four other technology networks in North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean joined in the formation of the Telecenters of the Americas Partnership (TAP) with a videoconference on Tuesday, December 9. Lead partners teleconferenced from sites in San Juan, Mexico City, Vancouver, Washington, DC, and Geneva. TAP comprises the world's largest Community Technology Network, representing more than 4,000 members.

The alliance between the Aspira Association, Pacific Community Networks Association (PCNA), ChasquiNet, Somos@Telecentros, and CTCNet brings together the strongest regional networks in the Americas to study the costs and benefits of greater integration among the myriad of regional telecenters that have emerged across North and South America. "All of the organizations involved have created strong networks of telecenters in their respective regions," says Kavita. "We seek to examine and share best practices between countries, streamline workload and costs, enabling individual technology centers to maximize resources and, ultimately, better serve our communities."

Art McGee, CTCNet Advisory Board member, at WSIS.

The agreement calls for the team to develop a system that provides easy access to the best telecenter tools and resources; the production of a comprehensive survey of major relevant telecenter activities in the Americas; and the creation of a long-term plan outlining the optimal structure, activities, and budget for an effective TAP partnership, including content development and distribution coordination, co-sponsoring research, and cultivating solid relationships among telecenter practitioners and network leaders internationally. "Technology is a powerful tool that can have a positive impact on a community's social, educational and economic needs, particularly in the low-income and rural areas that we serve," says John Zoltner of CTCNet and Chair of the Partnership. For more information on the Partnership, contact John at jzoltner@ctcnet.org.

2003 Annual Report Highlights: Transitions

The year 2003 saw many changes for CTCNet. Kavita Singh began in March as CTCNet's Executive Director and the organization continues to re-structure with the support and guidance of CTCNet's Board of Directors and Advisory Board. In November, CTCNet moved its headquarters to Washington, DC while retaining staff in Cambridge, MA, Chicago, IL, San Diego, CA and San Francisco, CA.

Member Services are receiving more focused attention with a new Member Services Coordinator, Stephen Quinn, to lead these efforts. Stephen, who coordinated the 2003 CTCNet Conference in Washington, DC, is working with staff and associates to develop our website and tools that will provide more detailed information on member centers and programs and better demonstrate CTC activities.

Annual CTCNet Conference. The 2003 conference was held in Washington, DC, drawing six hundred (600) of our members and associates to a convocation on "Creating Our Future: Shaping the Agenda of Community Technology." Along with more than 50 workshops, the location of the conference in the nation's capital inspired CTCNet to host its first Community Technology Education Day on Capitol Hill and featured the CTCNet President's Reception, recognizing leading community technology advocates for their commitment to the field.

Leadership Recognition. In addition to the Toni Stone Innovative Initiative Award presented each year at the CTCNet conference, and the Success Stories, CTCNet was proud to continue to recognize leaders in the community technology movement and present the first Outstanding Community Technology Leader Awards. In September, CTCNet collaborated with the Education Technology Think Tank (ET3) to recognize thirty leaders at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference. The awards were conferred by Congressman Major Owens (D-NY) at a ceremony in Washington, DC.

CTCNet also presented three Leadership Development Institutes (LDIs) in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Seattle, providing professional development and best practices to 75 of our members.

Cash Grants and Professional Development. In 2003, CTCNet provided more than one million dollars in cash grants to 50 community-based organizations. Grants were administered primarily through Connections For Tomorrow (C4T) and the Catalyzing CTCs for Community Change project.

National Service. In August, the forty newest members of the CTC VISTA Project had their Pre-Service Orientation (PSO) at the campus of U Mass Boston. This year VISTAs are serving 28 CTCs in 19 locations around the country.

International Cooperation. CTCNet and four other technology networks (Aspira Association, Pacific Community Networks Association (PCNA), ChasquiNet, Somos@Telecentros) announced the new Telecenters of the Americas Partnership (TAP), forming the largest international community technology network. Partners will convene in Mexico City in February 2004 to continue planning collaborative activities.

Executive Director Kavita Singh and Board Members Felicia Davis and Felicia Sullivan attended the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) in Geneva, Switzerland.

---

Dan Schackman is a CTC VISTA doing national CTCNet support work out of the office in Cambridge, MA.

]]>

6th Annual National Community Networking Conference—December 7-9, 2003, Austin, Texas

"This year's National Community Networking Conference was one of the best conferences I've been to in a long time. There was not only tremendous energy and enthusiasm from participants, but a flood of new, dramatically cheaper broadband hardware and robust, rich open source software, together changing the entire landscape for community investments in technology." —Andrew Cohill

The 2003 conference, "Community Technology Networking—Survival and Success," as it had been promoted, turned out to be a "how to" summit meeting, with leaders from government and industry joining community networking experts to help local leaders develop and sustain successful community technology initiatives. Interactive sessions, grant and funding workshops, hands-on technology demonstrations, and pragmatic advice from experienced practitioners and professionals highlighted this year's program.

Hosted by the TeleCommunity Resource Center, the University of Texas-Austin, the Texas ISP Association, CTCNet, AFCN, and other sponsors, this annual conference offered presentations and discussions on rapidly changing technologies, policies, and services, and practical success strategies for community organizations, institutions and ISPs, those just getting started as well as veterans of the Information Revolution.

The AFCN Board, including some past, outgoing and newly elected members, met for an all-day strategic planning retreat on the first day of the conference. Julie Fesenmaier and Ben Mueller, from the University of Illinois, serving as facilitators/reporters, expertly guided the group's conversations, questions, decisions, and actions toward a clear and realizable agenda for 2004.

Plenary session with the AFCN Board at the Community Networking conference in December: Steve Snow, Ann Bishop, Michael Maranda, Frank Odasz, and Amy Borgstrom.

A big Texas thanks to Gene Crick, Michael Brown, Patti Clifford, and all the other staff, volunteers, and participants who made for a most energizing and successful program, in a year of greater uncertainties and diminished resources.

AFCN Thanks to CTCNet

A big "Thank you, too," from the AFCN Board and its members to the CTCNet Board and all members for once again inviting the AFCN to be a partner in the annual (June) CTCNet conference. Washington, DC provided the setting for a superb gathering of knowledge and experience, shared purposes and friendships, and was a most valuable venue for Community Networking outreach. We look forward to growing together.

AFCN Announces 2004 Community Network Open Source Package Awards

A key service of most community networks (CNs) is providing Internet-based services to community, civic, and nonprofit groups. Community networks need an easy to install and easy to manage suite of information services that has an integrated and easy to use Web interface, so that volunteers and staff who are not Unix experts can set up, configure, and support service packages for local civic and community groups.

At the 6th National Community Networking Conference in December, AFCN announced its annual awards for the organization's Open Source Packages initiative. With the support and partnership of the U.S. Department of Commerce NTIA program and the University of Baltimore School of Information Arts and Technology, the AFCN is offering two $4,000 cash awards for open source software-based packages that best meet the AFCN's award specifications. The two awards are designed to meet the needs of most community networks.

Award One—Basic Services: This award is designed to meet the needs of modestly funded community network startup projects and/or CN projects that have limited technical support and assistance.

Award Two—Integrated System Services: This award is designed for community networks with the funding and/or technical and support staff to provide more sophisticated services with a higher level of integration.

In addition, funds have been allocated for the development of a resource guide to help AFCN members identify and better understand appropriate Open Source tools.

In announcing the awards, AFCN President Gene Crick said, "This is the best way we know to help communities get affordable, easily-managed technology. The packages will be especially helpful to smaller rural communities and urban neighborhoods." More information is available on the Open Source Awards web site.

CTCs, CMs and CNs: Convergence Opportunities

It seems obvious. There are natural relationships, challenges and opportunities for convergence among Community Technology Centers, Community Media (TV & Radio), and Community Networks, convergence both technical and social. At their evolutionary edges, these public-benefit groups overlap, with complementary missions and goals, and with a bottom-up focus on serving their communities of real people and places.

The technological tendency of all systems becoming digital, increasingly photonic, networked, interoperable and "open" means that community media programming will no longer be relegated to just one public access TV channel; that technology "training" cannot be provided solely in desktop computer labs; and that "public access" and "digital divides" have a changing and ongoing significance.

New or renewed broadband cable franchise agreements can create the opportunity to strengthen local public access television (media); can provide institutional fiber infrastructure and internetworked connections for many community sites as well as for wireless distribution nodes; can help to support training programs, along with local content and applications creation; and may help to support the development of convergent "community tele-media centers" such as some of you are already involved in.

The convergence of services and partnering of community media groups allows for sharing the costs of facilities, technologies, and personnel; leveraging strength through representation in the community; and more effectively evolving to continue along a sustainable path.

The natural path that seems to lie ahead for our local tele-media organizations also holds true for our national (and international) representative organizations. It's already happening. CTCNet is being very pro-active in this regard. AFCN also looks forward to strategically establishing and strengthening its working relationships with a number of public media and community development organizations this year, and together providing greater service to our members and to a world in need of smarter, more caring, and creative example-setting. Please tell us stories of "convergence" in your community, on the AFCN or CTCNet lists.

AFCN Logo Design Contest

AFCN is once again considering its visual and graphic identity. Dot-coms pay big money to graphics boutiques for new logos and effective visual presence. The AFCN is not quite in that league. But we are prepared to offer a prize of up to $500 to the winner of our Logo Design Contest.

Call for submissions: You graphic designers know the drill: Simple is better. It must be reproducible and scalable, at various sizes (from business card to conference posters), on both paper and the web. It should somehow represent AFCN's values, qualities, and purposes. The design should incorporate AFCN's name or initials. It may be an abstraction, or a symbol, or an iconÉ Creativity always counts.

Deadline for receiving submissions is April 1: Submissions should be sent electronically to mmaranda@main.org. AFCN's Board and new Advisory Council will reach a decision and select the winner in May. We plan to unveil the new logo/ graphic design and announce the competition winner at the Seattle CTCNet Conference in June. Should none of the submissions be selected, the competition may be re-announced.

AFCN 2004 Membership Specials

The Board recently (continuously) discussed the changing role of AFCN. It is the Board's belief that the Internet has changed the role of the traditional professional membership organization and that dues should be adjusted accordingly. In the past, professional associations WERE the network. Annual conferences and printed conference proceedings represented important if not critical sources of contacts, best practices, new research, and information. Today the Internet has enabled practitioners and professionals to form their own networks and to access a wealth of information.

The board believes that with the dramatic growth of communities embarking on community networking and technology efforts, AFCN continues to have an essential role in connecting people, best practices, and information. Dues should reflect the reduced cost of providing those services. Subsequently, the board voted unanimously to a new dues structure.

AFCN offered special 2004 membership prices at the Austin national CN conference in December. Now these special reduced memberships are available to all interested in joining and participating in this leading nonprofit community networking organization.

* Individual AFCN membership: $25 For only $25 a year you can join or renew as an active AFCN member. With expanded member information, benefits, and newly developed support programs, this is a bargain designed for current budget realities. Please forward this member offer anywhere appropriate, urging your friends and associates to join AFCN. Today we need each other more than ever.

* Community Network Showcase Membership: $100 Community organizations joining AFCN can receive a "showcase" listing in the AFCN CN Directory, including a Web page on the AFCN site to describe the work and activities of their project. Describe your services and strengths; explain your goals and needs. This is a perfect opportunity for leading CNs to demonstrate real "best practices" while supporting AFCN and the community networking movement.

* Corporate and Professional Membership: $200 Corporate sponsors, vendor members, service providers, and professional consultants are recognized as supporters of community networking and receive a listing in the AFCN Business Directory plus a business page on the AFCN site to briefly describe the products and services they offer. Now supporting the good work of AFCN also makes good business sense.

Be part of the future of community networking. Share in the AFCN. Join.

AFCN Committees

AFCN is currently forming new project committees on Open Source, Broadband and Wireless, Web Site Development, Partnerships and Support, Policies, and Global Outreach. Contact rl@dcn.org if you are interested in working on any of these committees.

Community Networking Spotlight on New Members and Resources

Eric Howland of DANEnet (Wisconsin)—DANEnet was founded in 1994. AFCN is delighted to have Eric, his wisdom and experience.

Afi Osakwe of Blue Springs-Hoke County CDC (North Carolina). Blue Springs CDC has a terrific Web site that is filled with useful information, and it's clear they are making a difference in their area.

eBigBend, Big Bend, TX, Keith Williams, Project Coordinator. eBigBend was originally conceived as strictly a technology based organization with three primary focal points: providing public access to computer and Internet technology for rural community residents, providing a web portal for local businesses and organizations, and promoting computer literacy for people of all ages— economic development through the advancement of technology awareness. While looking at sustainability options, we decided to add one more major focus: to become an Adult Education Center available to local residents and to the entire world by way of Blackboard distance learning systems.

PetalumaNet—Bill Hammerman, Cyber-activist. Serving the Petaluma area for over eight years, PetalumaNet's most recent CTC start up is the Teen Center, next door to the Regional Library, which now contains the computer lab shared by both the Petaluma School District's Adult Education computer courses and the City Recreation Department's computer programs for teens. PetalumaNet was instrumental in obtaining both a $25,000 grant and 20 donated computers to help launch the project, which is now self-sustaining. Partnered involvements include the North Bay CyberCity Roundtable and Sonoma State University's Cyber Institute.

Community Inquiry Lab—University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL. The Community Inquiry Labs (CIL) support engagement in learning, research and action with people from all walks of life. A CIL is a place where community members come together to develop shared capacity and work on common problems. A CIL is most importantly a concept, although open source, free, web-based community-ware is being developed to support the site. With CIL Builder software, anyone can create a CIL by completing a simple web form and selecting those individual software bricks that suit their needs (a document center, calendar, webboard, syllabus tool, library catalog, lab notebook). CILs have been created by a number of groups, including SisterNet, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center Street Academy, Eastern Illinois University Fair Trade Coalition, the Illinois Citizen-based Water Quality Monitoring project, and the Teaching Public Policy Research Group.

Lone Eagles Consulting—Frank Odasz is a one-man, rural "information society" development guru. His Lone Eagles web site is a treasure trove of practical, on-the-ground information resources and learners' guides. Currently learning and demonstrating some new "open source" tools, Frank frequently updates and adds to the site. Highly recommended. Take the time to read Frank's new report, "The Four Levels of Community Networking," where you'll also find his "Best Resources Collected from the National Community Networking Conference" and other resources posted while on the road or from his "eagle's nest" in Montana.

AFCN Broadband and Wireless Resources—A dedicated site with links to resources of particular relevance to localities. Watch and help this site grow and improve in 2004.

2004 AFCN Board and Officers

Gene Crick, AFCN President, Executive Director, TeleCommunity Resource Center; Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network; and Texas Internet Service Providers Association, Austin, TX

Michael Maranda, Vice President, Acting Executive Director, Korean American Community Services, Chicago, IL

Judith Pepper, Treasurer, Former Executive Director, La Plaza Telecommunity, Taos, NM; Consultant with Regional Development Corporation, Santa Fe, NM

Richard Lowenberg, AFCN Secretary; Executive Director, Davis Community Network, Davis, CA; Director, RADLab

Ann Bishop, Ph.D. Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, University of IL, Urbana Champaign; PrairieNet Board of Directors

Karen L. Michaelson, Ph.D., Director, TINCAN (The Inland Northwest Community Access Network), Spokane, WA

Frank Odasz, M.A., President and CEO, Lone Eagle Consulting, Dillon, MT

Sally Rawlins, Principal, Rawlins & Associates; Development Director, Terrell County TeleCommunity, Sanderson, TX

But the infrastructure job is not done. One thing that has been lost in recent telecommunications deregulation is the notion of universal access, ensuring that every household and every business has affordable broadband access and affordable services (e.g., email, Web hosting, videoconferencing, blogging, community directories, etc).

The "third age" of community networking will blend some "first and second age" infrastructure solutions with successful communities developing public/private partnerships to get affordable access to more households and businesses. Most community wireless projects will need commercial ISPs to make them viable over the long term. Communities can now make modest investments to help attract commercial wireless providers. They can also make modest wireline investments (e.g., duct, dark fiber, co-location facilities) that will also attract commercial ISPs to light the fiber and bring advanced business and commercial services into the community.

What is really exciting about the "third age" of community networking is that Community Networks can now provide inexpensive, very sophisticated services, including online learning, civic governance forums, "safe" chat rooms for kids, videoconferencing, audio and video streaming of community events, and collaborative work environments for community boards and local committees/commissions, just to name a few. In short, the "third age" of community networking is being characterized by mature computer hardware, mature broadband access, and mature services.

Now, any community in America (and the world) can have services and infrastructure that are as good or better than any urban area.

Hubs are places where people and information are gathered before spiraling outward. Most of us have flown on airlines that utilize the hub and spoke concept. Libraries are hubs of information, as is the Internet. But very few community centers, not to mention community technology centers, have made the leap to serve as the primary information hub for their community. Here are some examples of how CTCs can potentially redefine themselves as community information hubs in the not-too-distant future:

• Exploradome: In the Exploradome you can play with and learn how to use almost any technology device, software, or tool, ranging from the pencil to nanoconstructor sets. Simply choose an exploration station, select a language and audio-visual-sensual service package, and begin asking questions. If you need a live tutor simply say, "tutor help," and a certified Technology Exploration Assistant from your neighborhood will be with you momentarily. Remember not to be afraid. There is nothing that you cannot learn or do - all you have to do is ask.
• Living Classroom: In the living classroom you can choose a course of study in over 10,000 topics, from pre-school to post doctoral studies. Not only can you take on-site courses, you can interact with taped courses and holographic instructors, and sign up for and "live audit" classes that are in session right now, from anywhere in the world. You can also choose to "work study" next to a holographic co-worker to learn a specific profession or trade, or visit with a "world host" who can lead you through a real time audio-visual-sensual tour of a local destination in any of 150 countries around the globe. Simultaneous translations of all languages are also offered. If you think there is something that you can teach to others, we can help you design your own course and show you how to teach it.
• Interactive Community Room: If you prefer to stay closer to home, you can enjoy a virtual-reality tour of your own neighborhood, including businesses, service organizations, churches, schools, park or recreational facilities. You can also see and meet and get instant advice from the people who work in these places. We call this the "Interactive Yellow Pages." If you want to comment about a business or service in your neighborhood, we can help you make your ideas and voice and face known to others by participating in our live community commentary forum.
• Community News & Multimedia (CNM) Center: Why wait to hear the news from your local TV or radio station? In our CNM Center you can learn to broadcast local, on the spot, news from your wrist computer. Your commentary will be fed to a real time reporting studio with you and other reporters from your neighborhood doing the commentary as stories actually unfold. Here you can also publish your own, personalized community newspaper, broadcast a self-made audio, video, or Web film. Numerous multimedia, production, broadcast ethics, and responsible community reporting classes are also offered in the CNM center.
• Political Communications and Democratic Participation Training Center. Here single individuals or groups can identify and interact directly with others interested in similar local, state, national or international political issues and participate in virtual political rallies that alert politicians to your cause once a critical mass of online participants is reached. The service offers holographic tours of any branch of government and allows you to meet and hear from public servants and public and private political organizations in virtual reality and real time seminars. Finally, the center includes a virtual voting booth that allows you to cast your ballot on past, current or future political races or referendums with full privacy protection and security verification. Not only can you cast your vote, you can also learn to initiate your own political discourse or movement on a local, national or international level with the latest technological innovations.
• Community Technology R&D Center: Here we deploy a team of local research and technology experts who attempt to determine the practical short and long-term technology needs of you and your fellow citizens. In addition the team can design and build you an individually tailored product, software, or service for you to purchase or receive for free. We can even teach you how to do the research and development yourself or how to become a technology R&D professional. For new and innovative product developments that we develop in-house, the team will apply for patents and licenses that are held in the name of a local community trust.

CTCs can serve more people inside and outside of their physical location because of these new technologies. This is important because many residents will never walk into CTCs. Although they can potentially benefit from center services, they may be unaware of those benefits, face physical limitations, or simply choose not to walk in. However, all people have information needs and are inherently technology adopters. When CTCs are structured as information hubs, exciting new opportunities become available to those who have fallen through the cracks. To do this, CTCs need to see what technology people in their communities have adopted, such as cell phones and handheld devices, and persuade the funding community and strategic partners to accept and support programs as part of an information hub model.

With the CIH model, the potential exists to reach people more dynamically, with greater relevance, in the places where they live and interact. In an age when people and the information they rely upon is increasingly mobile, it makes sense to move beyond the "if you build it they will come" mentality. Instead, we need to be thinking more clearly about what information communities need and want, how we can leverage technology to bring that information to people where they are, and how we can build better communities in the process.

The amended articles had also included language that the organization (ACORN.NET) would educate the public about the common good of community networks. However, on the night shift, we never had time to do this, so last April we three remaining trustees decided to dissolve the corporation.

When I took out ACORN's legal file folder, I was struck by how skinny it was. I remembered taking four or five big boxes of material from my former office at the University of Akron Law Library to the Akron-Summit County Public Library. Those boxes contained the real history of ACORN, the history of the early Free-Net movement, and the efforts of a fantastic group of community volunteers who worked hard on the night shift for at least four years before the system came online in 1995.

In 1991 I met Tom Grundner, the architect of the Cleveland Free-Net. I had been taken by a newsletter he was putting out--Letters from the Fourth World. At that point the Cleveland Free-Net was blossoming, the Youngstown and Medina Free-Nets were up, and Tom wanted to see Akron join the mix. "Sure," I said, "I'll get on it." Always the optimist, always charging in when maybe I should have started thinking first. Didn't I recall how it was I'd gotten to be a foster parent? Well, as it turned out, building a Free-Net was actually easier than being a foster parent.

Since I was working at a university, I started in academia. I found that Debra Keller at the University of Akron along with Bill Dorsey, Millie Keyser and Dick DePew at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM) had already kicked the idea around a bit. They were great techies, but we needed a few more folks to help with the non-techie angles of the community networking biz. Sheila Szudjeko from WEAO-WNEO Public Television in Kent, Everett Prentice from Summit County government, David Jennings and Dana Beezley-Kwasnicka of the Akron-Summit County Public Library were the mainstays, although a number of others came, went and helped out during the course of the project.

There were funding efforts, proposals and budgets that alone filled a box. We never got funding from PBS or TIAAP, but we did get funding from The GAR Foundation of Akron. In those ancient days a decade ago, we had to build a network. We owned computers, routers, modems and other assorted tech items. I'm sure that another box contained all of the early community contacts correspondence from folks that signed on as soon as we first came online. At that point we were an ISP, a role that only now is ACORN relinquishing since there are other free email services available.

There must have been another box full of minutes from the years of meetings it took to build the system and enlarge it. I wrote most of them, and I'd found that if I didn't do them right away, I'd forget large chunks of what happened. We laugh now about the winter that a large, outspoken fellow came to the meetings with the agenda of tying us to a computer business that he was running. I think I only saw David Jennings angry once, and that was at one of those meetings. Finally the fellow went away, and we returned to peaceful networking.

Those were good years and good people for me. I was working at a job that had little room for creativity, and ACORN allowed me to get out there and use the creativity that went untapped on the day shift. I should also mention Rich Kovach, tax law professor at the University of Akron School of Law, who graciously answered tons of questions about the 501(c)3 application and much else.

The other lesson that stands out from those years is the importance of physical community. It's what Tom Grundner called "the radius." I live in Cleveland Heights, about thirty-five miles from Akron. With the exception of building ACORN, my community involvement was in my home community of Cleveland Heights. As silly as it may seem, I sometimes felt homesick in Akron, a visitor in a community that I could never be truly a part of. I don't know that everyone reacts to community that way, but I think that community networkers might. We may build something online that is open to the world, but we build it for a geographic community that we call home.

Needless to say, there had to be one legal hitch in winding up ACORN. The Ohio Secretary of State's office noticed that the notary hadn't dated her signature on my affidavit. Not only did they send the four-page certificate of dissolution back to me with the uncashed check for $50.00, they lined through every page so that I'd have to do it over again. This seriously annoyed me, to the extent that I tossed the paperwork into the "To Do Now!" folder, assuring that it would not surface for a considerable period. Gradually it dawned on me that when it's time to file the next Certificate of Continued Existence, I will do nothing. Then the Secretary of State's office will revoke the charter at no charge. Creativity--that's what the night shift is about!

Thirty years ago, the region missed acquiring an Interstate highway. Their next hope for an economic recovery was dependent on connecting to the world's largest "Super Highway." The problem was, and to some extent still is, that much of the core population didn't see the value of a big road that few could drive on: the Internet.

The problem demanded that we find a way to make the Internet personally useful to normal people on a daily basis. We use the term "normal" to mean everyone in the community: aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas, grandpas, your boss, your neighbor, your mailman, his minister, and his wife's hairdresser. Ultimately, we needed to produce something that adequately answered the community's relevant question, "What's on the Internet for me?" Or, more to the point, "What, on the Internet, is worth $45 a month?"

Our response was a program we named "Growing Digital." We chose "Growing" because everyone in rural America knew what "Growing" meant and "Digital" because that was the kind of technology that we wanted to grow. For the first year I literally walked around handing out seed packets re-labeled with ones and zeros to show people that we were trying to "grow" new kinds of "digital plants" in the area.

This new "digital garden" was designed around five common rural traits:
1. Insufficient population density and service demand to justify broadband Internet
2. Insufficient existing wire-line infrastructure
3. Most individuals watch lots of television
4. Most parents do everything they can to make their kids computer-literate
5. Most kids enjoy using cameras and the Internet

To plow up the ground we chose mostly middle school students as tractors, along with some elementary and more recently a little high school expertise. They're energetic, annually regenerated, and love working and playing on the Internet.

We hooked up a dozen or so, six at a time, to eight special computers bridled to six cameras and four microphones. Then, we encouraged their growth with some after-school and summer IT training programs to create what is now known as the Growing Digital Network (GDN). The students learned by doing. More than 90% of all training is hands-on. We assign brand-new crew members to an old crew member and put them to work on day one. (You don't get a crew member T-shirt until you've completed an entire webcast in a single crew position like camera, audio, or encoding.)

Most students already know the basics of running a video camera; many can operate a computer. What they don't usually know is what the possibilities are. That's where real learning opportunities arise. Students look at their work, better yet, their peers look at their work and say, "Hey, why was the video so dark?" or "Why is there a 40-second delay in the live video from the Internet video?" These questions are too difficult to answer in the middle of a live webcast, so we cover the "academics" in after-school training.

GDN produces about four live Internet webcasts each month. What's a webcast? It's a lot like a TV program except that you see it on the Internet. The bad news is that the picture can be much worse than TV, with sound quality that varies between that of AM and FM radio. The good news is that, regardless of the picture quality, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people watch the GDN network each week.

Trevor and Jarrod with the roof cam at the ALWS.

In many respects, getting people to watch the Growing Digital Network has been counter-intuitive. Some of our most widely promoted events have been the least watched and events that received virtually no pre-event publicity have been the most watched. The personal cell phone has turned out to be our best friend. People attending the actual events see our banners, discover that we're webcasting and call back home to tell family and friends, "Turn on GDN!" This mechanism is incredibly efficient. Once folks have seen what the Growing Digital Network does they keep coming back. To make it easy for them, all webcasts are always originated from the same web link so they can bookmark it once and easily find their way back. We send pre-event emails to coaches, principals, superintendents, and a growing list of people who have asked us to tell them anytime GDN is webcasting ANYTHING. So word of mouth is our most successful media outlet and it doesn't matter whether it's mouth to ear, mouth to phone, or fingers to keyboard.

So, what are twelve or so middle school kids putting on the Internet? The range of content has varied widely. First and foremost, GDN connects its audience with people and things they care about.

• Thousands who could not travel to the 2002 American Legion World Series in Virginia watched all 15 games live on GDN. A military mom stationed in Belgium saw every game her son played in that series.
• A father in Switzerland saw his daughter star in her high school play in Virginia. Hundreds of parents watched their kids compete in the state LEGO Robotics competition on GDN.
• Family members from across the nation could watch their son sing the winning tune in a talent show
• Upstate college football players watched footage of previous victories to prepare for their next game. .A soldier in Japan watched his alma mater defeat the next county over in their football rivalry. Gretna High School, the school holding the most consecutive losses record, won the Virginia AA football championship; more than 250 people watched the game from the Internet on a cold and icy winter day.
• My mother-in-law couldn't drive to Durham on slick roads, so she watched the world's greatest ruby-throated hummingbird expert talk about migration patterns.
• Our city is planning its 2004 air show and they're directing prospective pilots to visit GDN to see last year's event.
• Each month hundreds of people watch a bluegrass festival held in July 2003.
• This year a different Rotary International Club is hosting their annual convention so they're watching GDN to help plan for it.

2002 American Legion World Series: Most viewers around a single computer GDN contest winner.

In just over thirteen months, "normal" people have watched almost 4000 hours of streaming video on the Growing Digital Network. Most GDN live webcasts average 100 viewing hours each with more than 60,000 streams served. GDN has been viewed on at least 10,000 different computers. Conservatively, we estimate more than 20,000 people have seen a GDN webcast. One contest netted us a digital picture of more than 40 people watching a live GDN webcast on a single computer.

GDN has been lauded and recognized by Virginia's Center for Innovation and the state Community College system for its award winning technology outreach program. We don't believe any single non-profit organization in the country is driving more demand for broadband than the Growing Digital Network. In fact, we offer the "GDN challenge" to all comers: Show us any entity creating more rural broadband demand than GDN and we'll send them 12 GDN crew member t-shirts.

We believe the key to driving rural broadband demand is homemade regional video. It's homemade because the local kids produce it and the local people support it. If we are to see masses of rural Americans grow hungry for broadband Internet, we have to stock it with content that satisfies their existing appetites. The top of that menu begins with family, friends, and football. We serve two counties and a city with a combined population of under 250,000. Virtually anyone from our region, looking at the content of our home page, can find something they want to watch. On the other end of the statistic, we're using a total of 12-15 kids to produce enough Internet content variety to satisfy that level of regional media appetite. Most school districts already have the best broadband connections in rural areas and most of the equipment needed for webcasting. What's more noticeable is that school networks are barely used after 3:30 PM. That's about when we start setting up for Growing Digital Network webcasts.

The reality is that dial-up adequately serves the web browsing, emailing, and researching needs of most people. Even if 50-75% of rural residents had high levels of interest in web browsing, emailing, and researching, in most cases, it would not generate enough sustained demand to produce a new infrastructure return on investment (ROI); it's simply a function of sparse population density. The truth is uncomplicated: only video can generate enough demand to justify broadband in rural America.

In summary, rural Americans don't need to understand infrastructures or web browsers or what broadband is. They need to see what it does. In GDN's case, broadband takes family and friends to events they can't drive to see. And when it's over, GDN takes them back to re-live the game, the play, or the show all over again—three hours, three days or three months from now. It gives them a good reason to pass up small, blurry, dial-up video for an Internet TV program that's better than a John Wayne movie—one that stars their favorite kid, fastest car, or even a hummingbird expert. Grandparents will always be bumping into friends and strangers in the mall and pulling out photos of their grandkids. But with the Growing Digital Network around, they just might be pulling you over to the closest broadband connection. My advice is, try and get away after you see the photographs. If they get you to a computer, you'll have to watch the whole game!

This graphic is a composite of the maps found on the project web site, which includes a full listing with more detailed information about each video teleconference center.

The Hawaii Unified Telehealth (HUT) project aims to improve the health of underserved populations in the state by facilitating health education through distance learning and intergenerational peer education. In this project, funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Technology Opportunities Program, videoconferencing technology is the tool used to overcome geographic barriers to health care education in Hawaii.

Hawaii is anchored in the center of the Pacific Ocean and is one of the most isolated archipelagos in the world. The population is spread across seven main inhabited islands, with expensive and time-consuming air travel being the primary means of transportation. There are also cultural barriers, which result in poor health in numerous underserved and minority communities. Hawaii is among the most ethnically diverse of states, having no ethnic majority and therefore has diverse health care needs and demands. The primary care providers across Hawaii may practice traditional Hawaiian medicine, allopathic care, or eastern medicine, to name a few. Many minorities do not feel empowered to ask questions and get involved in their health education in traditional Western settings of medical clinics and hospitals.

Cultural and geographic barriers are being addressed through implementation of videoconferencing solutions within existing community learning centers. These centers are located within communities, in homes, shopping malls, and community colleges. The project, started in October of 2001 and funded for three years, has connected fifteen of these centers to statewide videoconferencing (VTC) systems and a network of 68 public videoconferencing sites altogether. People from geographically separated yet culturally similar communities are able to meet and share experiences.

Presently, there are few VTC units in rural areas available for public use. Furthermore, the digital networks that provide connectivity to rural areas utilize different VTC protocols, and do not interlink to each other well. The HUT project addresses these issues by expanding digital network connections to rural and underserved communities across the state, and by increasing connectivity between digital networks. Additionally, partnerships are being formed that allow broader access to VTC units already in place.

Project participants help develop culturally sensitive health information resources. Community learning centers already promote community-sponsored programs, which are made available locally. With the addition of videoconferencing, other similar communities are able to participate in these programs, sharing their enthusiasm, ideas, and their own programs. This project directly benefits ethnic minority groups such as Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Collaborating organizations include the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, Hawaii Area Health Education Center, Hawaii Department of Health, Hawaii Rural Health Association, Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, Hawaii Primary Care Association and affiliated community health centers, community learning centers and Native Hawaiian organizations. This project facilitates community-driven and culturally sensitive health education and serves as a model for enabling geographically distant communities to provide peer education and inspiration to each other.

To date, employees of the various 15 connected learning centers have received formal training in VTC use and a written certificate of verification of their training, a skill that enhances their personal marketability for future employment. Many sites have been used for videotelecommuting to classes, relieving these students from the financial and logistical burden of flying between islands to attend their classes. The equipment has also been used for counseling, departmental meetings of different community based groups, academic groups, and health care providers. At this time a new "Ask the Doctor" program is being initiated via VTC to bring medical specialists directly to interested community groups. A central coordinator is available to aid in scheduling and in trouble-shooting. Use of the equipment is monitored, and surveys are being collected to find what community members feel is most beneficial about the system and what needs improvement. Public health statistics are being analyzed to determine the impact of this technology on the health of the communities in which it is placed.

Collateral benefits of deploying these VTC units, with technical training and logistical support, include: legislative testimony from rural areas, administrative meeting facilitation, and enhanced visibility of the community learning centers within their community and among the various funding agencies and related support organizations.

A group at the Video Teleconferencing Medical Center in Hilo, Hawaii

Digital development requires several types of "champions" within the community: a strong sponsor to get community support, a broadly inclusive group of community business and civic leaders to provide that support, and the technology talent to provide expertise. Some form of catalyst to initiate the project is also valuable, as is knowledge of proven community technology tactics: what they are, how they relate to goals and strategy, and how to translate them into projects. Together, these roles make up the digital development value chain. While community technology projects may happen without one or more links, the stronger the links are, the more value and impact the project will have.

The digital development value chain.

In early 2003, a beta-test of the Community Technology Leadership Program (CTLP) was conducted, building upon its development of the previous two years, structured around a simple lifecycle process model, the "virtuous spiral," in which the a problem is identified and situation analyzed, a solution is designed, and a project set up to implement the solution. The following structure was developed and tuned during two earlier pilots of the program.

The "Virtuous Spiral."

The program consists of six half-day sessions over six months, beginning with a broadly inclusive group of community business and civic leaders defining a vision for the programs outcome. The leaders are also asked to nominate technologists to participate in the program. The second session introduces the technologists to each other, the issue, and the vision, and provides them with analytical tools. The third session is focused on analysis of the issue with the "tech team" breaking into sub-groups to work on design. During the fourth session the tech team finalizes the design and begins planning implementation. The fifth session develops an action plan. The sixth session brings the leaders back to review the project and to come to consensus on the action plan, to formally kick off the project. Between each session the participants are given assignments that tie into the next session.

CTLP in Mountaintown

The beta-test of CTLP in "Mountaintown" (a pseudonym for the actual location) demonstrates the power of this model, but it also shows the extent to which success is dependent on the active participation and support of community leadership. The unfortunate fact is that lackluster participation by community leaders undermined the project developed by the tech team, in spite of the fact that the community leaders professed the importance of the issue that it focused on: Tourism. There were two characteristics of how the program was structured that constrained the program's potential from the start. First, the beta-test's sponsor was the associate director of a technology-focused development center at the local college. While she did a fantastic job administering the program, she was some five or six levels down the college's hierarchy and simply didn't have the institutional or personal clout needed to fully engage community leaders. Second, the program was funded by an external agency, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), with in-kind contributions from Georgia Tech. While we greatly appreciate this generous support, the community leaders had no financial stake in the program, limiting their concern for its success or failure.

The weak community leadership engagement was not apparent in the first session. We had a group of twenty leaders including local government, business and industry, non-profits, schools, etc. The issue of "tourism" had been identified during a previous Community Technology Opportunity Assessment, and the group quickly came to consensus that this was a critical issue: maximizing the value of tourism while minimizing its intrusive impact. They wanted high-quality tourism in Mountaintown, and didn't want to become a "cheesy" tourist trap. We provided the leadership group with a number of examples of how communities used the Internet to promote and facilitate tourism. With facilitation they developed a vision that tourism-related organizations would jointly develop a means for tracking inventory and/or available capacity to allow for visitors to arrange complete itineraries, and get special package deals, online. Thus, the long-term goal defined by the leadership team was an online tourism "one-stop shop."

The leadership group provided very good evaluations of the first session and expressed strong support for the program. But the effects of weak leadership commitment and low-level sponsorship became apparent right after the first session. Participants wouldn't nominate members of technology staff for the program, maintaining that they were too busy to be given a total of two and a half days off over the next five months to participate. Despite this facile response, we managed to bring together a more than adequate tech team, including tech-savvy corporate, small business, public sector, and retired persons, along with employees of the local library and newspaper.

During the second session the tech team was introduced to the issue and to the leaders' vision by the facilitator and two key members of the leadership group: the presidents of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' Association. They were provided with a list of tourism-oriented organizations and a modified SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) tool to use for interviews with them.

The team began to self-organize with the third session. Several team members dove into the analysis, interviewing multiple organizations, and the entire team had substantive and insightful discussion of their interviews. They realized that tourism organizations in and around Mountaintown suffered from lack of information about, and poor relationships with, each other. The organizations wanted to be of more value to visitors and were willing to work together, but they didn't know about one another and had no past opportunities to collaborate. By the end of the session, the team had decided that what was needed was some means for tourism-related organizations to access information about each other and to share this information with their customers: a visitor referral system.

Such a system would not only provide a valuable service to visitors, encouraging them to spend more time and money in Mountaintown, but it would do this in a way that bolstered relationships between the tourism-related organizations and the visitors. It also provided a good stepping stone towards the leadership's vision of an online "one-stop shop." Like any good IT application, the system had built-in metrics: it would be easy to show exactly who used it, how many referrals were created by whom for whom, and how many were redeemed. The team broke referral system into several pieces—data about the organizations' products and services, online service and software, and a support organization—and set up sub-teams around them.

During the earlier pilot of the program we had serendipitously discovered that an informal "social" for the tech talent and leaders really helped the team gel. One of the team members owned a restaurant and volunteered to host the social. Others volunteered to get sponsorships for refreshments and to invite community leaders. The social, held between the third and fourth session, was top-notch, with five-star food and great conversation. Unfortunately few of the community leaders and only the most dedicated tech team members attended. The lack of leadership commitment had become all too evident.

Based on the team's analysis and discussion during session three, the facilitator and sponsor worked up a high-level design for a visitor referral system, including identifying resources needed for such a system. Session four involved an in-depth discussion of these resources and how to gather them. The data team had created a survey for gathering basic information about tourism-related organizations, their products and services. The online application team had begun work on a database system to hold this information and produce referrals.

Realizing that implementation and support would require significant organization, one of the sub-teams devised a program for students from the college and high school. Students could be assigned to help particular businesses get online, access the system, and create and clear referrals. In the process students would apply their school work to valuable real-world experience. This type of program was similar to past programs at Mountaintown High, and preliminary discussions with administrators were marked by interest and even enthusiasm for the idea.

All of these things came together in and around the fifth session. There was excellent discussion about what the sub-teams were doing, and what they needed to do next, but the session didn't result in an action plan or organizational structure for implementation. Moreover, despite heroic effort by the program sponsor, the final session was poorly attended by community leaders. During the sixth session the tech team showed off a prototype of the visitor referral system, explained how data about tourism-related organizations could be gathered and maintained, and laid out how the support organization could help businesses even as students gained valuable experience. Those community leaders who did attend were impressed and excited. But key leaders were absent. Without an action plan or organization there wasn't a clean hand-off of responsibility from the program facilitator to the team. No dates were set for next steps, no one took responsibility for making sure the next steps were taken, and the project had little inertia coming out of the final session.

The lack of inertia quickly became apparent. Personnel at the high school didn't return numerous phone calls and e-mails. Months after the program ended tech team members managed to track down a high school administrator who informed them that no funding had been made available for students to participate in the project. College students were available to work on the system, but no meetings were convened to begin this work. One took up the system as an individual project, but with very little actual effort. No one recruited businesses to participate in a pilot or began gathering information about their products and services. Interest and enthusiasm of the few community leaders who had actively participated never resulted in resources for the project. Even those tech team members who expressed strong interest in moving forward with the project were distracted by other priorities, and the project foundered.

Conclusion

On one level the CTLP beta-test was a resounding success. The tech-team designed a simple yet powerful way to use IT to increase quality tourism effectively. Their solution would have improved relations between tourism-related organizations; those organizations would have increased their revenue and technological capacity; and visitors would have had more reasons and opportunities to spend money in Mountaintown. The tech team carried this out in a very methodical and efficient manner, conducting an analysis, designing a solution, and even starting implementation with relatively little effort and almost no resources. In the process they learned a great deal about community and economic development, about their community, and about conducting community projects.

On another level, the low-level sponsorship and lack of "skin in the game" clearly undermined leadership participation. The beta-test demonstrated that strong, high-level sponsorship is vitally important to successful implementation and to on-going digital development. Ideally, a high profile sponsor would have convinced leaders to provide resources for the project and to have their technologists participate. Also, a clear, formalized implementation action plan with full consideration of contingencies would have aided transition from ideas to action.

The CTLP model has a great deal of potential. With strong sponsorship and well-planned implementation, participation and collaboration will spiral up, generating greater knowledge, better ideas, and the will and resources needed to implement them. Thus cross-training leaders and technologists via collective learning-by-doing results in digital development even as it increases capacity for digital development, putting IT to work for community and economic development.

• Although 47 million Americans speak a language other than English at home, only 13% of state and federal e-government sites offer non-English access (US Census 2000; and West, Darrell M., The Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, "State and Federal E-Government in the United States," 2003).
• Most information on the Web is written at a 10th-grade reading level or higher, even though almost 50% of the population in the U.S. read at or below an 8th-grade level (Zarcadoolas, Christina, et al, "Unweaving the Web: An Exploratory Study of Low-Literate Adults' Navigation Skills on the World Wide Web," Journal of Health Communication, 2002).
• 41 million U.S. adults are confused by much of the online health content available (Manhattan Research, "Credibility, Accuracy, and Readability: Consumer Expectations Regarding Online Health Information Resources," 2003).

Bridging this content gap, the focus of The Children's Partnership's October 2003 report, The Search for High-Quality Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Communities: Evaluating and Producing What's Needed, requires the creation of more relevant, high-quality content as well as tools to guide the development and evaluation of such content. Accordingly, the report includes findings and recommendations to help researchers, community technology and other nonprofit leaders, content producers, policy-makers, philanthropists, and other investors take action to close this persistent gap. The report also includes practical information, like examples of pioneering organizations that are already working to develop high-quality content at a local level, and extensive lists of programs, guidelines, and research related to content evaluation.

Our research included the examination of 100 sets of content evaluation guidelines from education, online privacy, usability, consumer rights, accessibility, health, limited-literacy, and cultural content areas. We found an emerging consensus around baseline requirements for quality content, but discovered that the existing guidelines often neglect to address the needs of low-income and other underserved individuals. Specifically, the issues of literacy, language, and culture were each addressed by less than 10% of the guidelines we reviewed (see survey results chart).

Based on these findings, The Children's Partnership developed "Guidelines for Content Creation and Evaluation," designed to be a simple and easy-to-use tool that includes clear and specific questions and a simple scoring system. The guidelines can be used by those creating content as well as by those evaluating the quality of existing content. The guidelines include the following evaluation criteria:

• Basic criteria for all Web sites—clearly identified sponsorship and topics of particular interest to underserved communities, including criteria for low-barrier Web sites (which address such areas as literacy level and language(s) of text, accessibility to individuals with disabilities, cultural focus of content, cost of access and use, and geographic specificity of content); and
• Requirements for high-quality Web sites—privacy, high quality of information, good presentation, interactivity, and technical quality.

Below, David Rosen, a leading expert in adult education, technology, and literacy, explains how the guidelines can be used to help the staff of community-based organizations and adult literacy tutors and teachers evaluate Web sites for (or with) their clients or students.

Using the Guidelines On-the-Ground
by David Rosen

A few years ago an adult learner asked me, "If the Web is like a huge library, where is the adult new reader section?" That is a good question. Finally we have a useful tool for adult literacy practitioners to use as they build Web-based adult new reader resources, which can be used by their students.

The Children's Partnership's "Guidelines for Content Creation and Evaluation" can be used in many ways by teachers, tutors, and adult learners with teachers or tutors. Here are four possible activities:

1. To increase "media literacy skills," a tutor or teacher and student(s) could use the guidelines to evaluate two or three Web sites.

2. In a workshop a group of teachers (from the same organization or different organizations) could learn to use the guidelines together by evaluating two or three Web sites and compiling the evaluations to develop their own "adult new reader Web portal."

3. Teachers or tutors who are interested in developing their own Web sites for students or other community members could use the guidelines to make sure their content is user-friendly for low-literate adults.

4. Teachers – or others – could use these guidelines with local government officials to show them what criteria their Web sites would need to meet to be considered "low-barrier" Web sites.

New Legislation: The Children's Partnership's Technology Policy Program by James Lau

The Children's Partnership, working as a member of the California Community Technology Policy Group (CCTPG), saw some important gains in the area of Digital Divide-focused public policy. Despite historic deficits at the state level, several exciting new laws were passed by the California Legislature and signed by then Governor Gray Davis.

We are including brief descriptions of the laws, which we believe can serve as good policy models for other states. Please see Techpolicybank and CCTGP for more information about this legislation and about how the laws were passed.

Digital Divide Grant Program

The Digital Divide Grant Program (AB 855) creates a sustainable and growing source of funding for technology programs in underserved communities. This legislation centralizes the process through which wireless telecommunications companies lease state-owned property to site cell towers. AB 855 specifies that 15% of lease revenues from state-owned property used for cell tower sites will go into a newly created Digital Divide Fund. AB 855 further specifies that the fund will award grants to nonprofit community technology programs to provide a range of Digital Divide projects, including technology training, e-government access, online content development, and educational enhancements. This fund has been projected by the state to collect between $3 and $6 million annually.

Connecting to Internet 2

SB 720 provides increased discounts to connect eligible entities to a high-speed network, or Internet 2. In California, all the higher educational institutions and most of the K-12 institutions, such as schools, school districts, and county offices of education, are connected to a private Internet network solely for educational purposes. This private network offers a dedicated and reliable high-speed connection for institutions to access and use educational curriculum. Because of the severe budget constraints facing schools, many schools, especially those serving low-income communities, are unable to connect to and access the educational curriculum on this network. SB 720 offers a one-time discount of up to 90% of the last mile connection and installation costs to eligible entities, such as schools and nonprofit community technology programs, that are not currently connected to this high-speed network. Because this policy includes community technology programs as eligible recipients of the discount, it holds the potential to increase the number of students, especially at-risk youth, who can benefit from this rich educational curriculum during the out-of-school time.

Electronic Waste Recycling Program

Although CCTPG did not advocate for this program because it falls outside of CCTPG's agenda, this program still represents a promising model for other states to adopt. SB 20 creates a program to promote the efficient and cost-effective collection and processing of electronic waste (commonly referred to as e-waste). As consumers continually purchase new electronic devices, such as computer monitors or televisions, they discard old ones, increasing the number of devices in landfills or on the streets. Because these devices contain cathode ray tubes, which are composed of between two and five pounds of lead, they pose a public health and environmental hazard. To prevent drinking waters from being contaminated or children from being poisoned by lead, SB 20 creates a program to collect and recycle 100% of the covered electronic waste discarded or offered for recycling in the state; to eliminate electronic waste stockpiles and legacy devices by December 31, 2007; and to end the illegal disposal of covered electronic devices. In order to fund this program, SB 20 imposes a variable fee of between six and ten dollars, depending on the size of the screen, on newly purchased electronic devices with a screen.

As the wonders of SPAM have grown, taking governmental action to protect innocent email boxes has become a new political mandate. After approximately 25 legislative attempts dating back to 1997, Congress finally came up with a proposal that made it through the filters. On January 1, 2004, the CAN SPAM Act went into effect.

The New Law

At first read the CAN SPAM Act can seem a bit convoluted. On second read the CAN SPAM Act can seem a bit convoluted! On third read...and so on. The Act says that fraudulent email headers are a bad thing. And then it says it again and again. And if it is not clear that you need to include opt out language in your SPAM, it repeats this a few times, too. My theory is that having immersed themselves in the universe of SPAM, Congress thought it might be clever to whack spammers by filling their inboxes with statutory language.

To the trained eye, however (translation: to an attorney who spends too much time in a grey padded cubicle attempting to discern the cryptic will of the legislatures, seeking revelations on how their clients might be redeemed), the Act will begin to elucidate meaning. The high prophets of the US Supreme Court have taught us that Congress always knows what it is talking about and there is no such thing as meaningless repeated repetition. Applying these sacred principles, the trained eye discerns that it is not just that Congress does not like fraudulent headers, and if you did not understand them the first time, then they will say it again that they really, really donÍt like fraudulent headers.

What Congress is up to is creating parallel sets of authority: one for the Department of Justice and another for the Federal Trade Commission. The DOJ authority is directed at culprits and their wayward deeds; FTC authority is directed more at the victims of the wayward deeds, affor