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   The URL of this document is:
   http://www.flora.org/russell/papers/newyears98.html. Many references
   made in this document have hypertext links at that page
   It was last modified on: December 31, 1997
   Other related documents may be read from:
   http://www.flora.org/russell/papers/
   
   
   
Happy New Years 1998

   
What was new in 1997?

   The report card for New Years 1997 spoke about the new community
   services that went online. While we had the loss of Ottawa.Public.Net
   for Access services in July, 1997 saw the gain of a number of
   communications services sites via the Shared-IP group. Shared-IP was
   initiated in January and involved 4 different Internet hosts being
   connected to each other and then to FLORA Community WEB so that those
   on the Internet could access the services offered by these sites. A
   number of new services were formed such as :
     * The Davin Community Site is the home of many experimental
       services, such as the FreePort Search Engine , the Davin News
       Gateway, and various Ottawa area Network News statistics.
     * INODE Community Networking includes work on software such as
       Firewalls and LYNX verifiers and organizations such as the
       Association for Bright Children
     * Jammys.net was the main HUB location for Shared-IP, and also
       offers UUCP/Fidonet links for Email and News.
     * Striker Software Cooperative which is the home of the The Ottawa
       Community Index.
       
   Before the end of January 1998 these services will have set up their
   own Internet connections which is now cost effective due to the lower
   cost of server access through services such as Rogers Wave and ADSL.
   
   More organizations are being able to set up their own provider
   independent presence online through the use of domain names. FLORA has
   been helping organizations such as the Citizens for Safe Cycling which
   have their own cfsc.ottawa.on.ca domain name which allows them to
   independently provide their members and the public access to cycling
   information. Without being tied to another providers domain, as their
   needs grow, they are free to make use of the most appropriate
   technologies of the time without any dependencies on any external
   organization.
   
National Capital Freenet

   My direct involvement in the National Capital Freenet came to a close
   this April as my account was archived. I did not renew my account as a
   protest against the inconsistent policy decisions relating to
   different software, and the focus on fund-raising vs community that
   the Board of Directors had taken. Likely as a result of this and other
   dissenting opinions about decisions being made at the NCF, an article
   entitled _Dissenters challenge FreeNet for abandoning mandate_ (
   Ottawa Citizen, Thursday 17 April 1997, Business section ) was
   written.
   
   On the positive publicity side, the Public Relations Team of the NCF
   initiated FreeNews. This extremely valuable newsletter has been
   published monthly since March and has kept members and non-members
   alike up-to-date on NCF related issues. The FreeNews is available on
   an NCF menu, in HTML format on the WEB, and as TEXT sent out monthly
   in a mailing list.
   
   While the NCF has continue to adopt more and more of the standardized
   Internet tools through its FreePlace services, the board is still
   having problems with technology issues and not creating technology
   independent community communications applications. This can be seen
   most visibly with the current inconsistent implementation of
   discussion groups between the NTTP access method (FreePlace News) and
   the FreePort Access method:
     * While FreePort has full guest access to all newsgroups that are
       part of a menu on the NCF, the FreePlace News access requires a
       password. When other organizations have tried to help the NCF in
       making things more consistent by offering GUEST access to News
       using NNTP, these have been incorrectly understood by the Board of
       Directors as being an attack on the NCF rather than an assistance.
     * While FreePort has full access for Members to all newsgroups on
       the NCF news server, FreePlace access is restricted to only the
       ott.*, news.* and ncf.* series of newsgroups. This requires more
       complex software configurations for users who may not understand
       the software, and does not allow the user to just browse menus and
       easily select discussion groups regardless of their origins as
       users of the FreePort interface can.
       
   These inconsistencies have been added by request of the Board of
   Directors, rather than having the board create generic policies that
   apply to all current and future technologies and allow technical staff
   and volunteers to implement these policies consistently.
   
   Further commentary on the NCF was available in last years new years
   notes and I would recommend interested people to take a look. I do
   hope that these issues of inconsistent implementation of technologies
   and the focus on funding rather than the NCF mission statement will
   soon be issues of the past.
   
Politics and new technologies

   My own activities in community networking have moved more and more
   into the mainstream politics. I was actively involved in both the
   Federal and Municipal elections of the past year, both promoting
   issues and helping to promote parties or candidates.
   
   Just before this years federal election I learned of the Multilateral
   Agreement on Investment. Through Newsgroups and Email I helped try to
   promote this issue to become a big part of the campaign. While we were
   successful in making the issue a big part of the debate for the
   smaller parties, the mainstream parties could not be convinced. Even
   the Labour based NDP party were unwilling to make statements regarding
   the MAI during the election.
   
   After the election a project within OPIRG-Carleton called MAI-not came
   to me to create a Web presence and public forum on the issue. The site
   for this project has been recently renamed to http://mai.flora.org.
   
   The forum, flora.mai-not was created with a new style of discussion
   forum that included the ease of use of a Website, the redundancy and
   distribution of a newsgroup, as well as the independence from the
   Internet of mailing lists. This forum style also automatically
   filtered out hit-and-run SPAM postings by checking contributions
   against a membership list. This format also does not slow down
   discussions by filtering through a human moderator or requiring
   technology specific or site specific tools such as password protected
   newsgroups or Web forum.
   
   As with all other technology tools at FLORA, this new Forum type is
   comprised of freely available tools available to any community
   network. It would be highly recommended that other community networks
   adopt this format in their technology toolkits as it answers many of
   the problems discussed by both those who have primarily focused on
   membership-required forums (Such as the National Capital Freenet, or
   WEB Networks) as well as those who have been advocates for totally
   unrestricted forums. The only limitations of this style of
   auto-moderated group is that the current implementation does not allow
   for either Newsgroup crossposts, or for Carbon-copy mailings to more
   than 1 auto-moderated forum.
   
Looking Forward in 1998

   With my own moving into Coop Voisins in June and my subsequent
   election to the Board of Directors (Also in June) I have started to
   become an activist in both the social housing and cooperatives
   movement. I plan to mix my activism in community networking and social
   housing/cooperatives in order to try to bring better access and
   communications tools to these growing communities. Projects at Coop
   Voisins and the Conservation Coop which is in the same neighborhood
   will include new Websites, discussion groups, and public access
   terminals. Other project being discussed include wireless connections
   to connect the various coops to each other to facilitate increased
   communications between these organizations.
   
   I also plan to help in any way I can the various future-looking groups
   such as the Quality of Life Network (There is a local group that has
   forums and meetings). This group was formed after Robert Theobald's
   book tour for his book Reworking Success which has been very
   influential on my thinking the past months. I also plan to continue
   helping activists groups such as the MAI-Tell us Why campaign, and the
   Peace and Environment Resource Center.
   
   If you have any commentary on this note, please send me email or open
   a discussion in the flora.general discussion group.

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.org/russell/work/>
 Dec marked the beginning of a year long commemoration of the 50th anniversary
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