CHAPTER FIVE HOW TO START AN NPTN COMMUNITY COMPUTER Building a community computer might initially seem like an overwhelming task. To be sure, it is NOT a simple hobbyists bul- letin board; it is a large, sophisticated, multi-user, computer system. To bring it on-line and operate it over time will require a lot of work and dedication on the part of many people. While building a system is a significant task, is not an im- possible one--IF you plan well and do it correctly. Helping you to "do it correctly" is the first service you will receive from NPTN. In general, you should follow these steps... STEP ONE: FORM AN ORGANIZING COMMITTEE No community computer has ever been put up by one person. It is a team effort and your first step will be to organize that team. We recommend that you form an organizing committee composed of people with a broad range of skills, significant contacts in the community, and who have a track record of being able to get things done. Key skills might include such things as computer hardware and software, computerized communications and networking (especially with regard to the Internet), project organization and management, fund-raising, public relations, and so forth. You might also want to make sure that you have adequate representation from the community. Included in this list should perhaps be rep- resentatives from the K-12 education community, city government, possibly the local public library, the medical community, legal community, and so forth. If you are planning to connect your Free-Net to the Internet via a local college or university, it is vital that you have a representative from that college on your committee very early on. STEP TWO: FILE AN ORGANIZING APPLICATION WITH NPTN The next step after getting at least your initial committee together, is to file notice with NPTN that you have begun such a group. If you look solid and assuming we don't already have a committee operating in your area (something you might want to check even before you pull a committee together)--we will send you an organizing agreement. This agreement does several things. First of all, it states that you will make a good faith ef- fort to bring a system on-line within one year, and the resulting system will be an NPTN affiliate for at least two years after you go on-line. Second, NPTN will make a good faith effort to help you bring the system on-line, and we will not put another NPTN community computer within the local telephone calling radius of your system. Three, along with the agreement we will send you more de- tailed information on establishing your system--tips on organizing your committee, specific equipment recommendations, specific cost estimates, publicity and fund-raising suggestions, etc. Fourth, as a organizing committee chairperson, your elec- tronic mail address (and that of whoever else you choose) will be placed in a private "listserv" used by all the current affiliates, as well as all the other organizing committees. The listserv works like this: When you send a piece of e.mail to that listserv address, it will automatically be forwarded to all of the people on a special list. If you are replying to a message, your reply also gets sent to everyone. For example, if you have a question or a problem you can post it to the listserv where everyone can see it (including people from the established systems), and someone will answer it. Other people seeing that response might then post suggestions of their own, and so on. Rolling discussions can be held on whatever problems you are facing because, chances are, someone has already faced it before you. This organizing agreement is a very important document. In effect, it makes you a member of the "family" and allows us to ac- tively work with you. Without it, there isn't much more we can do then send you this booklet. STEP THREE: BEGINNING THE PROCESS - COST FACTORS After becoming a formal NPTN Organizing Committee, it's time to start building your system; and high on your probable list of things to do will be to raise some money. The cost of establishing and operating a community computer will depend (obviously) on the size of your system. You will first need to estimate how many simultaneous users you plan to carry, to properly service your estimated initial userbase. This, in turn, will determine what size machine you will need to purchase, how many telephone lines, how many modems, etc. Next, unless you are planning on a very small system, you will need to think about personnel costs. As mentioned above, Free-Net community computers are not bulletin boards. They are large sophisticated systems which must be professionally run, and that implies paid professional staff to run them. The bulk of your costs will be tied up in salaries. When you receive the more detailed information sheets from NPTN you will be able to start planning a budget for your system. This is a very important document. You can't raise money unless you know how much you need and where it will be spent. In general, for a medium-sized system, you will probably be looking at an annual budget of $100,000 to $120,000 a year. This figure assumes a worst case scenario--that is, that nothing is do- nated, that you must pay for your own office space, pay full re- tail prices on all your equipment, etc. Each budget, and the costs which go into it, will be different and you will need to work it out based on the realities of your situation. STEP FOUR: JOINING THE NETWORK Once you get close to going on-line, NPTN will send you a copy of an Affiliate Agreement. This is the formal document which makes your system a member of NPTN and allows you to receive our Cybercasting services and other NPTN features. There are two ways of joining NPTN, as a "Plan A" member, or a "Plan B" member. PLAN A: Under Plan A your contribution to NPTN involves you with helping us to solicit members from among your users. It works as follows: In order for a user on your system to have access to elec- tronic mail, special interest groups, chat, and other features, he or she must be a registered user. One residue of this registra- tion process--whether done via paper or electronically--is the users name and address. Under Plan A, you pay $1 a year to be an NPTN member. If you mail-out an ID form-letter, you would include with it a letter or brochure (which we will provide) inviting them to join NPTN. If you do your registration electronically, each month you would send the names and addresses of your new users to NPTN so we can send out a brochure. Either way, we will give each of your users the opportunity to support public access community computing by join- ing NPTN. In this way the core organization is supported. Please keep in mind--at no time will access to any Free-Net be dependent upon a user being an NPTN member. It is a purely voluntary process similar to the fund-raising efforts of public television or public radio stations. PLAN B: An alternate way of helping with NPTN costs is more like the way it is done with public radio and television. This involves your paying a yearly "network fee" to NPTN which gets you the complete list of NPTN services. You keep your own mailing list; and you send your own tear-stained appeal let- ters to your users (if you wish). The fee is set each year at NPTN's annual meeting. For the 1992-1993 year the fee is $2000. THE AFFILIATE COUNCIL: No matter which plan you choose, once you come on-line you will be asked to provide a delegate to the Affiliate Council. This person may be selected or elected in whatever way you wish. The Affiliate Council consists of one voting member from each system which is currently on-line. It serves a number of func- tions such as recommending policy and procedures to the organiza- tion, suggesting new services and so forth. One of its main re- sponsibilities each year, however, is to elect NPTN's Board of Directors. Affiliate Council meetings are held as part of NPTN's annual meeting in June of each year. STEP FIVE: GOING ON-LINE The process of actually going on-line is more then just flip- ping a switch. It needs to be carefully planned. By this point you should have identified a group of people who will serve as your initial group of "sysops." Several weeks prior to the opening you should bring them together for a training session on the new software and to go over the rules and regula- tions of the system. Following this, the sysops should have a week or two to get settled on the system, become familiar with it, load their areas with initial information resources, and so on. While this is oc- curring, your committee should be making final arrangements for the publicity surrounding the grand opening. Publicity is some- thing that should not be neglected as it will lay the foundation both for attracting the userbase you want, and for future fund- raising efforts. In these final weeks also, your technical people will be working closely with ours to establish the initial set of Cybercasting services and features you will want available on opening day. Finally, don't forget to notify NPTN as to your exact opening date and provide us with your modem number and your machine's Internet address so we can assist your PR efforts with some of our own.