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Index of Subjects Hi Bob, Apologies - the original was circulated through ccn-comm, and ccn-board. It was simply some informational postings from Sue Newhook (Comms chair) who has been posting info gleaned from other community networks about future direction, membership, competition, etc. I'll include it below. Do you feel this is inappropriate for ccn-ip? I thought there was sufficient overlap and potential interest, but am willing to restrict it to the ccn-comm =/- whatever if so. ciao, Mark. Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 10:10:19 -0400 (AST) From: Susan Newhook <suenew@chebucto.ns.ca> To: ccn-board@chebucto.ns.ca, ccn-comm@chebucto.ns.ca Subject: Freenet du Jour: Calgary http://www.calcna.ab.ca A different take on this one: Below is a thoughtful and quite detailed note from the manager of the Calgary Community net, responding to the q's you can see. What do people think of the CCNA's objectives for the next couple of years? of the willingness of freenets to share their lessons? note: they have received their charitable status cheers Sue ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 13:02:13 -0700 (MST) From: Calgary Community Net Association <office@calcna.ab.ca> To: Susan Newhook <suenew@chebucto.ns.ca> Subject: Re: looking for info (fwd) On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Susan Newhook wrote: > What about you folks? and your sense of who your users are, etc. > We're just phasing in PPP access here, and I'd love to hear about your > experience(s) with it, or any other issues that go around a lot. I'm kind > of new to this and I'm trying to soak up what I can. That's part of the > reason I'mlooking for community net mailing lists...you'd think there'd > be all kinds of them! We have been offering PPP access for a couple of years and it is indeed quite successfull. The negatives - unfortunately we cannot offer formatted setup discs and some people have problems configuring their system to 'talk' to ours. I have prepared a printout that that goes into detail exactly what to do but 'newbies' still have problems and I end up talking them through it which is quite time consuming. We are not in a financial situation to do otherwise. Not everyone has nor want all the bells and whistles and our 14.4 modems are quite inkeeping with their needs. The CCNA is one of the only community/freenets to have never received government funding. We are staying afloat strictly by fundraising and selling dialup/memberships. Revenue Canada has granted us Charitable status. Our modem speed is only 14.4 and with technology progressing as rapidly as it is and with computers selling at more reasonable prices with higher modem speeds, we find our memberships are decreasing. Also, there are a number of providers here in Calgary that are offering free Internet accounts with graphical access. How can one compete with that. It is very difficult for CCNA to compete in this market. We are expanding our Public Access Terminals (PATs)to other strategic non profit sites in Calgary. My office is in the Calgary Public Library, where we offer free internet access, text only. Text is also becoming quite extinct as more and more web sites are gravitating to graphical access only. However, free e-mail accounts remain very popular as the Calgary Public Libraries do not allow telnetting or e-mail on their computers.When the PATs are open there is always someone here to offer asistance, during the day it is me, evenings and weekends I have volunteers come in. We have approximately 1400 logons on 12 terminals per week. I do not allow chatting or games of any kind on these terminals. It would not be long before we became a games arcade for all the unemployed of this city. Sue, I am not surprised re: the lack of community/freenet mailing lists. Each one is an entity onto their own and often do not want to share their fortunes or misfortunes or difficulties with others.... Our objective for the next two years is get out of the 'cheap' provider syndrome and zero in on expanding our Public Access Sites. This of course depends entirely on the success of our fundraising efforts. Our target groups will be of course non-profit orgs. who want to host PATs and those who want to publish web sites on our system. We offer free html services for this. Our PATs are frequented by seniors, newcomers to Calgary wanting e-mail access, job searching, submitting resumes, those that just want to 'learn' what this Cyber world is all about with discretionary incomes and cannot purchase the equipment and software to become computer literate. Our goal for 1999 is to upgrade a few of our computers here at the Library to GUI. Sue, I do hope this is the info you were requesting. Lets stay in touch. Shirley Barwise Manager, CCNA Board of Directors 263-8080, Fax:263-8083 ________________________________________________________________ Mark Rushton, Editor, Community Support & Development, Chebucto Community Network Mark@chebucto.ns.ca or via WWW: http://chebucto.ns.ca/~Mark/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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