Dear ByteWORKers and supporters,

Remember the "Bridging the Digital Divide"?
The divide is still there, and we are still working on closing it.

Yesterday I attended an excellent meeting of St. Louis Connects
at the MET Center where we focused on sustainability of CTCs
and our umbrella organization BTC. This event was sponsored by
America Connects, a DOEd program made available by our
participation in BTC.


Some quick acronym help:
CTC a Community Technology Center, ByteWORKS is one.
BTC Brownbag Technology Collaborative (StL CTC umbrella)
CIN Community Information Network -StL city govt. group
hosting http://stlouis.missouri.org, original sponsor of
BTC and host of May 23 meeting of St. Louis COnnects.
MET Center Metropolitan Educational Training Center
formerly Cornerstone, host site of meeting in Wellston.


The morning was a workshop on sustainability presented by
George Gundrey of Compumentor (SF, CA) and techsoup
-check out these web sites:
http://www.compumentor.org
http://www.techsoup.org
http://www.techsoup.org/DiscounTech
also
http://www.knowbility.org
http://stlouis.missouri.org/cin/index.html
http://stlouis.missouri.org/
http://www.ctcnet.org/

The afternoon started off with a Keynote speech by Ana Sisnett
director of the Austin Free-net (Texas). http://austinfree.net/

We finished up with a strategic planning session covering:
Forming clearinghouses in St. Louis for BTC members for:
1. volunteers
2. computer hardware and software

3. Providing low-cost/no-cost internet access to homes and
community groups served by the CTCs

4. Provide a directory of services: classes, labs, etc.

5. Acquire and distribute educational curriculum and software
as well as web based resources (I was on this team)

6. Increase training opportunities for people so secure higher
level employment in tech related fields. (MET center goal)


[!!!!!READ HERE IF YOU ARE SCANNING THIS FAST!!!!!]
I would like to have a meeting of all those volunteers, board
members and potential new volunteers who would like to help
reinvigorate ByteWORKS, and participate in our programs.
Please pass this e-mail on to any of your friends or co-workers
who might be interested in working with ByteWORKS or one
of the other BTC programs or member organizations.


Agenda items will include:

1. A mini recap of the sustainability workshop, focusing on
our program evaluation and ideas improvement.

2. Recreating and affirming our vision and goals for ByteWORKS.

3. CTCnet - Do we want to join this national organization?
Cost is $100 per year, benefits include resource manuals
access to other members and staff, regional support
(such as the meeting I attended), national policy advocacy,
access to software donations.

4. Sign up to help with objective 5 above, find, evaluate and install
an improved curriculum for ByteWORKS (and other BTC groups
working with youth).

You probably prefer to avoid meetings, so I would like to get some
feedback via e-mail, firm up a date and time hopefully in June
with a tight agenda. We will run this meeting in an hour or less for
those who want the executive update, and continue on in working
sessions for any worker bees who want to help with the details.

Please e-mail me with your thoughts and concerns, dates/times
you would (or specifically would NOT) be available, and any
agenda items you would like to expand.

Thank you for supporting ByteWORKS, I hope to hear from you soon.

Gavin

P.S. Please excuse any duplicates, I'm not sure who is on which list.
(So reorganizing our e-lists to be subsets and super sets of each other
would be a nice little project for someone.... hint hint.)

Please let me know if you want to be removed permanently from any
ByteWORKS lists, and I will purge you from my database.

--
Gavin Perry
ByteWORKS
St. Louis MO 63110
mailto:gavin@...