ICAN is born in Washtenaw County - opportunity for cooperation?

Mar 31 13:20 UTC 1996

ICAN - Interactive Community Access Network - new kid on the block.

response 4 of 39:

Apr 14 20:55 UTC 1996

Grex, Arbornet, HVCN, and ICAN all rubbed up against one another this
afternoon at the HVCN board meeting. This is a start. Next tuesday evening
at the Ann Arbor District Library (main branch on Fifth in Ann Arbor) will
be an opportunity to talk to each other informally. 6:30 p.m. -- 9:00 p.m.
M-Link, HVCN, and other demos. New web-based conferencing system. Even some
food. 

response 6 of 39:

Apr 15 14:35 UTC 1996

I was impressed with the history of how ICAN came about, and its direction(s).
However, I'm not certain I qualify as an agent of Arbornet as you described
in #4  ;)

I intend to try and be at the AA Public Library (er...District Library) for
the info night.  This is an interesting developement which, imho, is related
to the essence of "WIN" (still alive in spirit, if not fact).

response 8 of 39:

Apr 15 23:56 UTC 1996

Actually, the only person who did not appear was Elvis, but I understand he
tried to get in after we all left. Richard, I think you should become involved
in the ICAN initiative somehow. I also hope Arbornet, as a formal matter, will
decide to join this initiative in the sense of positive participation in the
formative stages. It may take some adjustment in thinking for all concerned.

response 10 of 39:

Apr 17 10:50 UTC 1996

I agree that no one should harangue Arbornet. The opportunity for mutual
benefit from cooperation is here but there is no point in getting upset if
Arbornet chooses to decline the opportunity. I suggest that the informal way
Grex and HVCN people cooperate and interact is an example of how a good
relationship can evolve. Neither group has given up its identity as far as
I can see, and there has been a real spirit of mutual help.  I hope Grex never
loses its independence and character but I also hope that HVCN will be a
positive factor for Grex. So far, in little ways, that seems to be what has
happened. Certainly Grex has been a positive force for HVCN. What is really
frustrating is that there are many great people at Arbornet that, I believe,
would like to cooperate but they seem to be cut off from doing so.

response 12 of 39:

Apr 17 22:57 UTC 1996

That is good. They are certainly welcome.

response 14 of 39:

Apr 23 14:01 UTC 1996

I, too, avoid m-nets general.cf, but have been trying to keep these
discussions alive in policy.cf, win.cf (I think there is an item there), and
as it came up...in the election.cf.  Perhaps I should link the election.cf
item to the win.cf to keep it alive???

There seems to be a tide of change leaning toward greater
cooperation...however, I'm sure that it is any more than supported WIN in the
first place.  there are darn few people involved in the discussions, and most
Arbornet BoD members are either not participating in the dialogue, or posting
rare responses which move away from the topic.

I'll keep trying to spur these discussions...any help from grexers and
hvcners, and all others, is appreciated.

response 16 of 39:

May 3 22:02 UTC 1996

HVCN will be creating a community networking conference on Backtalk. I intend
to add an item discussing the ICAN initiative in that conference. Will it
be ok to cross post those entries here, and vice-versa (assuming dpc will
help) to create the widest possible audience. I don't want to abandon this
issue here but do want to get some content from the ICAN people, and my
assumption is many of them may be more likely to play in the GUI stuff
than come here. <adbarr promises not to call anyone here a Geek, unlike
our other, out of control, director, whose name I will not mention> What
are your wishes? Perhaps rickyb could help also in keeping these two
conferences coordinated? There is going to be lots happening in the next
months that, I think, will be interesting and possibly important to those
here.  For those who might not know: Backtalk is a conferencing system
on HVCN -- http://www.hvcn.org -- go to interactive forums  -- that can
be accessed with Lynx - text mode, or better with Netscape etc. Please
insert ? at end of second sentence above.

response 18 of 39:

May 5 00:39 UTC 1996

Excellent! I knew I could count on you, rickyb. I fully support the idea of
cross posting to m-net WIN conference. This is going to take some time and
will not be coordinated as well as a computer could do, but us humans can
make the judgments that will cause the information to be usefull  As far as
coordination, I will discuss that issue with HVCN's board tommorrow. They
have some good ideas, in most cases.  ;-)  You, dpc, and I should take this
responsibility until such time as our over-worked tech volunteers can 
make this automatic. I think people will be surprised. Oh, and let's not
forget cross-posting in other areas. There are some interesting discussions
being started on HVCN that could bring new insights to conferences here and
on m-net.  I do have a concern that some of the more "acidic" personalities
will pledge themselves to be positive and civil on these cross-posts. We are
looking for constructive information exchanges.  I cringe at some of the
characterizations of other people I read sometimes. It serves no community
purpose. Ideas are despartely requested.  Our attorney is busy and has not
been able to address fully our AUP on conferencing. I'll gently remind him
about this. He does good work so it will be worth the wait.

response 20 of 39:

May 6 02:25 UTC 1996

re 2] well put

re 1] I can help. It should be a snap.
The hardest part will be deciding what has been posted on a given system
already.

response 22 of 39:

May 7 03:34 UTC 1996

HVCN now has an active ICAN item and an item to discuss sharing among
systems (community network information) -- http://www.hvcn.org -- go to
Interactive Forums. I apologize for the formatting problem in the first
item. Srw was pressuring me, Mom!

response 24 of 39:

May 7 23:32 UTC 1996

dpc mailed us and said it was a nightmare to share when he tried it sometime
ago between Grex and m-net. HVCN has a test area for just trying things out.
Perhaps a little area on Grex could be used - to be later scrubbed as a
test run to try cutting and pasting.  The posts would not have to be real.
We might get a feel for the numbering etc. problems. If it still is a
nightmare then we can start looking for other solutions - long run. As you
can see in the 1st item in the HVCN Communitynet conf I ran into a wrap
problem posting an item from my editor. The post was extremely simple
to make using Windows cut and paste but I should have used a test
first. This was in the Vanilla version so I should have remembered it
does not wrap as nice as Pistachio or this text-wrapper here on Grex.

If the conferences to not have 50 new entries each per day (ie - a reasonable
number) I am hopefull it will work with at least reasonable success. I think
we are still waiting for permission, but in the meantime we can try out
some examples?  I understand your feelings about Windows, but there are
somethings it makes possible that are light years ahead of DOS alone. I am
always accessing Grex and m-net through a Windows comm program. Same with
HVCN.  I will try setting up a test item on HVCN and transfer some of 
my own posts - I guess no one would object to _that_!  Would anyone here
object to a TEST item in this conference just to try the concept? I'll remind
people to use the forget command in the zero entry. I don't want to waste
much disk space with this so we will keep it pretty short.