response 50 of 220:

Mar 31 09:58 UTC 1995

I think the fears people have here are a bit more than that.  One of
those fears really has nothing at all to do with HVCN or WIN, but
rather, with internal grex politics.  We have a minority here who are
afraid of growth, who are afraid that Grex will lose its feeling of a
close knit community as it grows.  That doesn't really have anything at
all to do with WIN, so while I don't want to belittle the importance of
this question, I don't think it's fair to sidetrack this discussion.
I'd be pleased to expand and offer evidence elsewhere, but for here,
I'll only state this is an almost completely unfounded fear.

I believe another fear comes out of Grex's history: when Grex was
formed, it was formed as a reaction to a person who had absolute control
over another system, and who had a private agenda that did not respect
the interests of the community.  As a result, here, you will find people
are fiercely protective of the principles of this community, and
particularly suspicious of the possibilities of private agendas.  I'm
positive I'm not the only one who made a *very* careful study of the
past history of HVFN, and its evolution into HVCN.  I'm sure I'm also
not the only one concerned about the recent changes of Michnet as it
imposes authorization and access charges, who wants to be sure WIN
doesn't go that way.

I think another fear people have is in terms of "Big Money".  Of course,
Grex has never had the luxury of experiencing it first-hand.  However,
the people involved have certainly seen its influence in other
organizations.  Several of the Grex founders saw the NETI debacle first
or 2nd hand, which was certainly an impressive affair.  I think it's
safe to say that almost anybody who has been in the software world any
amount of time, has noticed there is little relationship between the
amount of money spent on a project, and the quality of the resulting
product.  Many fortunes have started in backyard garages, while many
other fortunes have been wasted out of fancy corporate boardrooms
funding ill-advised software projects, that should never have seen the
light of day.

Having said all that, I'm supportive of WIN.  I believe its goals are
our goals, and that the involvement of multiple organizations can only
do all of us good.  I believe that by getting involved early, we can
lend our expertise to WIN, help it to avoid making poor choices, and
encourage its growth in directions that will do us, as well as them,
good.  If it turns out there are irreconciable differences that would
make a commitment from us unwise, being on the inside will allow us to
recognize that as early on as possible, giving us the best opportunity
to withdraw painlessly and without ill feeling.

response 52 of 220:

Mar 31 14:48 UTC 1995

Keeping folks posted....
I was at another WIN meeting on Monday.  Someplace I even have some
notes I took on the meeting; when I find them, I'll post them here.
Marcus was at the meeting too.  Neat!

The next WIN meeting is on Tuesday April 4 at 5:45pm at the NEW
Center (on North Main street).  I'd be delighted to see more Grexers
show up at these meetings.

Also, I'm logging some of the mail from the TIIAP e-mail mailing list
in the directory /u/popcorn/tiiap.  Feel free to look around in that
directory and read the files there.  The file called "layout" is
especially interesting -- it contains proposed layouts for the system,
and discussion about them.

(If you're not comfortable with Unix commands, you can browse around
the files in that directory by typing "filebrowse" and choosing the
"change directory" option and typing "/u/popcorn/tiiap" (without quotes)).

response 54 of 220:

Apr 1 07:07 UTC 1995

I wish I could come to those meetings, but the timing is abysmal for me.

response 56 of 220:

Apr 2 17:40 UTC 1995

Steve Andre' - thanks for the info on NETI. Reminds me of a neat
little start-up in Miami - they had a sharp side-scanning sonar
with terrific capabilities, and a price many thousands below
anything on market (at the time) - but internal bickering and
personal agendas proved too much to overcome - could not
agree on direction and everyone thought he/she was steering -
they needed rowers instead of a tiller with ten handles! 
Tubed the whole project with .5 mm loss and big-time lawsuits.
Oh well.  Back later - Arnold

response 58 of 220:

Apr 4 03:52 UTC 1995

I found my notes from last Monday's WIN consortium meeting.

EMU also thought applying for a TIIAP grant, but theirs is more of
an environmental health focus than a public access to computing focus,
so Linda Vengroff told them we weren't interested in joining with
them to apply for the grant.  (I think EMU ended up not applying).
Everybody at the meeting said they supported Linda's decision to
not join into that grant application.

Someone offered to donate a copy of Caucus to run on the HVCN's
machine.  There was some discussion of the family tree of the
various conferencing programs we're familiar with.  I'm supposed to
dig up the recent coop discussion of this and post it to the tiiap
mailing list.

The HVCN has a home page prototype.  It's address is:
http://www.emich.edu/public/hvcn/hvcn.html   (To access
this on Grex, if you are a member, type
"lynx http://www.emich.edu/public/hvcn/hvcn.html").

All committees still need chairs.

The consortium needs something unique that makes us stand out, in
order to get funded.  Ideas?

Several people at the meeting expressed interest in setting up a
shared conference, probably via picolink, between Grex and M-Net
to talk about HVCN things.

The Saline public library expects to make internet access available
shortly.

Some people are very interested in putting WIN terminals in city/county
offices, and maybe libraries.  There was some discussion over how well
each of these possible sites would work.

Arnold and Linda are sending a letter to the city to ask for their
involvement.

We're interested in setting up dial-in ports all over the county, so
that WIN is a local call from everywhere.  Lots of places in Michigan
(even ones rather nearby here, for example Stockbridge) don't yet have
local Merit dialup numbers.

Some ideas for content that's available from the WIN menus:
County information (eg. how to apply for a building permit).  The Ann
Arbor News bulletin board system.  Scanned-in county data.

You can reach the Detroit freenet by telnetting to detroit.freenet.org.
You can get there from the "Which Host?" prompt.

Neil is organizing a HVCN technical committee meeting.



On Sunday I attended M-Net's board meeting where they made a decision on
participating in WIN.  They've decided not to participate.  However, 5 of
their 7 board members are up for election very soon, and some of the new
board members are expected to be more favorable toward WIN, so this isn't
seen as a totally final decision.

I'm about to send mail to the tiiap mailing list to ask if the M-Net people
who have been attending WIN meetings are still planning to participate.
Several of them are very strongly interested in WIN, so I'd guess M-Net's
board decision isn't going to deter individual people from participating
in WIN.  I'm not sure what this means for a potential linked conference
between the two systems at this time.

response 60 of 220:

Apr 4 04:48 UTC 1995

(That is, there's a phone list on the door, and a phone.)

response 62 of 220:

Apr 4 12:33 UTC 1995

re: 57 - Thanks janc for the further info on NETI.  Will look up the 
article.  I heard references to NETI at Arbornet Board which seemed
to indicate some personal experience there - all bad.  It is a great
help for me to know some of the history of the systems.

Re: 61 -- by robh - Craig of Arbornet called me late Monday and
told me of the decision. He did not elaborate at the time, and 
said he would send more detailed information on the board's reasons
soon - possibly Monday night.  Nothing yet.  Will let you know
if and when we have the information.

Re: popcorn and conferencing - Excellent idea to get *all* involved
in TIIAP in a conference soon.  This would be an excellent tool
to demonstrate to some potential supporters.  I assume this would
be an open coference for anyone interested to read and comment?  I
belive it should be open. Thanks for the family tree on conferencing
systems.

response 64 of 220:

Apr 5 02:44 UTC 1995

Due to Arbornet's pull out from the WIN group, the TIIAP mailing list has
been moved to win-tiiap@umich.edu.  Everybody who was on the old tiiap
mailing list who isn't on Arbornet's board is on the new one.  Anybody
else who wants to get on the list should send mail to me.  Several people
at the meeting tonight didn't want Arbornet to continue to have control
over the mailing list while Arbornet is pursuing their own competing grant
application.

response 66 of 220:

Apr 5 02:53 UTC 1995

(#64 slipped in)

response 68 of 220:

Apr 5 05:35 UTC 1995

Thanks for the update on the meeting, Valerie. I have a conflict with
the meeting time, but I very much wish to be involved.

Because I think that HVCN and Grex will complement each other well,
I think that Grex should proceed with the WIN consortium, too.

Had I been there I would have argued that HVCN is the right place to 
put community information. I perceive WIN as an organization dedicated
to providing connectivity and basic infrastructure to its member
organizations. 

People should be aware of the fact that HVCN does have a technical
committee, but that it has been maintaining a low profile during these
WIN and tiiap discussions. I am the chair of that committee, and there
are several other people on the committee, some associated with Grex,
and some not.

response 70 of 220:

Apr 5 13:54 UTC 1995

Hate?  A strong word, robh.

response 72 of 220:

Apr 5 16:03 UTC 1995

Jep, could you explain a little better what, exactly, is meant by "kiosks"
in the above item.

response 74 of 220:

Apr 5 16:46 UTC 1995

Thanks for the clarification, John.  I hadn't heard that the Arbornet
vote to withdraw from WIN was unanimous.  From Iain's comments last
night, I was under the impression that he had been in favor of staying
a part of WIN, and from your comments I wasn't clear which way you
had voted.  I had the impression that you had voted to stay a part of
WIN but were trying to explain why other people had voted against it.