1) For those of you who missed the last meeting, we heard a useful presentation about Boston's Technology goes home program; heard about the city's wireless pilot and RFI (led to interesting discussion of the intersection between the work of the wifi committee and our digital divide committee;) talked briefly about the work of our two subcommittees and handed out chart showing a draft of tasks for subcommittees to address. We also then had short but very lively discussion about the goals of the project overall and of the pilot-- especially the issue of target population. (In a nutshell, the issue was whether addressing the needs of families with children was the first priority of a larger goal or the main goal itself and whether even if the needs of families with children was the goal itself, whether the pilot in a relatively small place (like Newtowne Court) should be broader to ensure that we have enough information from a pilot to inform our later work.
This discussion will continue in the Program Design Subcommittee and then back to us all.

2) As we discussed, Susan Fleischmann is chairing the Program Design Subcommittee and its first meeting will be Wednesday May 16 at 3:00 at CCTV at the corner of Prospect and Bishop Allen Drive. Claire Spinner is chairing the equipment committee and its first meeting is Mon, May 21 @ 1:30-3 p.m. in the Anastos Room which is on the 2d floor of City Hall. A chart showing the draft charges of the Subcommittees is attached and was passed out at the meeting.

3) Tim Plenk sent me the following article that appeared in today New York Times. It is quite interesting about use of computers in the schools and the less than positive experience of some schools. While use in schools is not what we are currently talking about, we thought you would be interested and it also speaks to the issue of maintenance of the equipment.

Attached (in the bar at the bottom of this post) are the minutes from the 3/7/2007 meeting. We can use this space to discuss some of the unfinished business, and maybe suggest agenda items for the April 4 meeting.

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Let's see how this goes - if it is helpful to the process of the group, we can keep it going, and if not....

These are some of the issues to be resolved:
Issues that need to be addressed to design the pilot:
• Who is the pilot group?
Families with children in 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th were discussed
• Administration
– who runs it?
• Funding model – who pays for program?
Do families pay anything for equipment?
Who owns the equipment?
• What’s the equipment- lap top or PC
New/ refurbished?
- How to acquire computers?
- Where would they be stored?
- How will they be set up?
• Program Design
• Training for families
How to handle- video? Classes?
• Do people have to have training before they get the computer?
• Tech support
- How is it provided? video?
• Software
licensing issues? Standard image on each computer?
• Evaluation

Available here are three documents: the letter from Board President Joe Douillette introducing the proposed changes and calling a special members meeting, the current By-laws with changes indicated in red (the changes start on page 3), and an expanded explanation of the proposal, prepared by Board Vice President Rika Welsh.

I was thinking today that maybe some of my viewers would be more likely to interact with me via the internet than on the phone during my BeLive...I could have my blog up during my BeLive and people could post comments, or stuff could get posted during the week and I could check on it for the next show.....what do you say?