steve
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STeve Andre's longer campaign statement
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Dec 1 07:38 UTC 1998 |
Hello! Thank you for looking at the "long" version of this. Grex is
complex enough that I simply can't talk about it in just a few lines.
Below is the "short" version:
|Hi. This is STeve Andre'; I'm one of the eight or so people running for the
|Grex board this time around. I'm one of the staff that help keep the system
|running, and one of the twelve people who started Grex, back in 1991. I was
|on the board from 1992 to 1996.
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|This is the "short" version of my campaign statement. Being the gasbag that
|I am, I can't possibly put my thoughts and feelings of Grex and why I'm once
|again running for board into 22 lines. The long version is in ~steve/yak as
|well as http://cyberspace.org/~steve and in item XX in the coop
conference. |[Note: not ready yet!] | |Grex is seven years old now--positively
ancient in the world of cyberspace. |In every dimension possible we've grown
amazingly and are still growing |today. There are a very few systems like Grex
anywhere in the world, and I'm |proud to be a part of it. Little did I know
that what I've often refered to |as my "third child" would be known the world
over with users from more than |124 countries. But because we've done well in
the past doesn't mean we can |rest--we have new challenges facing us, from
dealing with our popularity, to |the ever-changing technology, and better ways
to provide our services to |people. I'd like to take on the challange of being
on the board again, if |the community thinks I'd be a good candidate. Read the
long version. ;-)
Now for the longer version...
Grex is a really cool thing, I think. Back in 1991 the twelve "founders"
had only a hope that Grex might be successful. I think we succeeded,
probably beyond most of our expectations, but just because we've done OK
up to now doesn't mean our fortunes can't change. Technology roars along
and what was relevant even a few years ago often seems old fashioned
today. Grex has done a fairly good job of keeping up over the years, but
we're going to have to keep changing, in order to continue to be the
thriving system it is today. Here are some of the changes I think Grex is
going to have to seriously consider and some of the issues we face:
- PPP on the dialin modems. Many people today don't understand what
it means to 'dial into a system'(!). As incredible as that is to us
BBS folks, there are a TON of people out there today who use computers
who simply don't have the knowledge to make a terminal connection to
Grex. By being able to handle PPP connections to Grex, a user could
use Netscape to read conferences, Eudora to fetch mail, just as they
would if they were on the net, wandering around. This isn't a trivial
task technically, but neither is it gigantic. The impact on Grex will
be as important as our getting on the Internet was, I predict.
- A better ("fatter") Internet connection. Right now, Grex's connection
to the net, as good as it is, is going to be overtaxed in 1999. As
it currently stands people can't have graphical web pages here because
we don't have the net bandwidth to allow for this. Back several years
ago we got by with a 28K modem connection. Today we're doing all right
with a 128K connection, but that isn't going to last much into next
year, given the continual rise in usage. Getting a faster connection
isn't going to be easy however, and is going to take some considerable
amount of talking with organizations/entities, until we find one that
is willing to let us have such a connection for free, or nearly so. I
say free, because we're likely to have to spend more money on the
physical connection.
- Better local advertising of ourselves. We've had the services of a
professional technical writer for years now (Misti Tucker, currently
on the board), but as an organization Grex hasn't really made a
serious effort to reach out to the local community and inform people
of what Grex is. Misti directed the still-running Grex video on the
local community access channel but we can do more. Some things that
we might want to consider are:
+ Talks on Grex, for the newcommer. A "Grex 101" class, covering the
basics that confuse people. I will bet that what the first attendees
say are the confusing parts are likely not what we think they are,
but thats fine: we need to get that feedback from the technically
shy.
+ Get the kids who use Grex to talk about Grex among their friends.
This has happened already, but it would be good if we could have
pamphlets and such for our younger users to hand out to others, and
to talk with the current kids about things like getting help on Grex,
and how Grex is poor and could use even *tiny* donations. ;-)
+ Continue the tradition of Misti's video, and work on something a
little longer, explaining what conferencing is, etc.
+ Wrangling more press coverage about Grex, and having a stock
"propaganda" press kit and web page for those people who are
accustomed to these things.
- Increased "begging" on the net and elsewhere for surplus equipment.
Grex jumped off it's Sun-2 computer to it's Sun-3, because a local
defense company heard of Grex, and decided the zero-book value Sun-3's
they had sitting in a warehouse had more value to an organization
like us than the cement floor they sat on. Jumping to the Sun-3
system was our first quantum leap, and let us do more of all the
things we wanted to do. I think that with a little effort on our
part to let people know that we're still "bottomfeeders" of technology,
we might get some interesting offers of equipment. It can't hurt to
try--all people can do is laugh at us, but we might get some nifty
things out of it!
- A litle better at asking for money from our users. *I* *DO* *NOT*
*GREX* *TO* *CONSTANTLY* *BEG* *FOR* *MONEY*.
I hope I've made myself clear here. Grex was founded on open access
principals, and I believe in them wholeheartedly. But at the same
time, I'd like to see if there is a way in which we can let people
know that Grex really does cost money--a lot of money--to keep running
every month. As it stands, we're about as laid back as you can get,
in terms of asking for money. I'd like to see Grex send one (probably
even two is too much) piece of mail to users who've stuck around for
a while, just to let them know that we really could use some help out
for our bills and expansion.
However, if we can't do this without sounding like a whining whale,
I'd as soon drop it. One of the coolest ideas behind Grex I think,
is the free and open access foundation upon which it rests on. I do
not ever want to change that.
Along these lines, I think that Grex needs to be able to accept
credit cards. This is a change of mind for me personally, but as
technology changes, so must Grex. It feels to me like we could get
enough people willing to join via credit card to cover the costs of
being able to allow this, but we need to look the matter over more.
An interesting side effect of this would be the likely increase of
members from other countries, as the ease factor in being able to
give a string of numbers in (secure) email has a powerful positive
effect on getting people to dontate money.
- Thanks to the wonderful efforts of Jan Wolter and others, Grex has
a powerful tool to use, namely our 501(c)(3) status which if properly
used could get us things that we'd not likely be able to get, on our
own. But with that tool comes management issues on how not to mis-use
it, which is extremely important. I think we can use this to our
advantage, as long as we're careful with it.
- Grex usage is such that today in November 1998, as many new accounts
are taken out every two days as in *all* of 1991. This growth has
been nothing less than incredible, both in terms of our popularity,
and our ability to keep up and manage it. I routinely get open
mouthed stares from computer professionals who learn of the ah,
"lean" staffing that Grex has, compared to it's size. This growth
presents interesting challenges to us as a community, as our system
has never been used by so many for as many different purposes as now.
Can Grex maintain its general nature, or are we going to have to
decide that there are things we should focus on, and work on those
aspects of Grex the most?
It is very nearly surreal to me, how many people have heard of Grex
and in how many different ways. It's no secret that India has an
enormous presence on Grex (the largest non-American user contingent),
but that will be overshadowed as China slowly wakes to the net.
Within the next three years Grex will be known by literally millions
of people (If you doubt this, keep this file in a safe place and
we'll talk then). When you consider the friendly nature of Grex
and the sheer numbers of people who have yet to get on the Internet,
it is a mind boggling proposition.
However--and this is the important part--I don't think Grex's interests
are best served by trying to close things, or make us less accessable.
I think Grex will be best served by rising to the challange of an
increasing user base, and to figure out how to accomodate as many
users as technically and socially possible. Can we do this? Yes, I
think so. We can look forward with fear, or we can be creative. I
prefer the latter!
Obviously we can't do everything overnight, or we'd have done much of
this already. The point I'd like to make here is that Grex has done
a wonderful job of taking a little money and old tired computing
technology, and making something... well, magic.
I don't think magic is too strong a word, either. Take a look out
there on the net and look for systems as open as Grex is, and as liberal
with its resources as we are.
There aren't many. We in the Ann Arbor area have had an incredible
and wonderful history of comuter conferencing, starting with Dr.
Robert Parnes Confer II software which ran on the old UM MTS mainframe,
which led to Mike Myers and Marcus Watts starting up a system similar
in concept (M-Net), back in a time when computers were rather more costly
than they are today.
Grex is a part of this heritage, and I'm really proud to have been a
part of all this. I'd like to see more systems like Grex around the
world, but all we can do is to provide an example. To show that an open
system-- one that offers services that many security "experts" say can't
be done--can still be reasonably secure, and whats more, fun. To me,
Grex embodies the philosophy of generosity and friendship, cooperation
and some real-world savvy that matches my own feelings about life.
I hope I've conveyed my feelings about Grex in this item. If people
like what I've said then perhaps I'll be elected. But if not elected,
I'll still be serving in the capacity of a staff person, and won't
slink away with my feelings hurt. There are *good* people out there
running for the board this time around. I'm truely glad to see so many
people running, for it indicates that people care about Grex, which is
all to the good.
Thanks for listening
--STeve
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