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Index of Subjects On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, Peter Morgan wrote: > Hi Blaine and Chris, > > Comments throughout: > > > >> I think the major problems which is stunting our growth are public > >> awareness of Chebucto, and training. Most people don't understand WWW and rely too much on advertising. As a result, they think they have to have IE or Netscape. It is hard for CCN and lynx to attract attention. Advertising is, however, targetted at people with disposable income. CCN needs to target groups that have to be careful with their money. One problem is that many small organizations get technical "advice" from members who _are_ targetted by advertisers and don't realize that CCN would give a small org. more bang for their buck. > > I think it is a) lack of PPP access for individuals and lack of PPP/FTP > access for IP's and c) lack of network services (multiple email, etc) > accounts for organizations. As a heavy user of the WWW I find that lynx and pine are my preferred tools: a) they are available on a variety of platforms, b) they have low resource demands so I can run other tasks at the same time. There are really very few sites for which a graphical interface adds value, but too many that don't support lynx. Using lynx first at least lets me see what problems someone who does not have alternatives might face, and I can complain to the site admin. > > Once we have these, then we have something to communicate. > > >> - Get a good terminal emulator (communications program) which we can > > I think what we need to do is organize ourselves to offer individual > members PPP access and then take the ISP version of Netscape and Internet > Explorer and create automated individual dail-up connections. Sprint and > Sympatico do this--they just distribute a CD. We could do the same. > > The number of people with older equipment who want to connect to the > Internet is fixed (and we have all of the market anyway). How many CCN users have special needs (e.g., voice synthesis)? Are any other IP's addressing people with disabilities? CCN's main role should be to provide lowest cost access for low income individuals and small non-profit groups with limited financial resources. The alternative model (to subsidize accounts for such groups on commercial providers) is non-functional: a) money directed to such groups would better go to the group's primary functions, and b) commercial providers want (and are willing to provide free or reduced cost accounts) to high-profile and non-controversial organizations, but are not dedicated to principles of universality. My wife and I made a donation to provide a non-profit org. with internet access, but under the condition that they document the cost/benefits. This is a group that does a lot of mailings to raise funds and make people aware of particular issues. The target group for these mailings is higher income brackets where email and WWW access is common, so using email and WWW is much more cost effective than conventional mailings. Without some external seed funding, a small NPO can't risk the investment in trying electronic communications to see if it works for them. There is a learning curve -- some information campaigns are more effective via electronic communications than others, depending on the target audience. CCN should be more involved in this sort of project. Many small organizations don't realize that they can make effective use of the internet without a large investment in equipment and access charges, and even CCN rates are an unnacceptable risk, especially if it is necessary to purchase new equipment. It should be possible to coordinate donations of equipment with provision of accounts. Ideally CCN would have a fund earmarked for such experiments, but in practice we could encourage people associated with NPO's to make targetted donations. CCN could make a big difference by providing technical and other assistance to such experiments. We have to expect that many organizations that start out with CCN will move on to commercial services. Ideally, commercial services should see CCN as worthy of financial support for its bringing new groups into the electronic realm. I've heard a number of cases where small organizations tried to use commercial services and had problems a) paying their bills (very few such organizations have effective financial management) and b) keeping their equipment going. I suspect commercial providers might actually prefer to send this class of customer elsewhere if they could do it without alienating people who might become good customers down the road. -- George White <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca> Halifax, Nova Scotia
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