SCN: Now what?

[Al Boss]

Hi, all.

JJ, as always, raises an interesting point, and it has prodded me into
finally getting around to typing out something I've been thinking about for
the past couple of weeks.

The SCN/SCNA situation is pretty overwhelming when viewed as a whole.
Leadership, direction, volunteer base, equipment, users, and information
providers are all pretty lean, although we seem to be doing much better at
the physical things (equipment and capital) than the ones that require
people in the mix.

The SCNA part, the need for an active board and a functioning structure, are
obviously essential, and the bulk of our conversation over the last few
weeks has been--correctly, I think--around that subject. Maybe because we
have active participants in that conversation, my thoughts have wandered to
another question.

If I wanted to approach people about joining either SCN or SCNA (preferably
both), I'd immediately have to explain what SCN is. What does it do? What's
it for?

JJ's analysis of our principles mirrors mine, but our conclusions might
differ. Technology has changed tremendously since 1992, and specific needs
have changed, but like JJ says these principles are short on specifics. The
thing is, I think that's a good thing. Here's why:

The big issues haven't gone away. They're not obsolete. What's happened is
that we were a little too successful in our vision for the response to these
issues, so much so that much of what we offered is available elsewhere from
better-resourced providers that offer a much wider range of features.

Free email? Check.
Free Websites for nonprofits? Check.
Internet access somewhere in your Seattle community? Libraries, community
centers, Internet cafes.
Free dial-up access? Available from several sources.

I imagine you get my point. Aside from the computer giveaway program, much
of the "stuff" of SCN, the actual services we provide, are either obsolete,
commonplace, or no longer relevant.

But that's just stuff, isn't it? It's not our ends that are flirting with
irrelevance; it's our approach.

Access: Are there technological things that people don't have easy access
to, things that could make a positive difference in their lives? Yes. Same
things as in the early 1990s? No way.

Privacy: Folks need to consider that, now more than ever. We've always
offered services that won't sell your data. I can see room for a big chunk
of information about what that means, about what privacy means in this
decade, about where we can still expect it and where it's completely gone.
Back then, we were an alternative; now we're a haven--and we know why we are
and how we are, and as part of our commitment to community we can educate
the citizenry about why and how that matters.

Democracy: Are there still things a bunch of smart, technically savvy,
community-minded suckers (that's us) can offer, that'd help level the
playing field a little bit, that'd help folks get some extra advantages
they'd not otherwise have? Are there things we can do to help voices get
heard? Do I even need to answer that?

I can keep this up all day, but if you've read this far you probably see
where I'm heading. And, you can probably see why JJ's question dovetails
with mine so well. He asked about the agenda, about what to fix, and that's
just what I was considering: what are the needs of today? What kind of
problems would benefit from SCN being a part of the solution? What are our
strengths?

For example: Seattle Schools have special rooms where you go for computers.
But when kids aren't in school, the technology is ubiquitous. In school all
kids learn to keyboard, and to never look stuff up on Wikipedia, and that's
about it. There's more if you pursue it, but suppose you want to learn how
computers work rather the history of the floppy disk and how to use Word?
Don't expect you'll find that at school. Maybe, maybe not.

So, wait till college. If you make it in a local college, you'll learn that
there is no operating system other than Windows. How many of our community
colleges have more than one class using something that's not from Redmond?

Musing: if SCN were where kids could build communities of interest, that
they had to maintain, I wonder if there's an easy way we could sandbox them
in a way they could learn about the back end as well as the front, without
compromising our system? Stop, JJ, don't hurt me, I'm not saying _that_ is
what we should do--or even could do. Other people already do that.
(Freeshell.org and SDF come to mind.)

I _am_ saying that Out There we've got a lot of people out of work, a
generation of people who don't remember a time without computers, schools
requiring community service, Amazon and Google with offices in a county that
has a dearth of ways to learn Unix/Linux, and a host of other juicy
challenges, and In Here we have some of the smartest people I've ever had
the pleasure to work with, stable equipment, expertise in hardware,
software, community, education, security, flaming, analysis, coding,
debating, and finding good coffee. Certainly there are some good matches in
there.

At the same time we're shoring up our leadership structure, we should also
be thinking about what we might want SCN to do in this phase of its life.
Directors will direct, but it's quite possible that what we want from
directors (and what they want from us) should be different from what we have
been doing since 1989 when we first started kicking around the ideas.

Best,

Al
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