From AFCN

[Doug Schuler]

Here is the press release on the official launching of the
Association For Community Networking.  Feel free to distribute
it to anybody who might be interested.

-- doug

Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 10:04:06 -0500
From: Amy Borgstrom <amyb at seorf.ohiou.edu>
To: "'afcn-advisory at lists.colorado.edu'"
	 <afcn-advisory at lists.colorado.edu>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 26, 1998
Contacts:    http://bcn.boulder.co.us/afcn/

Amy Borgstrom
Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet)
94 N. Columbus Rd.
Athens, OH 45701
(740) 592-3854
amyb at seorf.ohiou.edu

Steve Cisler
cisler at pobox.com

Steve Snow
shsnow at charweb.org

The Association For Community Networking opens its virtual doors!

ATHENS, Ohio -- The Association For Community Networking is a national
non-profit membership organization dedicated to improving the
visibility, viability, and vitality of Community Networking. AFCN links
and serves the more than one hundred and fifty community networks
around the country. AFCN also builds public awareness, identifies best
practices, encourages research, and develops products and services.

Community networks are locally-based, locally-driven information and
communication systems which are owned and operated by local citizens,
government officials, social services, schools, libraries,
community-based organizations, and others; enable community members to
use the Internet to solve problems and create opportunities; usually
include a World Wide Web page or other online presence where community
members can publish community information, share interests and
communicate with one another; and often provide public access,
training, and support for users.

"There is tremendous power in this country at the community level--to
create, to support, to build a healthier nation," said Amy Borgstrom,
President of AFCN and Executive Director of the Appalachian Center for
Economic Networks in Athens, Ohio. "AFCN's role will be to help
communities make use of the great technical advances available to them,
in both rural and urban settings. Community networks help people become
better informed, better educated, more prosperous, and more connected
to others here and around the world."

AFCN builds upon the 25-year history of community networks that began
with the Community Memory Project in Berkeley in the 1970s, and became
popularized with the Freenets like the Cleveland Freenet in the 1980s.
Community networks have quickly become a key means of civil interaction
in many places around the world in the 1990s. Existing community
networks, if taken as a whole, have one of the largest electronic user
bases in the nation.

Take a snapshot of community networking today and you might see:
homeless people checking out job listings at a public access site from
a shelter in North Carolina; high school students being trained to be
computer consultants in rural Ohio; senior citizens using e-mail in
Boulder; or citizens "meeting the candidates" in an electronic
conference in inner-city St. Paul.

AFCN provides members with An electronic mailing list for members to
share experiences and learn from one another.  A bi-monthly newsletter
examining issues and providing community networking tips and insights.
A growing, resource-rich World Wide Web site at
 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/afcn/.  Opportunities for face-to-face
interaction, learning, and policy development--the Association is
planning a roundtable in the spring in Washington D.C., and a members'
gathering in the fall.

"Community networks can have significant impact on peoples' lives,"
according to Madeline Gonzalez, Executive Director of AFCN. "AFCN is
helping communities create their own networks, as well as working with
businesses and existing networks to develop new products and services
in the public interest. As we move toward the 21st century, this is a
movement whose time has come."

People interested in joining this exciting effort are invited to become
members. This will make it possible for AFCN to continue developing
quality products and services for community networkers everywhere. For
more information and a membership form, check out the AFCN website, or
call Amy Borgstrom at (740) 592-3854.

The Association for Community Networking is incorporated in the state
of Colorado, and is administered by a virtual Board of community
networking professionals: Amy Borgstrom of the Appalachian Center for
Economic Networks in Athens, Ohio; Steve Cisler formerly of Apple
Computer; Richard Civille of the Center for Civic Networking in
Washington, DC; Joan Durrance of the University of Michigan School of
Information; Madeline Gonzalez, a founder of the Boulder Community
Network; and Steve Snow of Charlotte's Web in Charlotte, North
Carolina.

More than a third of the existing community networks have had a hand in
creating AFCN, which has been under development for the last two
years.  Start-up activities were supported by Apple Computer, the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation, the University of Michigan, the Morino Institute,
and a group of 50 founding contributors.



Amy Borgstrom 
Appalachian Center for Economic Networks 
94 Columbus Road
Athens, Ohio 45701 
(614) 592-3854 voice 
(614) 593-5451 fax
amyb at seorf.ohiou.edu 
http://www.seorf.ohiou.edu/~xx001

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