Imsong Lee called the meeting to order at 7:30 AM at the Terman Library. Joe Villareal introduced Emily Harrison, Palo Alto Asst. City Manager. He gave a summary of her extensive experience and background. Emily gave a brief review of her activities and duties at City Hall, especially in communications. This is a new area for her, and she welcomes the challenge. She acknowledged Elliot Magolis [Margolies] and pointed out that the Council approved added City funding for MPAC from the franchise fees. Bob Moss noted that Cable Co-op pays more than twice as much as Palo Alto to support MPAC. There was a clause in the agreement between Cable Co-op and MPAC that MPAC would share in profits, and Cable Co-op has had a profit for the past 6 months. If there is a profit at the end of the year there may be more funds available for MPAC.
Elliot Margolis described how he became involved with the Internet and the wide array of information available there. It was a very interesting learning experience. He applied the information learned to his job as a public access producer in order to aid people using public access to present themselves well and identify common interests. He is very interested in creating sites which bring people together and allows them to share information and work together. With so many people in Palo Alto on-line, it's the ideal test bed for community interaction. He conducted a survey in the Midtown neighborhood to find out how many people were on-line, and what did they want from an on-line community. They distributed 4000 surveys door to door and got about 250 back. Just before they had the 1st neighborhood community meeting on forming an on-line community the PA Weekly announced they were going to have a community bulletin board type of Internet site. Elliot worked with Bill Johnson of PAW and got him to agree to work with the community group to set up the site and run it. There are a number of issues in setting up a neighborhood web site, such as privacy, freedom of speech, harassment, censorship, competitive issues, etc. They think that all of the issues have been worked out, and they are refining the software. They bought the MOTET software for technical conferencing, and are ready to set it up and launch of NeighborSpace.
The agreement they reached with Bill Johnson is that the Weekly will market the service, but the neighborhood part will be commercial free. They want to serve the community grass roots from the neighborhood perspective. It's a work in process. Everyone will have a chance to do what they want. Each neighborhood is different in interests, level of organization, etc. There are 4 kinds of conferences - self referential, exclusive to each neighborhood, public community interests, and private interests. It is intended for neighborhoods all over Palo Alto, not just Midtown. There are several ways that organizations like PA-ComNet can use it, for example as a conferencing area, or to provide content. Conferencing doesn't duplicate the list serve. It will be biased towards public things since there are many other venues for private conferences.
Mary Jo noted there have been some detours along the way. They applied for a grant, but didn't have non-profit status. It is an MPAC project now, so they have nonprofit status via MPAC. It was just for Midtown originally, but is intended to be used citywide now.
Elliot used a computer and projector to show screens from Cafe UTNE which also uses the Motet software. The URL is UTNE.com/motet. He showed some of the various types of areas that can be accessed. Each interest area can be identified, with a history of access, site filters, directory of responses, a specific order that items are presented, etc. There is a scroll space at the top of the screen which UTNE uses for ads, but it can be set up for other topics. Any item of interest can be selected by the topic, by the postings since a particular date, by who posted, etc. There is no moderator, but privileges can be set to exclude topics or particular individuals from being accessed. If items are posted they can be erased. There is no general filter as such. There is a directory of users. The screens had lots of information on the sites and topics, and appeared to be easy to use and to navigate around. There was an interesting presentation of the features and capabilities of the system.
David Green said NeighborSpace is up and running, and in test. PA-ComNet is an ideal group to play with it and offer suggestions. Now it is in Alpha, with no sysop. The address won't be released until the site is improved and is in Beta test. Contact Elliot for access and information on the site. His address is mpac@nanospace.com
Committee reports were next. Margaret Cooley reported on administration. They arrange speakers for the monthly meetings. Presently they are working on a system for on-line voting, but have not gotten enough agreement yet to bring proposals back to the group.
Joe Vilareal reported on outreach. Warren Kallenbach has a roster of neighborhood associations and contact people and addresses which will be posted on NeighborSpace when NeighborSpace is on-line.
Tom Passell reported on policy. There was 1 meeting in the past month with 3 members present who provided a draft vision statement which still is in work. The effort is continuing.
Keith reported on the TAC meeting of Fri. May 1. Van Heimke gave a presentation on the universal telecommunications RFP which is in process. There are concerns that the scope of the RFP may make it hard to identify who would respond. The City may sponsor a fiber to the home trial first, to see what issues, problems, and features are involved, and then reconsider to the Council how detailed the RFP needs to be. There was a request from the Community Center Neighborhood for the City to help provide fiber to the home connections. The City has a business model for use of the fiber ring that they evaluated, and it looks promising. It was developed internally, but the figures aren't firm. The TAC panel thought the trial was a good idea, but it may be too small to be accurate in predicting Internet awareness and usage issues. It may delay issuing the RFP for use of the fiber ring, and they may miss the market. TAC approved going to the City Council to try to get a trial use of the fiber loop to residential users underway as soon as possible. There will be a selection process for each of the areas. The plan is scheduled to go to the City Council in July.
Bob Moss reported for resources on work with Plugged-In to get them high speed access. Cable modems were installed less than a week after the people from PA-ComNet visited Plugged-In. Bart is very pleased with the modems. Bob also got approval from his company to provide surplus computers to Plugged-In. The management approval was given in less than 2 days. Now they have to find suitable hardware to send to Bart.
David said that it is difficult trying to identify where in each neighborhood potential users are relative to the fiber loop and breakout boxes. Will all neighborhoods be treated equally as far as fiber loop access is concerned, or will a few neighborhoods be treated separately?
Marvin Lee noted that the Community Center Neighborhood is compact and can be treated by itself, but it also can be expanded to include other nearby areas.
John Horan briefly described the business data base which was created to show examples of listings and how they can be modified, corrected, etc. It is fully functional and ready to use, but it needs to be exercised so that we can find out what works, what doesn't work, and what information is still required. Paul Pease is the business dataguard. John Horan will coordinate it. The site was torn apart for remodeling, and now has some input from about a dozen businesses and residents. The Chamber of Commerce has not been contacted about the business data base yet.
There was a very brief presentation on wireless data transmittal which would use the fiber ring as a backbone.
Imsong introduced Charles Barry, speaker for June meeting that will be devoted to competitive economics and performance of Fiber-To-The-Home system for Residential Broadband Communication Service.
Next PA-ComNet meeting will be Wednesday June 3, 7:30 AM at Terman.
The meeting adjourned at 8:40.