Tom spoke of drinking a cola on the way out to the conference. After finishing the drink he noticed that there was an advertiement for Earth Day on the can. Then he got to thinking, why not have an Electronic Earth Day for the InfoSphere?? Why not have a day to focus on Cyberspace. I think that Tom has a neat idea there and will see if I can help him make it happen.
It was during Tom's session that I became aware that some folks were using Powerbooks that looked a bit odd. I later found out that these systems are on a wireless net running at about 256KB!
Patrick Finn using one of the frogger systems to schlepp around the net while listening to Tom talk about it.
Other folks gathering round. Probably to check their email.... perhaps this puts
a new meaning to the concept of Air Mail? (groan)
Richard shared five concerns with us:
This was a quick 20 minutes with Jean, Wally, Beverly, and Glenn giving us information about their parts of this project.
Jean Polly started the tag team.
Glenn and Beverly gave us a wonderful success story of how Glenn learned how to
read and to write using the network as his workbook.
Patrick opened with comments about the Taos La Plaza community network system which is grounded on the notion of the Town Plaza or Town Commons. He said that this is necessary to provide a common ground -- to reproduce the sense of community and security found in a local neighborhood. How important it is for us to work together to build communities.
In order to build those communities Patrick went on to share five elements for successful partnership:
Frank recounted his adventures as he made the transition from dude ranch manager to the teacher or teachers who teach teachers. (...about that woodchuck?) He told us of how the Big Sky Telegraph has been using low end band width to introduce people to telecomputing and the net. A point that he re-emphasized a couple of times is that there have to be "communities of purpose," that we have to have a reason and a need for networking to succeed. Frank suggested that we think about public service in the vein of: "Americans in electronic service to Americans" and "What can You and your Modem do for America."
One question from the audience later asked Frank if the Big Sky folks have an intern program so that one might learn from them. Frank thought about it for a moment and began twirling an imaginary lariat.... and said that he had thought about setting up a digital dude ranch......
The sun was very bright! Folks grabbed their bag lunches and headed outside to eat.
Here is another example of wireless computing.... now you can take the Internet with you!
Space was at a premium on the wall.... 
Here is Mario listening to carfully to another comment after the session. I
tried to get closer but the people were three or four deep around him.
Keola 
She said that although there are more than 400 native american tribes in the USA, that each tribe essentially has its own culture. That is why we must be very careful about thinking that we can develop one network application that will be appropriate or functional for all Native Americans.
Anne Fallis 
Anne also stressed the need for respect of the privacy for individuals as well as groups. But this sort of privacy is different than what I usually think of. What she was referring to, is more that others must accept and respect the fact that an individual does not have to give up information to others in the electronic community. I may not be very clear here, but as an example Anne showed us digital drawings made by children and other tribal members. She said that each of these images had been given to us by the artist. But, that there are often images not given to anyone other than specific people for whom the art has special significance. As you can tell, this is important to me... I guess because I've been a visual artist, and I know how people want to see "everything" you do. To the point that they are insulted if you wont share.
Thank you Anne for reminded me that keeping things private is not the same as being selfish.
George Baldwin
Ken Klingenstein talked about the Boulder Valley School Project and about K-12
networking in general. As the day rolls on the presenters have become more
relaxed in their delivery style.
Pedro Hernandez-Ramos (Apple Latin America) demonstrated a system that he has been working on for school systems in Chile, South America. It uses a well developed graphical inter