Present:

Danny Budzak - LBN - Database editor (DB)
Rik Lewis - LBN - Consultant & ELLVTR (RL)
John Lock - University of East London, Thames Gateway Technology Centre (JL)
Chris McLean - Newham College of Further Education (CM)
Michael Mulquin - Newham Online Chair/UKCommunities Online (MM)
Lou O’Connell - Net and Beyond (LO)
Gavin Sealey - Newham Young People Online/Newham Youth Services (GS)
Richard Steel - LBN - Head IT (RS)
Richard Stubbs - Newham Online Co-ordinator/UK Citizens Online/CH&CTCRP (RJS)

Re: 3 List of potential local projects had been put on site

Re: 2.1 Membership - Richard Stubbs had not redrafted as when he had attempted to do so he had realised that there was a range of issues that needed to be considered further by the group before this could be done.

Re: 2.3 Representation- hard to do final edit until issues of membership clarified.

Re: 2.4 Promotion - RS to circulate draft text of leaflet this weekend. To be edited online. LBN would print leaflet and assist with design. LBN also prepared to produce and post letters on behalf of the partnership. The leaflet needs to be produced in time for July meeting.

Re: 4. Newham Online as a Service Provider. The agreement of GPT to become partners in Newham Online had meant that following up BT had been put on the back burner.

RJS introduced this item by saying that he wanted the group to get used to using a number of tools that could increase the creativity of a group. The first set were ways to improve on basic brainstorming techniques.

2.1 Provoking futures (Edward de Bono's "po")

Aim - To obtain a new perspective

Technique - choose a statement that simply describes a possible future and assume that it is true. Ask - why is this true?, what else would be true? What impact on daily life? Economy? Art?

Example - po Local broadband access is free

As virtual meetings, remote white boarding and home working become common businesses seek to save costs by cutting down on office premises. Post persons, couriers and cleaners lose their jobs but this is compensated for by jobs created through online developments. Even though it may be easy to produce your own content there will be a large market for designers and producers. Some things will remain on paper for legal reasons but most communications will go online. EMail will not disappear, as it is faster to scan or search written material than it is audio and video. Relationships will change with people having a far greater network of personal contacts. Inevitably the technology will be used for sophisticated selling and there will be a market for products that protect users from such sophisticated "spam". There could easily be a cyberwar between marketers and companies protecting users from marketers. It will also be used for lobbying though political "spam" would probably be counterproductive. Free access could cause a problem for businesses that charge for access unless they provide added value services. There will be people desperate to avoid intrusive communication and places where it can be escaped could become popular.(Beyond the Net perhaps?)

2.2 Persistant child

Aims - To challenge and explore basic assumptions.

Technique - place issue in middle of sheet. Ask Why persistantly? (do we do it this way?, in this place? By these people? Then also ask Why not? Persistently.

Example - Membership

Why? To get people involved, to achieve profile and leverage, to avoid elitism, to create an organisation, to be accountable, to obtain contributions, to be exclusive.

Why Not? Disagree with aims, why bother when it will happen anyway, it excludes non members, no time to be involved, don’t want to control or be controlled, nothing to offer, big brothers watching, wait for something better to come along.

2.3 Random futures

Aim - To break down the conservative approach that much brainstorming falls back into. To generate wild variations on an issue in the hope that something new will come up.

Technique - Choose letter, choose noun. Link topic to noun. All following word chosen randomly.

Membership creates jobs, workers co-operatives, giving jobs to members can be seen as illegitimate (eg masonry), members can exchange skills so increasing an individuals chance of finding work.

Comment - the word jobs gave rise to a vision for a possible Newham Online based on co-operation between members to create work for themselves.

A jewel has value as does a high quality membership,

jewels can be polished as can members,

jewels have quality standards, like kitemarks, standards of membership

jewels have cutting edge, Newham Online's membership could be cutting edge.

Jewels can put on strings, links of communication between the membership.

Comment - the word jewel created a vision for a possible Newham Online that feels a bit like the ACA ie a respected, professional body that offers training and accreditation to members and whose reputation depends on the quality of its membership.

Ceilings are a focus of light which can enlighten the membership

Ceilings can be "glass ceilings" that limit the membership

Ceilings can be limits to growth so there may be a limit to the number of the membership

Comment - the word ceiling results in a vision for Newham Online where it has a practical limit to its size However even though everyone is a member an individual can't rise up through the organisation so as to control it, though they do gain benefits from on high.

Michael outlined where we were with the Newham Online development. We had done quite a lot of work looking at the infrastructure issues and had agreed to set up an ISP and work with GPT. We had so far done very little work on the content aspect and we needed to start work on this. We had also started work on the ethos of Newham Online which would link the content and networking activities together. There were other areas such as training which we were not involved in yet. It was argued that training was part of content and not a separate issue. After discussion we agreed that there were four main areas for consideration. We identified "champions" for these different aspects and allocated key tasks to be performed before December '98:-

3.1 Newham Online as an organisation (John Lock & Michael Mulquin)

Be accepted as the natural repository/sponsor for local infrastructure projects including inter organisational developments.

Take a leading role and encourage other areas

Develop the business case

Foment rationalisation of the provider market

3.2 Infrastructure development (Lou O'Connell & Richard Steel)

Identify a critical path leading to the convergence of separate network infrastructures identifying problems to be overcome and opportunities to gain investment.

Create public web space for use by groups and individuals including a virtual learning and debating space.

Provide free access to all Newham residents to the Newham network and free or cheap access to the internet.

3.3 Content development (Danny Budzak & Chris McLean)

Be seen as an unbiased organisation that can be contacted for information either,from large organisations or smaller groups - not necessarily individuals.

Comprehensive Gateway site

Accessible and useful information beneficial to the community

Create a viable critical path which permits divergence re content and use. Identify problems to overcome and opportunities to gain investment.

3.4 Newham Online as a network of users (Rik Lewis & Gavin Sealey)

Identify service and products that will benefit all Newham residents

Promote IT to the masses identifying its benefits and uses.

RJS said that the reason we had been unable to get far with discussion of membership of Newham Online was that it had the four aspects we had just identified and in addition membership also was multi dimensional. Membership breaks down into the issues of ownership, control and participation. These needed to be considered for each of the four areas we had identified. We broke into groups to discuss these issues.

4.1 Infrastructure development (Lou O'Connell & Richard Steel)

Ownership. The providers of the various networks that will make up the Newham Online extranet will continue to own their bit of the wider network. The providers will include Council, Telecos, educational providers etc. Richard Stubbs suggested that Newham Online might choose to own the routers that link the various networks to the extranet.

Control. The overall control of the extranet will be with Newham Online whereas the individual networks will remain under the control of their owners. There will need to be a licence agreement between individual networks and Newham Online detailing usage restrictions and access arrangements.

Participation. For individual users access should be free but for organisations joining the network there should either be charges or contribution in kind made to Newham Online. The added value of the extranet will be very high so there will need to be a membership application process.

4.2 Newham Online as an organisation (John Lock & Michael Mulquin)

Ownership. Problem of issuing shares as potentially gets taken over. Should not be run by the Council. Probably needs to be an organisation owned by a number of organisations however there needs to be someway of ensuring that this doesn't simply become an exclusive club for these organisations.

Control. Depends on phase of development. The first task is to bring together all key players. Newham Online has identified the business opportunity and its founders need to ensure that the agreed values are embedded in all development so as to mitigate against the risk of key players simply disregarding Newham Online and its values once the extranet is developed. Newham Online will also need to promote the creation of partnerships to develop content and applications and again these will need to be value based.

Participation - Need to attract people and organisations to participate who have a wider view than simply meeting their own needs.

4.3 Newham Online as a network of users (Rik Lewis & Gavin Sealey)

Ownership. Issue of people vs organisations. There is a great potential for organised consumers with common interests to use the technology to meet their needs this could conflict with organisational interests. There is a ladder going from participation to control to ownership. We want ownership of relevant content but are content with input into how the network service is managed.

Control. We don't want editorial policy applied as a result of commercial and other considerations. We want to use the technologies to recover a sense of our collective power and community. We need tools to understand what we want and to improve the efficiency of the services we receive. We want to use the net to improve our position through self help ideas such as East London Skills and Information Exchange.

Access to relevant information such as education, legal, tax, info. of specific communities. We want to participate by giving feedback as to the services we get, we ant to be able to lobby for improved services. One issue is that all parts of the community can participate including BNP supporters, will these technologies work to empower or disempower such organisations?

4.4 Content development (Danny Budzak & Chris McLean)

Ownership. Content is owned by its creator. The development vehicle needs to be owned by both information providers and service users

Control. Obviously illegal content on the extranet is not acceptable but there are issues of standards of quality of information in terms of its reliability and currency. This may be an issue that is relevant to the design of the Gateway as we want to provide easy access to good quality, reliable information.

Participation. All users are potentially content creators, especially true with respect to applications such as online discussion fora. There is a distinction between individual and organisational participation.

RJS explained that a completed application form and business plan needed to be submitted by the 10^th. June. He had identified some key issues for discussion.

The method of financial management suggested in the report had been agreed by Richard Steel and was acceptable to the Steering Committee. It was noted that partners within the bid needed to provide written confirmation. RJS to ask Jerry Murphy whether eMail confirmation is adequate and if so write to all partners asking if they want to be included. It was agreed that RJS should put the draft bid on a password protected part of the site so that Steering Committee members could readily comment on drafts. It was noted that all the match funders would need to formally approve the bid.

In future any attachments sent to the list or files put on site for downloading should be saved in Word 6.00 format not Word '97.

Proposed method for project management was agreed statements of project management experience required from RJS, MM and RS.

We reviewed the tasks identified. DB agreed to write a brief for an information and communications audit. CM said that NCFE should be able to supply students willing and able to work on such a project in the period June-August. It was agreed that the July meeting should be called a Partners Conference and the Project Launch Conference should be deferred to October. The 10 local companies trading online deadline should be extended by 3 months to March '98.

DB said that he was interesting in creating a database of people in Newham who had an eMail address. RJS to contact Newham Recorder re article asking people who are online to send an eMail to DB. DB will contact Newham News and ask for a similar article to be placed. It was thought that we could get an idea of the total number of eMail users in Newham by searching AOL and Compuserve for people with the relevant postal codes. As the percentage of the market held by these companies is known it should be possible to get a rough estimate of total users.

The budget was discussed Richard Stubbs said that he had entered his income from the project as being £26,000pa and that in '97 it was entered as half time. He reckoned that he had worked on average 2 days a week on the Newham Online project since January and from July anticipated he would three days a week thus making it a half time job over the year. In '98 he could work full time. The Committee were happy with this but it was recognised that the decision on this and detailed budget items lay with the financial partners.

RJS reported that he had talked to Jerry Murphy and had been advices that there would be no formal decision by GOL as to the applications until the end of July '98. It followed that there would be nothing to announce about the ERDF bid other than the fact that it had been short-listed.

It was agreed that the aim of the meeting was to obtain further commitment from existing partners and possible obtain new partners.

It was agreed that the meeting should focus on the extranet and gateway. GPT could be counted on to give a high quality presentation and should be asked to focus on what they would be doing to help us achieve the extranet. LO said that the Net and Beyond would be happy to produce a multimedia mock up of the Newham Gateway that could form the basis of a presentation Lou would work with DB on this. RS said that he would like to be involved but was unfortunately was much occupied writing ERDF bids and business plans as a result of his St. Luke's work.

General outline:-

1. What we have achieved and where we are going

2. Newham Gateway

3. GPT and extranet

Stephen Timms will be there at 2.30pm, Tom Duncan is coming and the Newham Recorder will cover the event. The most important thing is to get people along. Our target is around 50 people.

Each person present should aim to bring at least two people from outside of their organisation in order to widen the range of potential partners. Our key method of promotion should be word of mouth. In addition key people within existing member organisations should be invited in a bid to deepen the level of commitment of these organisations.

All acceptances to be posted to the list so that we can monitor how many people will be coming. Leaflet needs to be printed in time for event.