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| | 09/27/2004
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| | Scoop
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| | Briefly noted, by Ron May
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| | Briefly noted, by Ron May
Old actors never die, they just join the community technology movement. I kept looking at one guy who was sitting at the table near the door as you entered the Hyde Park room at the Ramada Inn on 53rd and Lakeshore Drive, the location of the first annual Illinois CTC meeting. (CTC stands for Community Technology Center.) Anyway, he looked familiar and besides, Debra Walker Johnson of CTCNet (look, if all these acronyms confuse you, I am going to try to straighten it all out today) had told me that I should talk to him. Well, when we sat down to talk, I soon realized that the face was familiar because I had seen it before, albeit nearly thirty years ago. Do you remember the TV series "Barney Miller" from the 1970s? Well, Max Gail or Maxwell Gail, Jr. as his name tag read, was Det. Stan 'Wojo' Wojciehowicz (also as Maxwell Gail), although I don't really know what that "also as Maxwell Gail" comment means.
Here is a list of his credits and it seems that he liked to play a cop quite often.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0301178/
And here is his picture:
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/barneymiller.html
Max is the guy on the left.
It turns out that Max is quite active in the community technology movement and in fact, he is moving to Chicago, where he will live half the time since two of his younger kids are here, so I hope we can see more of him. Having a celeb in our ranks won't hurt the tech community's image one bit.
Max is a very smart guy and he started out with the plan of science and engineering career at Williams College and then MIT, (a three year and two year program brought on by Sputnik in the late 1950s) but life intervened and he ended up in acting as he was headed off to law school. I had a long talk with him and am going over the tape now. He has some very insightful things to say about the importance of story telling and how our culture understands complex issues which he feels are best captured through stories, and the stories or humor he likes best is part of a tradition that has had many variations over centuries and across cultures (I will get you the name from the tape) which he characterized as "the emperor has no clothes" humor with the town mayor and officialdom and then there are the observers of their folly along the lines of the choir in ancient Greek theater or maybe they are like the court jesters. I don't know enough about it, but Max will bring some much needed broadening to our often too parochial perspective. Oh, here it is. He calls it "place based comedy" and brings up Comedia del Art in Italy and Broong theater in Indonesia. "They are the classic characters of the community and then the spirit characters... It is like the place where the emperor has no clothes... it does not mean that the emperor is evil, it is a way for parents to tell their kids that even though he's the king when he rides through town, we have to grovel on the ground and we can't even look at him, but he is only the king, he can't put humpty dumpty together again." Max said that "I think we have a need for that and we need to use stories in science and religion, as opposed to policy papers and theories --- theories are stories too --- well, it might work like this," Max explained.
He was in a comedy that did not have the success of Barney Miller but it got him thinking about the place based comedy issue and he also changed a lot during the period when his wife died of cancer in 1986 and he was a single parent to a two year old, so he took five years off. He wanted to see more place based community building. He had always been involved in social movements from the Indian movement to Aborigines in Australia, but he started envisioning a world where there were more places where people could congregate, somewhat like the taverns of early America or the sidewalk cafes in France, but far more inclusive, he said.
"Places that weren't work or home," he said, but not just about meeting and feeding, somewhat like a health club as a social gathering place where people are free to do what they want, he said.
Max thought that maybe a story telling environment could be created with a TV show that used the concept of "lap" which in the dictionary means "a domain of care, charge, control and responsibility."
Time to get this out for today. We can finish on Max later. His email is max@lap.org. Tell him that you want to see at Chicago tech events. LAP stands for Local Access Proposal, by which he means an invitation to an open mind, heart, source, game, which he preferred to the word "Places."
He went on to mention the educator Parker Palmer, the works of George Lakoff and his idea of an "open source social operating system." He said that they should have been sitting in a circle at the meeting, but we tend to not do this because we have a default way of thinking. He spoke of transformation, the Native American movement and the alternative ways to look at things and he just "stayed on the learning curve" and got into the works of Ken Wilber (check out his collected works on Amazon.com) and something like the Institute for Integral Studies under the general header of transpersonal psychology and philosophy
One of the panelists was a woman from Los Angeles, Linda Fallows, who advised the ILCTC group on how to organize themselves at a statewide level. In California, the community technology centers are much further along than we are in terms of lobbying, etc. Her group is called California Community Technology Policy Group.
The conference covered a lot of nitty gritty issues, everything from how to write an e-mail and she requires that the newest staff member read any alert because if they don't get it, then it is not clear enough to be sent out. They also talked about something that may appear trivial, but it's actually not. Sort of like (and this harkens back to my days as a headhunter) when Dick Pick, the inventor of the Pick operating system, used to argue that everything comes down to the name and address file. It was really a very profound philosophical and logical problem. (Oh, I have to tell you a funny story. I actually met the infamous Dick Pick on a few occasions when he came here to speak. He was known for his dalliances and in one talk he misspoke when he said that there should be a secretary on every desk. The audience started chuckling because he probably meant exactly what he said, even though he did not mean to say it. Am I the king of digressions or what?) Along those lines, someone brought up the problem of retaining institutional memory. When a key person leaves, there is a great loss of knowledge and memory of what happened in the organization. One attendee of the conference suggested that with a website for that purpose, it should be possible create the necessary historical knowledge. I agree that this is a problem. Why not institute a simple website that allows collaborative participation and then you can say things like we tried this method for our marketing campaign and it got such and such results or we instituted such and such a program and found that it had the following results.
Linda Fallows ended the last panel with this advice which I think is good for any organization involved in lobbying to think about: "I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get real people using the technology and actually changing their lives because of the technology to go and testify at hearings and talk to their legislators, have legislators and them go out to the programs and actually meet people face to face. We can talk all we want on behalf of those people, but the most powerful way to change somebody's mind or to educate somebody, is to have an actual person whose life has been changed, talk about that change. We had a young man, urban Los Angeles, had been raised in poverty [editor's note: I could not pick up her exact words off the tape here], went to a community technology center, and I am sure you have a story just like this, turned his life around, became a multi-media guy, actually got a full-time professional position, went on to college, he now actually works at the community center. We took him to a senate hearing about community technology and why one of our legislative pieces was important, we knew it was going to be a tough hearing, so we prepped him a little but not too much because we did not want to make him nervous -- he had never spoken in public before. This is a kid who on the street was tough as nails, he was really nervous, so he got up their, he did his piece and after he spoke the room was silent and one of the toughest senators said, 'Well, I guess we can't argue with that,' and with that we got the legislation passed. So there is power in the voice of our community movers."
There are so many organizations and acronyms that it gets confusing. Layton Olson did his best to set me straight.
Johnnie Muhamed who was there is the chair of the Illinois Technology Community Fund. Layton explained that the fund was created by the Illinois Commerce Commission as a result of the Ameritech/SBC merger and that fund funded a three year effort of the Illinois Technology Consortium which is today developing a formal state association.
The Illinois Technology Consortium which has been developing over the last couple of years is from a grant from the Illinois Technology Fund which was created by the Illinois Commerce Commission with 15 members in 2000.
Now, it is important to keep straight what money is what. The reason it matters which pot we are talking about is that some of the money, the $4.5MM, was a one time deal, and so alternative methods of financing have to be developed. That small amount --- from the point of view of an SBC --- is the lifeblood of much of the community technology and community wireless movement. Without that money, who knows where the community tech movement would be.
So, as Layton explained, there is also money from the 2001 Rewrite Act.
The Illinois Technology Community Fund basically had about $4.5MM from the 1999 activity. About $1.3MM went to this and the Illinois Community Technology Fund made in 2000 and 2001 a lot of small grants averaging about $40K, so that role got taken over by DCEO. That is the program that John Barr of DCEO was discussing in the meeting I attended a few weeks ago came out of this fund.
There are two hits of funds. One came in at about $4.5MM and the other was for $15MM which was the 2001 Rewrite Act. The $15MM fund came out of the 2001 Telecommunications Rewrite Act.
So, the thing to keep in mind is that the Ameritech/SBC merger money was essentially a penalty arrangement agreed to by Ameritech and SBC. That would seem to have been a one time deal. But the Telecommunications Rewrite Act money, the $15MM from 2001, which is about half gone now, will be at issue again when the Telecommunications Act is rewritten again and that process begins in the spring of 2005.
The national organization, which was represented by Ryan Turner, has about a thousand organizations of which about one hundred are in Illinois. Ryan liked the fact that the meeting was needs first, they are not talking about issues first, but their organizational needs, and "the fact that they can actually talk as organizations to one another goes a long way toward ensuring that they can pull off a sustainable movement in the long haul." I asked what those needs are and he said that it is not just money, but they also need to have a sense that there is a continuum of services that are being delivered, that there is this net of things that speaks to both underserved as well as the broader community as well... we do want to see everybody taking advantage of what the technology revolution has brought about," Ryan said.
Layton was standing there and he added that part of this is to connect the federal advocacy of CTCNet with the state advocacy. The CTCNet national works on the money from the Department of Commerce and the TOP program and the Department of Education, and it also works with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). Don't get confused here. Bear with me. First, the TOP program stands for Technology Opportunity Program and it is a $14MM a year program funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce. "The idea [at this conference] is to build a statewide affiliate that will be affiliated with the national organization," Layton said.
He said that this program has funded two very important demonstration projects in Illinois in the last year. The Center for Neighborhood Technologies Wireless Communities Program in four communities, two in the city of Chicago, and one in Elgin and one down [sorry Layton, I was talking over you as you said where the fourth one is]; and the other project is the Full Circle Planning Project with community mapping including six communities in the city of Chicago and one in Aurora under the Northeast Illinois Planning Commission. Layton said that these projects were selected to be two of thirty projects being done nationally out of about 500 national applications.
"These are models that Illinois can share with other states too," Layton said.
OK, if you know me, you know how my mind works. I hear Elgin, I hear Aurora, I think Dennyland. So, I asked Layton if this is based on economic need.
He said that "it is based on replicable models. There are low income areas in Elgin and this goes through the school district." Ryan added that "it is the capacity to handle the technology, not just to replicate it but also to be able to do something effective with it."
Layton also said that the "other connection is that CTCNet national works with the FCC on a lot of their policies on the e-rate and other things that are important to bringing revenue into the state of Illinois so this is a way of connecting a federal advocacy with a statewide advocacy --- "which is why at some point you will want to interview Thyataria Towns, the woman from Congressman Rush's office who is actually in the D.C. office and at some point you will want to talk to Kevin Smith who is the technology representative for Congressman Rush. There are only a couple members from Illinois on that telecommunications committee and they also get involved in all of the FCC issues that you might want to learn more about," he said.
Fortunately the entire conference was video taped and will be edited down and a DVD will be provided. The panels had some interesting people and of course, I missed the main action which was on Thursday. I am a master of showing up at the end and getting the gist of it.
I talked to Gary McNeel who represents Sim Desk, a Houston company that has developed an office productivity tool. The tool has spread sheet, word processor, contact manager, etc. and the CTCs can use it however they like. Gary said that they are already working with the city and they are looking to spread the word to the CTCs.
Linda Fallows is with a policy group in California. I quoted her above. She told me that the people in Illinois are trying to form a policy and lobbying group which they have already had in place for some time in California.
Debra Walker Johnson told me that there are about 130 members of CTCNet Chicago and statewide the number is much larger, of course. It is not all about economic need, but also about areas that have limited access and that is where things like the rural parts of Illinois and areas underserved by SBC come into play.
Just to finish up on the source of funding issue which can admittedly be quite confusing. Think of it this way, and I get this from Layton's handout, entitled "The Rewrite is Coming! The Rewrite is Coming." Basically, distilling it down the overall budget for all the so-called "eliminate the digital divide" issues comes to about $4MM a year, and that money will no longer be there as of 2006 when the $15MM from the Telecom Rewrite Act of 2001 runs out. That will kill all the grants of about $40K each to the CTCs in Chicago and throughout the state. The flier lays out a call to action involving getting state senators and reps in on the act by having them attend town meetings and view the CTCs first hand. The people to contact on this are Theresa Riley at Centers for New Horizons at 773-373-5700 (by the way, the flier has a typo and incorrectly lists the number as 773-5700) or Debra Walker Johnson at 773-268-3600.
The panel I would like to see is the one headed by Jim Carlini. Jim, have we ever met? I ask because I keep hearing more and more about you, so don't you think it is time we met. And besides, I happen to know that you have been unhappy with your arrangements with ePrairie for some time now based on the fact that you write a column for free and that you have no equity. I have heard and you can only guess my source that you wanted to start a competing publication, one to compete with both ePrairie and The May Report and that you met with Brian Connolly on at least three occasions to discuss how you would run the newspaper side and he would run the sale of the template to other outlets. That is for Connolly's newspaper template, called Furthermore.com. And by the way, the Connolly battle with Mambo has continued to draw new press attention almost every day over the last two weeks. You can view the articles at www.literatigroup.com/versusmambo. But back to Carlini and his quest for riches in the newsletter business. Jim and Brian could not come to terms because as I understand it, Jim thought that since there were two people in the room the equity split should be 50:50. Negotiations between Carlini and Connolly broke off at that point.
Josh Schneider and John Prinz tried that same argument in August of 1999 when he and I met along with my brother, Tom Thornton, Neil Kane, and Jeff Gilbert representing TMR and Prinz as Josh's guy. Prinz said 50:50 and we asked him what he thought the underlying value was, so he threw his pencil in the air and said that if he had to quote a figure it would be $750K each. So, Prinz's logic was that a non-existent community site (remember there was no ePrairie then, just the capacity to build a community site using Epigraph technology) was worth three quarters of a million dollars. That meeting was a week after TMR was the cover story in Crain's, so it really wasn't 50:50, was it Jim? Now, let's be clear, I am not in any way taking Connolly's side and I think he can be intransigent in any negotiation, but there has to be some underlying real value (dollar value) to any equity split. You can't just say 50:50 without knowing what your underlying dollar value is. But the technique seems to be tried and true. The guy with the least to offer at the table talks percentages. And while we are on the subject of laying cards on the table when appropriate, the article that set off the firestorm about Connolly that appeared in LinuxWorld and written by Robert Hamilton, admittedly a good guy, did not disclose that Hamilton is a partner in Connolly's firm, Literati Group. So, a partner is writing an article about his own business colleague and it is not even mentioned. Connolly argues that it is irrelevant. Is it irrelevant that Jim Carville is advising the Kerry campaign. Connolly says that my bringing this up at this late date is like a guy showing up after the Hindenburg explosion and saying, "I smell gas." It would have been no skin off of Hamilton's back to have disclosed the relationship to the readers of LinuxWorld.
On TMR's side in that meeting of August 1999 were Neil Kane and Tom Thornton, Gilbert and my brother, and Tom may have been already talking actively to divine about going there, but he was still at the Coalition and Neil told me a few months after our meeting that he was on the advisory board for ePrairie. Talk about incestuous relationships in this town! All I can say is watch your back. Now all we need is Darcy in on the deal.
You know, Jim, maybe we can work a deal. You can put out a report a week on the tech issues you care about and combine it with other stuff and advertising and you can own a significant part of that deal. That way, you don't have to start from scratch in building a readership of 19,000 people and I don't have to sound like I know what I am talking about when I really don't. We could call it "The Carlini Report." At this point, Jim, the way I figure it based on buzz, you are the only columnist in ePrairie I ever hear being talked about, good or bad, so you probably "own" about 25% of the publication anyway based on buzz, that is.
But I digress --- of course the footnotes are always the best part of any book or article.
Anyway, Michael Maranda told me that the Carlini panel was lively because Stel from OnShore --- and Stel your time is up --- you are now a columnist for TMR with an op ed to Carlini --- challenged Carlini repeatedly. Annie and Peter Collins were also on that panel according to the program guide. The issue was the last mile and various theories about how to handle it, but Stel seemed to take issue with Carlini's use of the term "war driving" which is how people go around town looking for holes in wireless networks that they can tap into.
Michael's point was that Stel took issue with the use of the word since most of the so-called "war driving" is done with NO malice intended. It is not like corporate espionage is being conducted --- it's just kids for the most part having fun, Maranda argued.
Other panelists at the conference included people from the IT Resource, including Deborah Strauss herself, Robin Woodsome from the Illinois Century Network, John Barr, the guy from DCEO who runs the CTC program, Paul Adams from PrairieNet and Sascha Meinrath who was one of the key organizers of the successful national 2004 Community Wireless Summit down in Champaign-Urbana in August which I attended. Pat Quinn was the keynote speaker.
Between Layton Olson and Don Samuelson we have two guys, both attorneys, who are virtually walking encyclopedias when it comes to all this stuff. Layton knows the policy and programatic issues better than anyone and Don knows the wireless stuff pretty darn well.
To finish off for today, since the Illinois Century Network was represented at the conference and I never did finish my write-up on them after I interviewed Pete Ashi, the policy chair, in August, here is more info. on the ICN:
From: "Pete Ashi" <cpashi@sbcglobal.net>
To: <ron@themayreport.com>
Subject: more information about ICN
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:30:23 -0500
Ron,
You can find more details at www.illinois.net
Pete
provides a world-class IP network to 6,000 educational institutions - more than any other network of its kind in the United States or the world
was cited as a contributing factor in Illinois being tied for #1 in the 2001 Digital States Survey
serves approximately 2 million Illinois citizens - mostly students
passes between 600 and 800 million bits per second to the Internet on a daily basis
is growing at a rate of 6-8% each month
has the largest bandwidth available to any community college system in the United States
operates the largest private network in the state providing real time traffic management, network services, upgrades, and repairs on a 24/7/365 basis
connects to Internet 2 providing access to ICN educational constituents, many of whom would either be ineligible for Internet 2 access or unable to afford it without the ICN
is the first state network to become fully multicast enabled allowing a single stream of video to be replicated at an institution providing access to broadcast quality video transmissions including channels and productions from CSPAN, PBS, NASA, Department of Defense, the Smithsonian Institution, and hundreds of others
provides service, equipment, and management in order to light up dark fiber for the Chicago Housing Authority, City of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools, and Chicago Public Library
is now working in partnership with the Department of Central Management Services and the I-Wire project to further utilize long haul state-owned dark fiber to increase bandwidth and decrease constituent costs
is piloting video applications with Illinois Healthcare to provide hospitals with access to Critical Care and Burn Care Units in rural areas
offers the lowest possible cost for constituents to receive bandwidth to the commercial Internet and to one another - saving the state approximately $12-15 million per year
provides a cost effective resource for institutions transitioning from older H.320 video to newer IP-based H.323 video
has a regionally based, 100% certified, technical staff to provide local support throughout the state
Some of the colleges on the network are:
Blackhawk College
Carl Sandburg Community College
Illinois Institute of Technology
McKendree College
Sauk Valley Community College
Southeastern Illinois College
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
University of Illinois Extension Offices
+++++++++
May here again. Finally, John Stanton of the KACS is leaving. Maranda tells me that he does not want to put up with another Chicago winter. And next year's conference will be held in Champaign and hosted by PrairieNet. |
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