By Tamara Blaschko
This was a year of major growth for the Internet service. At the end of October we had almost 500 accounts on the system representing over 100 different nonprofits organizations and agencies. Our own web pages have been created and The River Project is the site for about 15 nonprofits who have created their own web pages. Anyone with internet access should check out our web pages at http://www.mtn.org/
The River Project's mission which is:
1) To connect, train and facilitate nonprofits', civic and government agencies ability to access and publish on the Internet.
2) To provide public access terminals in the community for public to have access to all the information that is available through the Internet.
Throughout the year we have been involved in a number of projects that further this mission. We are working with a Southern Minnesota Community Network (CONET) to provide public access terminals in the Twin Cities. These should be placed by December 15, 1995. The River Project has provided accounts to many of the City Departments and to the City Council. It was involved also in the multimedia exhibition at the Walker Art Center which opened Nov. 19.
The River Project is developing the same policy for web pages as it has for the channels. We are a common carrier and therefore any nonprofit, civic or government agency no matter what their politics, message or culture are welcome to join the River Proj ect. The prices are set on a sliding fee scale to make the Internet accessible to all no matter what their income or budget and yet maintain a self sustaining system.
The River Project began teaching classes this past summer in how to use the Internet and how to create web pages. These classes are being taught in Cyberspace and we currently have several good machines to teach the classes on. We are always looking for donations of 386 or better and Macintosh personal computers to use as public access terminals or to increase our capacity in Cyberspace. These classes are available to anyone whether they have an account on our system or not.
There are about 20 volunteers who help the organizations on the system. A big thanks go out to Marv -- (the guy responsible for keeping the hardware running), to Stuart Johnson, Ralph Jensen, John Ladwig and David Byer-Bennet. Without their help we neve r would have gotten the hardware up and running. There has been a lot of time and energy put into this project by a number of people with MTN as well, this has been a year of learning for us to and to begin understanding how the Internet fits within the mission of MTN in general. Thanks staff.
Keep an eye on this project as we head into 1996, because you are going to see major growth and new information added by the organizations using our system. If you would like more information or to get involved you can send email to mtn@mtn.org or give us a call at 331-8575.
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