A Few Partly-Baked Thoughts About Where We Are and Where We're Headed (115 Lines!)

Jul 1 11:51 UTC 1995

The following are several partly-baked ideas about the state of Grex.
They're all related in a way, but I have not done a good job of tying them
all together.  As I say, they're partly-baked, and I present them here for
discussion. 

I know that a lot of what I discuss below is going to require a lot of
volunteer time and money. But, unless we want to wallow at where we're at
right now, we've got to start working on finding ways to do this.  I'm
convinced of it. 

I also know that a lot of what I discuss below is going to sound like a
personal attack. Please do not take it this way. Heck, as a board member
for nearly the last four years, I'm as open to this criticism as anyone. 

Memberships

Memberships have hovered between 90 and 100 for more than a year now.
The number of members is important because the members pay the bills.
Without membership dues, Grex would cease to exist. At our current
membership level, we're paying the bills. That's not the problem. The
problem is there is not enough left over for investing in better
hardware and software. If we want to improve Grex, we're going to have
to find and keep new members.

Keeping members has been a big problem lately. Eleven members did not 
renew in April, ten failed to renew in May, and eleven dropped out in 
June. That's a turnover rate of more than 33% in three months!

We've always had people who join for a month or two, and then decide
Grex is not for them and drop out. That's no big deal, but we need to
find a way to hold on to these new members. If we could hold on to more
of the new members, we would have the money to invest in new equipment
and provide better service.

Another troubling aspect of the high turnover is that some of the
recent dropouts have been folks who have been members for a long time.
This is troubling because it tells me we aren't serving the needs of
these people or they have decided that we are not doing the right
things to earn their support.

Hardware

I think part of the problem is our hardware. Let's face it. Grex is a 
rag-tag collection of castoffs. It works, but how well is it really 
serving us?  

Grex is sometimes so slow, I don't even bother with it.  It's not a big 
problem for me because I can log in during the morning and afternoons.  
But, how many people are we turning off or turning away because they can 
only log in at night?

Then, there's the disk problem. I wonder how many potential members have 
given up on us because we lost their files?

Finally, we have an incredibly funky Internet connection.  The 28.8kbaud 
link was fine when we first set it up, but we've really outgrown it. We 
have to start working on replacing it now.

I know we're not an Internet services provider, and that we constantly 
tell people this, but in the end, service is what it's all about.  If we 
don't provide something that people want, how can we expect them to 
become members and support us?  

It's the same with other non-profits. Take the People's Food Coop, for
example. If they didn't provide something different from Kroger or were
only open between 12 pm and 2 pm on Tuesday and Thursday, why would
anyone belong?  Hitting a little closer to home, I think there would
have been no need for the HVCN if we'd been a little more professional
in our early years.

Software

I think our software also needs major updating.  Picospan is great 
software, but it's showing its age. Computer nerds and the truly 
determined will master it, but we're failing to serve the majority of 
people out there who don't want to bother with learning arcane commands 
and Unix. For better or worse, people have higher expectations of 
software today, and it's time we upgraded.

We should be running software that allows someone to stick a disk into 
their PC, click on a few buttons and get connected to Grex. I really 
think we need some kind of visual interface.  That's what most people 
expect these days.  It's the reason that the Web has become so popular.  
A simpler installation procedure and a visual interface would really make 
Grex the open and accessible system we think it is.

Things to do

I know this sounds kind of trite, but I think we need a mission
statement. The by-laws have always been vague on this point. A mission
statement will help us clarify what it is we're about and what we're
trying to do.

To help us develop this mission statement, perhaps we should conduct a
user survey.  I am going to start developing the survey; any input you
all have would be helpful.

Once we've clarified our goals, then we can proceed to find the
resources necessary to do what we need to do.  That could mean any of
the following: auctions, a membership drive, and outright collecting
for various projects.

In concert with raising funds and increasing membership, we need to
start developing our volunteers.  We are off to a good start with the
new cfadms and party administrators, but the projects I've talked about
above are going to require lots more workers than we've needed in the
past.  Getting people involved helps them strengthen their commitment
to the organization and its goals.

We're at the point where we need to become a real non-profit corporation 
providing a real public service to the community. And like any 
corporation at this stage, we're going to need both more money and more 
human capital. Now is the time to start talking about how to find and 
develop those resources.

response 2 of 137:

Jul 2 03:19 UTC 1995

gary agrees with dan also. And will be renewing ASAP! :)

response 4 of 137:

Jul 2 12:24 UTC 1995

<valerie contradicts what she said in response #1 and agrees with srw's
comments in the first paragraph of #3>

response 6 of 137:

Jul 2 19:39 UTC 1995

An HTTP-to-PicoSpam gateway would be quite interesting as a project.
The technical details of doing the relaying don't seem that complex,
but the introduced state of participation file management and providing
effective direction (i.e. having some equivalent to a way to browse
what's new, read what's new, forget things, step through a list of
conferences) is hard to introduce into what is essentially a stateless
protocol.  You need something that works better than news.  (Well,
actually I guess a PicoSpam-NNTP gateway is also theoretically
plausible, although Pico uses a linear model instead of a tree model and
so would produce some problems.)

There exist other HTTP-based conferencing software systems.  Most of
them suck, because they don't adequately provide these things.  If this
is done, care should be taken; it is easy to do but very hard to do
well.

response 8 of 137:

Jul 2 20:29 UTC 1995

  Another alternative to HTTP or custom client software would be
to use the RIP graphics protocol.  It's an existing standard for
providing BBSes with GUIs.  It allows you to put up graphics and
buttons as with HTTP, but doesn't need the lower-level protocols
on the host or client end.  A number of PC comm programs support
RIP, though I don't know how many are PD, or what other OS's are
supported.  I haven't seen it in action, but it seems preferable
to custom client software, as only the host interface would need
writing.  It's harder to compare RIP's tradeoffs to the HTTP/CGI
approach.

response 10 of 137:

Jul 2 23:01 UTC 1995

That's pretty much true of all bbs. Clients (especially http) to
make them easier to use are only just coming into existence. Grex
was "before its time" - but then, so were all the others. The question
is, can Grex "catch up"? It will always be one of many, in any case,
so the question is what "niche" will Grex fill. 

response 12 of 137:

Jul 3 11:41 UTC 1995

BUT I DON"T WANT TO FOCUS ON ONLY ONE QUESTION!!!

In fact, the GUI question is probably the least important of of all the ideas.
Let's start a new item to talk about that, please.

response 14 of 137:

Jul 3 19:03 UTC 1995

What other one question should we focus on now, danr?

response 16 of 137:

Jul 4 16:42 UTC 1995

yes, yes, and yes.

Actually, the question really is whther or not we're satisfied with Grex the
way it is, or shall we attempt to stretch ourselves into something more
professional and more of a public service.  I would like to see us
stretch ourselves, but Grex is certainly a system of, by, and for its
users.  If Grex users don't want this, then there's little we can do
to force them.

response 18 of 137:

Jul 5 06:24 UTC 1995

Danr says that that there are a lot of things that we could be doing
to be a more professional system. Yes, that's true. But professional's
get paid. We need to find volunteers who are willing to be more professional,
but without getting paid for it.

Our system's current uptime and reliability statistics are an abomination.
We crash all the time, losing files left and right. This is just the way it is
and the way it will continue to be until we get the Sun-4 running.
Progress so far= 0, despite the application of $1000. I am not happy about 
this, but I am hopeful that the stalemate is about to end.

We need a better net connection desparately. I do not know if we can get one,
but I aim to try as hard as I can to make it happen.

There is a great deal of resistance to change. I have been bugging the 
staff for months to implement the now year-old member policy, but once again
we can get nowhere. The excuse is the instability of the system. 
I think it would be inexcusable in a professional organization, but we
aren't one, are we?

I am the only board member that supported Rane's proposed experiment in
support of a nonprofit. I still don't understand the reasoning used
by the others to kill that idea (but it's dead).

<sorry to rant, but it has been building up for a while>

response 20 of 137:

Jul 5 12:38 UTC 1995

Over the past year or so I have seen evidence that the missions of Grex
(whether formalized in writing or not) and the missions of HVCN are
more similar than they are divergent. Danr, srw, popcorn, STeve, remmers,
ajax, robh, and others have assisted HVCN directly or indirectly - without
any tangible reward. (Gosh - don't forget mdw!) This says alot to me
about the public service roots of Grex. If I understand danr's questions
then I believe we each (Grex and HVCN) have part of the answers. Perhaps
there could be a Grex that pretty much stays the way it is - providing
some esoteric forums for the people who want those - difficult to use
at times, slow at times, but richly rewarding in the ideas, conflicts,
and open expression of thought.  Another Grex could be focused on 
community service in cooperation with HVCN and other groups - using
the experience and common sense solutions to provide enhanced public
services? Both would exist within Cyberspace Communications, Inc. 

Add this ingredient to the mix: Some major "Free-Nets" are in trouble,
and trying to re-define themselves in light of the lack of funds needed
to be "free". As I see the situation, community networks must build
a very large number of divergent community supporters to the end that
the loss of one or some will not jeapordize the network. This creates
an opportunity for the "second" Grex I described. Or?

response 22 of 137:

Jul 5 15:37 UTC 1995

One comment:  a sun 4 would be an improvement, but it's another danged
antique, and will not serve our needs for long.  We should be raising
money for a Pentium box, or some other 20th century computer.  Grex has
people with ten times the technical ability of M-Net's staff, but they
burn up all their time cobbling computers together from dumpster divings,
instead of doing things to move Grex ahead of the curve.

response 24 of 137:

Jul 6 12:18 UTC 1995

I fervently agree with Jan's comments in #22.  If the new computer is
supposed to be 2 to 3 times faster than our current one, that's not
going to "fix" things: Load averages will go down from, say, 30 to 10.
A load average of 10 is still astronomical.  Look at how fast M-Net runs.
We could do that!  Also, if we got Grex onto Intel technology, there
would be a *lot* more people who could help do hardwarey stuff, instead
of only the very small number of people who can do things for Grex now.

I wonder if Grex *could* afford to pay a staffer.  If part of the staffer's
job were to do Grex publicity and bring in new members, it seems to me
that the person could well pay for his/her own salary.  Dunno, though;
that's a mighty big leap to take.  I'm not sure Grex is ready for it yet.