Topic: San Luis Obispo County Regional Network Consortium
Speaker: John Wade - Director of Information Services at the County of San Luis Obispo

The April meeting may be moved since there is a competing event at the Lobero. The next meeting will be a panel on telecommuting and cultural issues.

Joe Mortz: 4/23 City of SB will discuss Internet access via the Cable TV facilities in the city council chambers in the morning. If you want Internet via this facility, be there.

John Wiley announced a Kai Krause benefit for equipment purchases for the Mac lab of Adult Ed. Lobero, 7:00-9:00, 4/24.

John Wade, Director of Information Services for SLO discusses the development of the SLOnet infrastructure:

San Luis Obispo has a new organization called the "Speakers Bureau". He showed a small PR video. He asked for individual introductions first.

The Speakers Bureau presentation. A PR presentation for SLO including resources, industries, prominent communities, scenic attractions, and structure of the county government. Information services is a separate department. They serve the other departments and provide communication facilities as well as information technology and management.

SLOnet: Idea came from Phil Wagner, of APCD in LA. It is a community based info network with information relating to the community located centrally. He wanted the county to take it over and run it. If anyone wants info about SLO, they can go there (via the Internet?). The county was originally a record keeping organization . Records need to be publicly available. SLOnet is the new way they do this. Although SLOnet is connected to the Internet, security issues prohibit full access from the Internet-- a lot of the county data is confidential.

The major information providers of the county formed a committee (to decide how to get this information to the public). The " electronic village conference" happened a couple of years ago. It was a great success combining business, government, and community themes. They needed to show how this technology could be used in real applications. The 2nd conference covered these topics and had an attendance of 450. The "emerging technology committee" got the idea of a regional information infrastructure. The county is deploying a 24 node frame relay network.

The "regional network consortium" was formed as a result of efforts to persue NII grants. They learned that there was a lot of common interest and a willingness to cooperate. The consortium is mostly county government and agencies. The idea was to share network plans, coordinate efforts, standardize networking methodologies, interface with community groups, provide of a directory of information technology contacts, coordinate efforts to secure funding, sponsor workshops for services/products/equipment, and share technology expertise.

Some successes: SLO coastal schools wanted a modem pool and they cooperated with Cal Poly to offset costs and get connected to the SLOnet. They get action through cooperative agreement, not power agreements or MOUs. The agencies had business plans/ operational plans. So he asked the participants to send him their business plans and he became the repository of this information using a database for these plans. Another success was getting county engineering to discuss combining fiber plants along with water/sewer trenching.

Q&A: Points out that the interested parties had no interest in technology. They were interested in how IT could solve their problems. He visited the remote communities to ask them what they needed and how they might use IT/communications. SLOnet is primarily interested in providing local information and connectivity services.

Joe Mortz asks what suggestions might be given to get our county government to do this:

A champion is needed. You have to pick a problem worth solving. They championed teaching the clerical staff to use the system-- they in turn realized that this was a more efficient way to do their work. They got the Cal Poly students to develop their GIS (Geologic Information Service?) by giving them an SGI server. They are sharing aerial data to save money. Now they can have a GIS data entry system they probably couldn't afford and everyone saves money. (The County and Cal Poly now have an MOU after PG&E donated the SGI server used to develop the Geographic Information System.)

Becky briefly mentioned the UCSB approach to communal problem solution. Identify a really painful problem. Solve some small part of the problem proving you can solve problems cooperatively and then go on to the next problem.

John Wade reemphasized the need for willing cooperation. He also emphasizes that the phone companies are best equipped to provide infrastructure.

Minutes submitted by Dave Oster (doster@silcom.com)

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