South Coast Telecommunications Alliance (SCTA) Held at General Research Corporation, Santa Barbara CA July 26, 1995 - Minutes of Meeting ______________________________________________________ Dale Taylor moderated. The topic of the evening was "A Community Information Infrastructure" - why we need it and how it can be implemented. The Mayor Harriet Miller, Councilman Tom Roberts, and Dev Vrat from County Planning were present as well. Nancy Oster announced that Martin Hellman would be the guest speaker at the August SCTA meeting which will be held on a Monday, August 28th, instead of our usual Wednesday evening. It will be at GRC at 7 PM. Martin is a cryptologist and was a co-author of public-key encryption with Whitfield Diffie. Michael Masterson asked Nancy to announce that the Science and Engineering Council is offering a panel discussion and public forum luncheon at the UCSB faculty club on August 3 from 12 noon to 1:30 PM. The topic is The Economic Development of Technology. Panel members are Richard Auhill from Circon, Jeff Bermant from Bermant Development, Viola Koch who is Pres. of the Central Coast World Trade Center, Sanjit Mitra from UCSB ECE dept., and Ram Natesh, the SB County Economic Development Coordinator. The cost is $12 for SEC members, and $15 for non-members. Call Barbara Keaney at 684-4927 for reservations (9am-5pm). Tim Schwartz announced the Glen Culler Honorary Lecture and dinner on September 8, 1995, 4:00 at the Corwin Pavilion of the UCSB University Center. Doug Englebart, inventor of the mouse and the windows concept will give the lecture entitled "History of Personal Workstations: Past, Present, and Future" Marty Rickler requests information to add to his web resources lists for alcohol and drug abuse, community human services/social services, and the criminal justice system. If you are familiar with a such a group that has an email address or web page, please email him the info (paladin@silcom.com). He will be adding lots of resources that don't have email addresses and URL's, but would like to focus on these first. Yvonne DeGraw announced the meeting of the Society of Technical Communications (STC). She can be contacted at yvonne@smartstar.com Dale began the overview of the evenings discussion about the local information infrastructure. Dave Oster reviewed the available technology for construction of the backbone portion of a Community Information Infrastructure (CII). Frame relay and SMDS technology were discussed in terms of the relative speed, cost, scalability and availability of each service. The CII could eliminate most of the costs of telecommuting, voice line toll charges, by having dial-up modem servers in each of the communities in the Santa Barbara County attached to the backbone network which is usage and mileage cost insensitive. Bruce Hanna talked about how to get the concept going---how can we get the Local Information Infrastructure (CII) to happen. Nobody is using the newsgroups. We are at a point in computing where a paradigm shift is taking place. We have to pay attention to what we can do here in SBC, not somewhere else. The primary driving force in the Internet is the commercial uses and the personal uses. Examples were given of Blacksburg businesses-- a restaurant menu and coupons on the local web. Another was the idea of having automotive repair shops on the CII and talking to a mechanic using cu-see-me so you wouldn't have to be at the garage to pick a mechanic. Electronic communication like e-mail improves the quality of communication. Bruce encouraged the SCTA participants to participate in the lists and newsgroups. He noted that the CII is not about enlarging the Internet, it's about the local services-- that's what has happened in Blackburg. He said we have to focus on the people's needs, include all of them, and tailor the applications to the community. A panel of city and county officials was then invited to speak about how they saw their participation in the Community Information Infrastructure: Tom Roberts was first on the panel: He related his experience in trying to prompt people to believe in the emerging paradigm shift 10 years ago. They didn't believe. The City of Santa Barbara consists of people at varying degrees of capability. The council is not all at the same level of interest in information technology. He advocates the continuation of the push by himself and SCTA to bring information technology to peoples attention and put infrastructure in place. He is not sure that the government is the only or the right source for the support. Jan Ballard is looking at the idea of an information utility to back this network. A lot of investment is going into new infrastructure. Tom makes the point that the people who use information technology are the voters with the greatest interest and devotion to the process so politicians will listen to them. John Patton, from SB County Planning: He is very interested in the benefits of a CII for improved quality of life and stimulation of the economy. Water, traffic and air quality are very big issues. The county could help with changes in regulation to stimulate employers and employees to use a CII. He needs to know what the actual need for a CII is in numbers of users who could use a telecommuting facility. Another idea is take part of the road taxes and pour it into the CII. John Danner suggested a summit between the City of SB and the County to discuss the issues of the CII. Dev Vrat, with SBCounty. Only in the last year has the concept of and the value of Information Technology and communication really exploded. His department is actively promoting Information Technology. John Lynch suggests a trial/demo is the only way to really get the computer phoebes and those who don't care on-line. Duffy Leon hinted a little about the future broad band communication structure that COX will make available. Sharon Clausen suggests the traffic reduction applications could be the main focus in creating the CII. Next meeting is Monday, August 28, 1995 at GRC. _________________________________________________________________________ David Oster, CEO | Wide-Area Network Interface Cards MultiAccess Computing Corporation | Novell * FTP * Macintosh * Windows 805-964-2332 fax 805-681-7469 | Frame relay * SMDS * CDS * DXI _________________________________________________________________________