I would like to see the New Civilization Network be a viable and growing
and effective network for all of you and for the world in the future. I'm
sure most of you would like to see that as well.
I have no doubt that it will. However, there are certain issues related to
growth and viability that need to fall into place along the way.
One of them is, unfortunately, still economics.
NCN is working fine as it is with close to a couple of thousand members,
with some nice webpages that a lot of people visit every day, with some
mailing lists, a chat room, some bulletin boards, a member directory, and
so forth. At this point that can still be coordinated by a couple of
volunteers, by donation of computer resources, by a few monetary donations
here and there, by a lot of investment of time on my side on programming
and maintenance and communication. And, not the least, by the participation
of a lot of great people - you.
However, I would really like to see a lot more facilities at your disposal.
More places to meet, collaborative groupware software, a more complete
on-line environment that truly helps us accomplish something together. And
more facilitiation, more nurturing, more development of the potential that
truly exists among us. More active coordination of projects, collection of
data, etc.
And I can sure imagine a lot more things that could be done in terms of
creating a better infrastructure. But they require time, people, and money.
More time than I have, more money than I personally have.
So, I'd like to think a little aloud on how to go about it.
NCN can work as it is with 2000 people. But how about when it becomes
20,000 or 200,000? The cost of servers and connections would be a problem.
The time it would take to maintain databases and mailing lists and that
kind of thing would be more than the full time work of one person. And, if
a more solid and scalable structure hasn't been put in place, it might all
become too chaotic.
If enough voluntary donations came in from members, possibly it could cover
the server costs, and for somebody to dedicate the necessary time. However,
I wouldn't want to see NCN being a continous fund-raising drive, asking
people for money all the time. I very much appreciate the few of you who
sent in something when I put out a call recently. I appreciate that you
find NCN valuable enough to send in a donation, even when you don't have
to. However, it added up to only about 10 people, out of 1880. Not to make
the rest of you feel bad, just to make the situation clear.
I see several avenues.
I have mentioned the New Civilization Foundation several times. There's a
very active working group here, with a bunch of you who have spent great
effort on organizing strategies and mission statements for this, and it is
taking shape nicely. The funding is still in progress, but it isn't there
yet. When it is, it certainly is no longer an issue how we finance and
staff even a very large and sophisticated infrastructure.
But, sitting around just waiting for big funding to come around and save
us, isn't an altogether useful thing to do. We will certainly do things to
be prepared for it, but we need to have other avenues happening at the same
time.
Another possibility is to provide more of an incentive to pay a little
something towards making NCN run, by providing something of value
specifically to those who make such a donation.
Let me first explain more of the situation with the servers that NCN runs
on. For the first couple of years the webpages and mailing lists were
running on the newciv.org server, which Max provided, and which he paid for
the connection for. It is a low speed connection, a 28.8 modem continuously
connected. That costs a couple of hundred dollars a month.
The web pages now run on a faster server with a T1 connection to the
Internet (about 60 times faster than a 28.8 modem). The connection costs
$650/month, at the current rate of traffic, which is significantly less
than the typical cost of about $2000/month for a T1 line. This server and
the connection is left over from Global Solutions, which was a local
experiment in collaboration, which didn't quite work out. I'll tell the
story of that later. The equipment, the location, and the connection was
acquired by Synchronicity Networks, which is a company that I run with my
partner Julie Solheim. Or, to put it better in perspective, we saw the
existence of the equipment, and our experience in networking and virtual
communities and web development as something we ought to make a business
out of. Both because that's what we feel is needed, and secondarily,
because we still need to eat and have a place to live, and because some
funds do need to come in in order to pay for Internet connections, the
offices they're in, etc. We're idealists, but there are still certain
practical realities one needs to pay attention to.
Now, the plan we came up with for NCN, and for other networks we're working
on, is to add a set of personal value-added services that can be available
to people who pay something, such as the hosting of a simple web page,
forwarding of e-mail, and maybe additional chat facilities. And, at the
same time, as we will develop more different networks for different
purposes, some of which will be commercial, we will find ways of re-using
some of the components, and thereby avoiding having to re-invent the wheel
over and over.
So, what we would like to offer initially for NCN purposes is that those of
you who give a donation of $20 or more per year will be able to host a
simple webpage on our servers, and there will be an online program that can
help you create it through a web browser, and you will be able to get an
e-mail alias on one of the servers. For example, you could have a
newciv.org e-mail address, which you could hand out as your e-mail address,
and the mail will be forwarded to your regular account. Any of these of
course only if you want or need it.
I'm sure we can think of more fringe benefits along the way, like private
chat rooms. Anyway, the idea is of course not to take anything away from
the general NCN facilities that anybody can access, but just to add some
more personal facilities for you. The general collaboration facilities for
everybody will continue to be expanded.
If 20% of NCN members went along with this scheme, the connection would
essentially be paid for.
Please understand that NCN isn't, and won't ever be, a commercial activity.
It is a non-profit grassroots network. However, on the side of it we can
very well add some activities that will fund it along the way.
So, if you feel that NCN is inherently of value, and you'd just like to
support its continued existence, send in a donation of any size you're
comfortable with. And, if you would like to have the service of a personal
webpage, but haven't gotten around to figuring out the technicalities of
web design and web hosting, or if you think it would be cool with a
newciv.org e-mail address, send in at least $20 and we'll set it up for you.
We'll set up a more formal legal entity to send donations to, but at this
point the easiest is still to send it to me. My address is below.
- Flemming
Flemming Funch
7448 Oak Park Ave
Van Nuys, CA 91406
o o
/ \------------------ Flemming A. Funch -------------------/ \
/ * \ New Civilization Network / Synchronicity Networks / * \
/ * * \ ffunch@newciv.org / * * \
o-------o----------- http://www.worldtrans.org/ -----------o-------o
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Dec 07 2000 - 23:22:12 PST