IP Committee

1996-97 Annual Report


Over the past year, the Chebucto Community Net Information Providers Committee has done some vital growth in the area of teamwork, and that teamwork has strengthened our relationships with our IPs. At the same time, we have seen the number of IPs, and the number of people visiting their sites, steadily increase.

On the front lines, Bob Adams, our IP Trainer, has developed a streamlined on-line training process. This allows CCN to train editors of Information Providers' web sites at their own pace, without the hassle of scheduling the time and space for live training sessions which was holding up the whole process in the previous year. Without Bob's hard work, we would still be backlogged with requests for training. Thank you, Bob.

The CCN Editorial Team guides IP organizations through the process, from application, to training, to going "live" with a new web site, as well as being responsible for editing CCN's pages. Chris Majka, our Editor-in-Chief, has been a godsend. He has written policy for his team, an "Editor's Guide" for use by his volunteers, and has contributed in numerous other ways to establishing a very strong and effective team of editors. In particular, he spearheaded our efforts to clean up our database of organizations, sorting the wheat from the chaff, which has allowed us to move along some applications which had become stuck or orphaned. Oh, and thanks, Chris, for the attractive and consistent look to CCN's pages. You've given our site distinction on the World Wide Web.

Tony Cianfaglione established the ip-help mailing list which has helped us to support our growing base of IP web site editors. Also, he contributed by helping us to stay in touch with the Technical Committee, a job which was taken over later in the year by Ed Dyer. Ed has since kept us abreast of all sorts of new developments in CSuite, and has acted as liaison for us, communicating back to the Tech Committee our own technical needs. Thanks, Tony and Ed for sticking with the IP Committee even while juggling several other balls at once.

I would also like to thank Sharon MacDonald, Wayne Groszko, Peter Mortimer, and Laura Jantek, who each contributed their time over the past year to help the IP Committee to fulfill its mandate to seek out, bring online, and support IPs from our community.

Next year, we hope to build on the groundwork laid this year. We will be focusing on better communication and support of our IPs, helping them to make the best of their web sites, and to find new applications of community networking in their organizations. We will also be building a team to more aggressively seek out IP organizations in our community and bring them online, particularly in under-represented areas.

In closing, I would like to thank each of the teams, board members, and individual volunteers who in various ways have played supporting roles to the IP Committee.

-- Ben Armstrong, CCN IP Committee Chair