nettime: NetDay96 - Wiring the West

[Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>]

via: RRE
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 16:28:59 -0800
From: Jay.Backstrand@Eng.Sun.COM (Jay Backstrand [CONTRACTOR])  

On NetDay96,  March 9, 1996, a hundred thousand volunteers in
California will go to twelve thousand schools in California, and
install the same Category 5 wire we use in all California business
local area networks.  We will connect five classrooms and the library
to a central closet, in preparation for connection to the Internet.
This is a barnraising, a kickstart for networking in the schools.

Every high tech employee in California should be involved.  Every
contractor for a high tech company should be involved.
Anyone--employee, customer, or supplier-- that you can think of who
believes linking our children to the Internet is a good idea should be
involved.

What do you do?  Go to www.netday96.com, find a school, and volunteer
to help put that school on the Internet on March 9.  Go to that school
on Saturday, March 9, and help ten other people pull wire from five
classrooms and a library or computer lab to a central closet--you don't
need any particular expertise.  That's it. You can choose a school from
the twelve thousand home pages created on a server at the Well:
www.netday96.com.  All schools, private or public, are there; if it has
more than ten children in a classroom, it's a school--if you don't see
your school, mail netday@kqed.org  and NetDay will put up a home page
for you.

As NetDay approaches, you will see pages go up for every company in
California supporting NetDay, together with the count of participants
from each company.

We're jumpstarting the schools.  Our goal is to bring every school in
California past the first barrier to access: interior wiring.  We then
use the new capability in the schools to persuade the carriers to
provide Internet access.  And it's working.

We now have commitments from MCI, Netcom, and ATT to provide free
dialup a ccess to the Internet for every school in California.  Higher
bandwidth will come next.

We've talked the vendors into creating NetDay Kits that they will ship
directly to the schools. A standard kit, with two to three thousand
feet of Cat 5 wire, jacks, a 24-way patch panel, connectors, and cable
ties will cost between $350 and $500.  Pacific Bell is sponsoring 1,000
kits.  Small electrical contractors are sponsoring two or three
schools.  Individual parents are sponsoring schools.  You can. Your
district office can.  All details are at the NetDay web site:
www.netday96.com.

Please sign up now.

Our first need is to show a groundswell of volunteers.  We announced
NetDay in San Francisco on January 19, at a school wired by Sun and
3Com employees on Volunteer Day in November. Vice President Gore
arrived to praise the volunteers, and thank all California
high-technology companies participating in NetDay.  Volunteering has
taken off, but we need to reach ten thousand in the next week or two.

Please volunteer today.

This Web site is the first use of the World Wide Web to organize a mass
volunteer event.  Please help make it a success.

Please mail this request to anyone on your mailing lists.  Please ask
all webmasters to put a pointer to www.netday96.com on their home
page.  We are organizing this in a totally decentralized way, using the
Web.  This is the first time this has been tried, and I believe the Net
can do it.

We can do it. 




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