September 24,  2000

Dear members of the South Central Texas Chapter of the Internet Society and friends,

 

We need your help to make our home a "Smart region."  

Here is how you can help without getting entangled 

in time wasting distractions.

For the last ten years SalsaNet,  now the South Central Texas Chapter of the Internet Society, has been working toward the creation of a socially responsible regional network.  We’ve tried a little of everything and broken a lot of ground.

 Since this chapter was founded the will of the membership has been very clear – do what is necessary to build a community network so that the Alamo Area  might become a smart region which attracts and  nurtures the  high tech companies that will provide dignified employment for our people.

 For the last few years we have stimulated  and studied the human and material communication infrastructure of  the  region.

 We initiated the Smart City project,   participated in the Mayor's Task Force on Technology Implementation  and found that although San Antonio has a golden opportunity to tap into the energy generated by the Austin's high tech environment, we still have some fundamental work to do to take advantage of these new  economic opportunities.  We must do the basic work to create the Smart Region.  

 We must grow our own technology leaders.  Here is how it can work.

 AACIS  (Formed of SACIS and SATNET) has been awarded a TIF grant to provide a collaborative community network for the Alamo Area.  The AACIS project will be like a big regional network barn raising and will need organizations such as ours to help with the work.

 AACIS represents a significant move toward a socially responsible regional network.  In recognition of this, ISOC sent this letter in support of the grant.

 Our ISOC chapter is a pool of some of the brightest thinkers about communications and networking in the region.  Using AACIS as a demonstration experiment,  we just might be able to encourage a new age of high tech prosperity.  We all know the score,  the region will need the collaboration of all of us and I think we have a way to make that possible without adding more stress to our already over committed lives.

 Each of you,  who chose to actively participate,  will get a student to mentor and who will mentor you.   This student will represent you and your knowledge base on the mentor circles web page.  He or she will attend meetings for you,  concerning this project,  on the Internet and in the community.  He or she will collect questions and other stuff for you to ponder.  These students will take what they learn from you, and mingle it with the insights of other project students.  They will devise ways to flow this information to the public through the web and television to tickle entrepreneurial imaginations.  The project will draw together a core group of students and professionals who will  become net buddies to volunteer facilitators.  Facilitators at a certain level will be compensated.

 

Students will trade their intelligence, 

insight and energy for a 

real world education 

by doing high tech community service.

Click here for a diagram  of how we will start  (net buddies and web circles)

 We also need some sort of certification for the mentors who help people use the regional net.  We will form a workgroup to design a certification program that will enable people to make a living doing networking facilitation..  Levels.

 We will start by creating mentors for the AACIS project. 

 Our pilot project will involve  an experimental group at Communications Arts High School. We will initiate a community technology awareness campaign using AACIS as a model. Project students will tell the story of AACIS’s formation and educate the general public about the internal workings of the creation of a community network.  

 We chose Communications Arts High School because ISOC board member Jason Potterf was a student there and  it was where he formed  the team for 3DSA . The project is working toward a visualization methodology for projects like the Environmental Design Charrette.  Such a methodology will make complex concepts accessible to non-specialists and will be an important part of creating effective GIS interfaces..  (Communications Arts students who will participate in this project have all had one year of Computer Applications and one year of Video Production, in addition to personal technology experience, such as building their own web pages, etc).

The  students will interview regional  technology leaders using the crew and facilities of KLRN.   Rough cut video with time code will be streamed from a  web page where regional students can edit them for broadcast using collaborative storyboards.    

Broadcast shows  will solicit the involvement of quality students from the region who wish to advance themselves by mentoring and interning with us.  They will help us design  the  mentor circle web page that will provide information and resources to community networking facilitators.  This will give the students a first class introduction to the communications community and technology and give the public basic training in the use of network technology.

 On August 22, 2000, ISOC members  Mary Ellen Burns, Susan Ives, Charles Vaughn and Pleas McNeel met with  a group of students at Communications Arts High School under the supervision of Heidi Whitus.  They are forming a chapter of   the American Technology Honor Society as the first demonstration  group for the project.  The high tech future belongs to the young people - we are going to  put them to work helping to design it.

 KLRN will provide additional training opportunities and paid internships to attract the exceptional students. Someday gangs of documentarians will stalk the new tech frontier taking us with them as they explore our future.  We are at the brink of something very special and we all need to know that.

To insure that we will have qualified  technology writers Susan Ives will publish articles from project members in  PC Alamode,  the magazine of   Alamo PC.    The magazine reaches 4,000 or so PC enthusiasts who will also be asked to volunteer as mentors with the project.

Eventually, we hope to draw exceptional technology students and volunteers from all over the AACOG area to work with the professionals at ISOC, AACIS, and KLRN  to train and maintain Community Networking Facilitators (net buddies) to help transition the region into the 21st century.  They will work with ISOC, AACIS and others to establish a certification program for these facilitators that will enable them to make a living helping create a smart region.

Bill Gonzales and Web-Hed will mentor server side students and the mentor circle web site will reside at Web-Hed  (maintained by students under the guidance of Web-Hed's staff).  Bill is already mentoring a student (Matt James) from Com Arts.

We are in the process of forming alliances with other technology groups.  At present I am discussing with Lester Wenkel, president of AITP  about how we can collaborate.  We will work wilh all technology groups to insure that everyone has a chance to participate.

Finally, we will solicit mentorship from the world wide ISOC chapters .  Perhaps we can build a world wide net buddy system.

 The timing for all this is wonderful.  Time Warner Cable is providing Roadrunner to the schools.  Email from Phil Jackson.  Press release from Time Warner.

This is the time we have been working for.

Our children can lead us 

if we trust them 

and give them the tools.

 

The future belongs to them 

and we really need their help

as we advance,

out here on the edge of certainty,

somewhere between 

wisdom and folly

making it up as we go.

 

Just maybe toward 

a golden age

here in Central Texas.

 

Pleas McNeel

President

South Central Texas Chapter of the Internet Society (SalsaNet)

pleas@salsa.net   -  (210) 826-4591

 

to be part of this project call Kitty Thomas at KLRN (210) 270-9000.