Great news!

Great news!

The Hibbing Masons have agreed to donate the computers to us for the senior centers! We still have to figure out the operating systems, but it's great to have the machines available to us! I figure this means that we can use the money we might have spent on the machines themselves on subsidizing repair and maintenance fees. This is very positive, and we're well on our way to getting labs to the seniors.

An idea for the business sector

The communities involved in the Get Broadband grant program had two conference calls last week with Bill Coleman. On one Jan Hepola from Minnesota Technology, Inc, talked about a program they have been running in Cambridge, MN. MTI (www.minnesotatechnology.org) is a public nonprofit that does a number of things, including technology assessments of small to medium sized companies (she defines small a bit bigger than I would). They have done 1-on-1 assessments of websites for a while now, but recently adjusted their presentation into a 3-4 hour workshop, called Web Site Review and Search Engine Optimization Workshop, that might be useful for companies in Hibbing. Let me explain:

They accept a group of people from up to 8 companies at a time, but they can have 2-3 or so folks represented from each company for each workshop. Beforehand, MTI people do an in-depth individual report on the companies' existing websites. Who is the website's audience? How is the website organized? Plus a host of other subjects. Then during the workshop, they discuss the websites together, get the organizations talking to each other, and offer further critiques and recommendations about the websites. An individual company is discussed as much or as little as they might feel comfortable, but the majority of the time anything said about one is useful to everyone. This costs several hundred dollars per company, but that seems reasonable given what they will get from it.

Another thing that they will do is offer what she called "executive overviews" prior to the actual critique workshop. These are smaller meetings, designed more for the executive who will authorize the payment for the main critique workshop. One is called "Net Returns," and that illustrates what will be the ROI to sprucing up a website, and/or attending the workshop. She said they can be inexpensive, maybe $30/head, and is a good way to introduce the execs to what MTI does, as well as let them know why a review might need to be done. They also do exec-level workshops on "Hide and Seek"-- search engine marketing and are putting one together about podcasts and blogs, the pieces that can help develop an audience.

I'd like to know if you think there might be a demand for this sort of offering in Hibbing. We (meaning the Get Broadband program) could help subsidize the executive overview, and then help arrange for the main workshop. But I'd like to know if you think there might be 8 businesses in Hibbing that could do with such a workshop. It has worked very well in Cambridge with some of their manufacturing companies. I was thinking this might be useful for some of the mining support businesses. See http://www.blandinfoundation.com/bsite/docs/Blandin_WSAandSEOWorkshop.pdf for more details, and let me know if this is something that we might want to pursue.

Thanks!

Kate

What I have been up to (nonprofits and small business)

I think this is really exciting.

According to Jo with United Way, plenty of nonprofits in Hibbing either don't use computers at all, or maybe have an entire office sharing one dialup connection. I think there's a lot that broadband can do for some of these nonprofits, but they might need to be persuaded that computers and broadband access will make their lives easier, or at least easy enough to justify the added hassle. I think there's some space there for some educational training. In addition to giving them the option of participating in our computer redistribution program.

In 2005, I attended a conference for technology use in nonprofits in the Cities, and it was fascinating. There are tons of whiz-bang applications that nonprofits can get for cheap or very inexpensively, and lots of ways to save time and money. But at the same point, I know that some of the rural or smaller nonprofits are just not quite there yet. What I think would be enormously helpful would be a panel discussion with people in town who have had great success introducing broadband to their nonprofit. Then that can be followed up with a series of workshops or a conference giving some more information and detail.

So I called Mary Streufert, who is the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Twin Ports point person, to see if she knows of classes or workshops for rural nonprofits. She did not, but suggested the MNCN conference in the Cities. When I spoke with her in person, and described something at a more elementary level, but that might feed into the MnCN conference, she was very excited about it. She needed to run it past her supervisors, but is very interested in partnering with us on this.

So, next up I asked Bill Coleman at Blandin about it, and he thought it was a fine idea, that it was quite possible that some of the other communities might be interested in participating as well. They will discuss it and get back to us. I see it working as follows: The local communities who are interested in participating will get their own panel of 2 or 3 people together to share their successes with a general audience of nonprofits and small businesses from the area. I figure that people are more likely to come and hear what their neighbors and follow UW agencies are up to. Then there will be a follow-up conference or (my preference at this time) series of workshops using ITV or videoconference giving more detail about some of the information presented. Some ideas might be: what to buy (hardware, software, etc), email options, website options, blogs, podcasts, etc. The actual content is up in the air, but I am excited about the possibilities. And I figure that the same or similar energy will go into a series of workshops whether they will be strictly local or with a little wider impact. And that way, too, it can still be wildly impactful and successful, even if only 3 or 4 people from Hibbing participate. And we are not strictly forging all new ground, so we can build on the works of others. The Extension Service has a great collection of information for nonprofits: www.accesse.info (see link to access eNonprofit).

Kate

What I have been up to (seniors)

Howdy.

SENIORS: Both of the senior centers in Hibbing (the Tourist Center on Howard and the one in the Memorial building) are very interested in acquiring labs. I have been working on the Tourist Center all along, and they are excited about it. They sold, or are in the process of selling, their pool table (which no one uses) to make room for some computers. I have only recently gotten in touch with the Memorial Building Senior Center, but their period of instability appears to be finished, and they too are on board. In addition, the man who runs the Memorial Building is very supportive, and has been looking at possible locations within the building for a little lab.

I think both centers have a variety of ability levels, which might be a challenge, but they see the computers as a way to reach out to other, younger seniors. It seems to be the case that while the population in Hibbing is getting older, there are fewer, rather than more, participants in Senior Center activities. I know that they are interested in having some introductory courses, and I have talked with the Tourist Center about classes on email, up- and downloading photos, using webcams to talk to the grandkids, etc. In addition, there are some people who would be very willing to give presentations or classes at the labs. Outreach people from the hospital would be very interested in talking about research online, and other issues of telemedicine, and I spoke with a travel agent in town who would consider giving a talk about internet armchair travel.

I have been in touch with a woman named Lori Trenholm, who does IT stuff for Headstart in Virginia. I can't say enough good things about her, but high on my list is the fact that she is VERY excited about community access, and in fact has been thinking about a lot of the same issues for years now. AND, because she works with technology in a social service organization, and because she's very good at what she does, she is the best at explaining technology to technophobes (but people who are willing to try). She has agreed to help with a workshop or class for the people who will be receiving the computers, to help them troubleshoot and maybe fix some issues, and also understand some of the issues at stake (i.e. children and the Internet, how to prevent patrons from removing stuff and changing settings, etc.). I figure that a smaller class size will be ideal for this, and so between the senior centers and a couple of churches who are sitting on donated hardware, that might just be a Go.

So the hangup with the seniors is the computers. I am anxious to get something going, and their labs seem to be the best thing to do quickly. While the hospital would again be a logical choice for a source, they have other priorities (as they should). So I am investigating other sources of computers. The Masons in town have a donation program, and I have submitted a request for some of their machines (although I don't know anything about their ages or if we can get matching ones (if the OS is the same, it makes maintenance of a number of computers a bit easier). We'll see what they say. Another possibility is to see if any of the local computer stores might have some inexpensive machines that would fit the bill. It might be a valid use of our limited funds to buy some computer towers. And Duane and Zach suggested at our meeting that while perhaps not ideal, it might be best to get the seniors started on any sort of computer we could find, and then swap out when we can get new ones. That way at least the seniors with very beginning skills will have something to learn on, and then they will be that much closer to being able to really use broadband when we get it.

Kate

Here's what I've been up to (open access)

Hello, all.

I apologize for being so tardy with my reporting. But I will try try try to be better. I feel (although I've said this before) that we're right on the cusp of doing lots of good things, it just takes a little longer to get stuff done than I had anticipated (although Mary from Blandin said that's not at all uncommon).

OPEN ACCESS: The supply side is dialed in--Joe's crew at the hospital will be refurbishing all qualifying machines that they are replacing, so that the computers will be in a state to be donated easily. That is fantastic. The downside is the timing. I am antsy to get moving, but the computers that they are replacing now are the oldest machines they have. This makes sense to me from the hospital's POV, but at the same point, if our focus is promoting high speed internet, we need to have machines that process fast enough so that it doesn't erode the speed of the internet, if that makes sense.

Initially I was hoping to get the supply side figured out before working on a process for community groups to apply for the computers, but I have become convinced that we can do both at the same time. Not only that, but once the application process is out there and rolling, then we'll have some idea of the demand, which can't be a bad thing. And as long as the applicants know that they might not get their computers right away.

To that end, I have written a draft of the application questions, that I will pass along to you shortly. I have included questions about the organization's background, their request, plan of action, financials, and proposed community impact. I haven't quite thought through the actual selection process. There may not be enough applicants to require a selection, but I hope there will be. The two suggestions that have been offered have been: to handle it United Way style, where each applicant has 20 minutes to present his or her agency to a panel; and to decide in advance what our priority responses are, assign a numeric rank to them, and then anyone can "grade" and prioritize the applications without a committee meeting. I am inclined to the presentation, to put a face to the application, but I haven't decided. And, of course, if we have requests for just 4 machines, then the question is largely answered for us.

I'll address the other two focuses in other entries, to keep them as brief if possible.

New things happening

Hello, all.

I just wanted to catch you up on what I have been doing, not counting a Boundary Waters trip.

I've been working on getting together my thoughts on questions for the application to receive our donated computers. We think we should have an application and a deadline for people to apply to receive the computers, and the app should ask some questions to help us establish who might best serve the goals of our grant. Next step is to go over these with a subset of the committee and publicize our program.

I've been in contact with a few people in the area who have interest and/or experience with setting up community computer labs, and I'm very excited about picking their brains about ideas for trainings. I want to know what information we can help them get that would help keep the labs as self-sufficient and as useful to the community as possible. I've done a bunch of research about content filters, user agreements, Child Internet Protection Act and things like that, and it will be interesting to see what these experts think.

We're still looking for storage options for the computers between donation and distribution, but there have been a number of locations suggested.

I've also been talking with HCC's microcomputer program to see if they'd be interested and able to help us out. I think it could be a winning proposition on all sides, but we shall see if it fits within where they want the program to go.

More later. Enjoy the beautiful weekend.

Kate

MS software options for refurbed computers

We found a number of inexpensive options to provide Microsoft licenses legally for the computers:

MAR. Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (http://www.techsoup.org/mar/). To be a Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher, you must:

1. Supply 50 or more computers per year to charities, schools, or families.
2. Be a commercial, nonprofit, school, college, or government-based refurbisher.
3. Be located in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Panama, or Peru.

Microsoft Donated Computer Operating System Program (http://www.techsoup.org/stock/dcosprogram.asp)

1. For fewer than 50 computers

Microsoft Donated Software program (http://www.techsoup.org/stock/microsoftprogram.asp)

1. Deep discount, just TechSoup’s administrative fee.
2. Up to 6 titles per organization, and up to 50 licenses per title per 2-yr period.

Microsoft Open Charity (http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/open/opencharity.mspx)

1. You can purchase multiple licenses for each software package.
2. For qualifying 501(c)3s.

Fresh Start for Donated Computers (http://www.microsoft.com/education/FreshStart/FreshStart.asp)

1. Replaces Windows licenses and operating systems for computers donated to primary and secondary (K-12) schools
2. For Pentium III and earlier.

These options could be useful for other organizations in our area. We were thinking that the cost of the OS and software was be prohibitive until we heard about some of these programs. Open source is all well and good, unless the recipients want to have classes for job skills, etc. I am guessing that they would be very alert to cons, but they seem like good programs if you are legitimate.

Computer Redist Mtg

Last Thursday we had a very good meeting about the refurbishment process. Four people were there, so we had a little variety of opinion, but not so much that we couldn't make decisions. Here's where we are:

Our current plan:

Joe at the hospital said he and his staff can rebuild their computers to be ready to go out the door and into another nonprofit, so we would not need independent refurbishing processes. They are constantly turning over machines (est. output: 0-20 in the next month), have to scrub the innards for HIPAA regulations, and can log hours spent on our project as community service hours, always good for a nonprofit.

We thought that starting from scratch is a lot to figure out, between the refurbishment, storage, donation, and training processes. We thought that if we start with the hospital computers, then we could focus at first on getting smooth donation and training processes, and then if there is an established demand, and we think it would work to take other donations, maybe the HCC Microcomputer students could help with the refurbishment process part. Because several sources, including Hibbing Community College, Mesabi Range CTC, and Reptron, have excess computers that they’d really like to have used by someone. So we still want to consider how to get those computers into the hands of users, but just for now we will focus on the second half of the process. Plus, we felt that since our focus and the purpose of the grant is increased use of broadband technologies, we didn't want to get too bogged down in other issues.

We also decided that it would be much easier for a lab if they have all matching machines.

We thought it would be most useful for these organizations if they have printer(s) and servers as well. The hospital might also have some old printers, and Jeremy from Reptron knows everything about sprucing up printers. We were wondering about old server licenses as well, figuring that might be useful for our labs as well. Licensed Windows server? We decided that the nicer and cleaner the labs we have, the more likely Doug and his classes could help us administer them, and the more likely that it would be rewarding and useful for them.

Kind of a fun idea: Maybe, as Joe is turning over computers, we could constantly update the labs that we have set up. Lori, at Head Start and AEOA, has had extra computers before, without a place for them. So, she taught an intro to computers class, to parents of Head Start kids. Then at the first class, she announced that if they completed the course, they could take a computer home with them. We thought that might be a nice touch for these labs, that they could give computers out to people who had attended X number of classes, for example.


Remaining outstanding issues:

1. Content Filtering would be a concern: Dan’s Guardian is an option. Zach suggested that Matt would be a good choice for setting up content filtering (particularly since he missed the meeting). The library uses iPrism, which is expensive but worth studying.
   Keeping the labs clean, uncorrupted by the users is also an issue. What does Hibbing Public Library use? How about the college labs?
2. Storage of the computers that the hospital is donating. Joe would prefer that the machines that he is donating be taken away from the hospital as soon as is reasonable. It’s not critical, but it would be nice to get them out of his way. Some ideas: L&M building, the Mall, Central Campus. Any other ideas, or contacts at these places? It’d be nice, too, if it’s a secured location somehow.
3. The donation process. We decided that we would have a preference, at least initially, for labs for the community, but that the united way people could help us with the application and selection process.
   

If we move on later to accepting other computers, ideas for how the refurbishment process should work:

Absolute minimum tech requirements could be 333 or greater, depending on OS. Windows 98SE or newer. Network Card. CD-ROM. Minimum system requirements would be whatever is required for Microsoft 98SE or 2000. Microsoft vs. Open Source would be 2 possible solutions.

We can provide a CD of operating system, making the process easier to install and deal with. Requires CD-ROM drive. Knoppix and Ubuntu are two Linux (open source) operating systems that we could use.

We thought that the area computer shops might be interested in helping us load software, etc.

Eagan's Tech Task Force

Chris from the library sent me a link a few weeks ago to the City of Eagan's tech task force (thanks, Chris!). Pretty neat stuff, worth looking over. Of particular interest to me is this slick little PDF map they have of their ISP coverage in town. Wouldn't it be handy if we could do something like that? It's part of the city's GIS system, so they can update it as needed. I believe that Bill Coleman was involved in the task force, so he might be able to get us in contact with their community development director for tips. If we want to pursue a similar map. In their community, I think ISPs need to prepare maps for the City in order to get Right of Way for installation of fiber, etc, so they were already part of the way there. Is that also true in Hibbing?

Their task force resulted in a report of where the city needs work with technology and where they are now. They had input from industry and ISPs, but it's not completely current. Hard to know what has happened since.

Kate

Doings, Apr 19

I finally got to speak on the phone with an acquaintance who might be very helpful for us. She does technical work for AEOA, specifically with HeadStart and their computers. So she speaks the language of technical people, and the language of nonprofitty people. Bonus: She has long wanted to establish open access sites around the region, so has many ideas to share. And she has established programs where she redistributes older laptops to people who attend beginning computer classes.

She has agreed to come to a meeting or two with us and share her ideas. I think she'll be a great addition!

Lots of other small stuff to report at a later date.

Kate