4.1 Management Team
The Management Team has been expanded from the original Principal Investigators on the NTIA grant application to include a more broadly representative collection of community and university interests. The team has been designed to address issues of long-term development for BCN. Ideally, the members would be a Board of Trustees for BCN should it evolve into a 501 (c)(3) non-profit. The team consists of the following members:
The Policy Advisory Board is responsible for writing basic policy statements (http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/policies/center.html). The statements address the rights and responsibilities of information providers. In addition, the Policy Board reviews new services such as newsgroups or political action services (URLs under development) that could be provided on BCN. Each of these services require user agreement statements or charters. Overall participation on the Policy Board extends to twenty-three individuals, and there is a core of eight regularly active participants.
4.3 Technical Advisory Board
The Technical Advisory Board reviews the technical requirements for implementation of services such as newsgroups, modem pools, and scripting that is necessary for feedback forms. Overall participation includes around 20 people, and the active core of 10-12 keep the others appraised of new situations and opportunities. Both Advisory Boards served as crucial developmental agents in the launching of BCN. While the Technical Advisory Board meets regularly to discuss potential applications and the changing technologies afforded on the WWW, the Policy Board will be evolving to address new issues not directly related to policy such as marketing, public education and the philosophical implications of offering particular services over others.
4.4 BCN-Research Group
In addition to the Advisory Boards and the Management Team, there is an active group of 24 volunteers who meet regularly to continue perfecting BCN's public orientation session formats, develop various marketing efforts such as posting flyers, writing press releases, setting schedules for radio and local TV appearances. The group also works on interface issues and information organization research.
4.5 BCN Community
Aside from the regularly active participants mentioned above, there are literally hundreds of people throughout the community who promote BCN in one way or another (http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/bcn-people/bcn-people.html). The overall support and exchange of ideas has been a key factor in BCN's success.
4.6 Lessons Learned: Participation
BCN could not have happened without the people who have dedicated so much of their own time and energy. The process of initially hammering out all the individual/organizational differences was difficult and often frustrating. The process led, however, to the forging of a common vision that we could all believe in and work towards.
1. Inclusion should be one of your guiding principles.
2. The broader the community representation, the more challenging the process of arriving at unanimous decisions. Accept this, and if there is disagreement realize that the conflict means that all perspectives are being considered. Go with a majority vote.
3. Try to involve the public libraries, the university, the local governments, the local media, school district, and human services people.
4. Being affiliated with the University has assured access to technical resources which have been fundamental to a smooth operation.
5. The first target audience should be technically savvy people who can then be recruited to help other segments of the population.
6. It is also good to make sure that you have people who care about the social needs and implications of the community network so that the social impacts do not take a back seat to the technological aspects of the project.
Comments: Catherine Weldon or Madeline Gonzales