Newham Online Steering Group meeting
 March 31st 2000

 

SWOT analysis

 

Strengths

Everything and nothing – It provides an all-embracing vision, but because it has no legal existence, is difficult to attack

Provides a context to develop specific projects

Diversity of skills and experience

Creation of a real community

Growing profile, reputation and influence

Creative

Spirit of sharing

Newham Young People Online

Domain names are all registered

Network audit

Mailing lists

Product: CD, audit report

Extranet

Steering committee

 

 

Weakness

Endless demands on our time

Lack of money, staff and resources

Lack of support (from some local institutions)

Lack of model for skill building leaving us too dependent on the skills of a few people

Lack of co-ordination between key stakeholders

Money still spent badly in Newham because of poor advice and coordination

Lack of technical expertise at certain level in Newham

False perception by decision makers of what’s happening on the ground

Cultural change needed in organisations / key people

Lack of problem solving

Lack of funding in the middle – ie for Newham Online’s role

Major institutions think Newham Online is ‘sorting it out’

Under capitalisation

Project dependent

Under resourced technically

Moves too slowly

Lack of understanding among local decision makers

Too little informed support locally

No clear sense of deliverables (services and products)

No sales or marketing

Vapourware

NeOn can't achieve income, as is an unconstituted body

Undervalued (Marconi invests 40million in Cambridge and 10k in Newham)

No business plan

No big partners (RJS comment - I think Marconi would count as this plus

Council!)

 

 

Opportunities

Gateway

Services to the home

Profits for local business

Co-ordination of local resources and initiatives

Potential social return

Developing our own problem solving ability

Capacity

Using Newham as a test bed / best practice model

Developing a cluster of initiatives

Culture

Partners to bid

Secondees from outside eg LBN, HMG

Objective 2/SRB and other funds

Newham.net as an income generating telco

Producer network/learning network growth engine

Serving local business

Creating a research environment

Democratising production

Thames Gateway

Diaspora and global opportunities

Clumping/clustering

Knowledge Dock

 

Threats

Over dependence on key individuals

Danger of hype

Danger of losing our way

Loss of funding

Missing opportunities

Competition – from free ISPs such as Freeserve, and the wider deployment of broadband.

Lack of USP as others catch up.

Offer eclipsed by commercial provision.

Technical failure - no redundancy - exposed by disaster.

Partners' change of policy.

Legislation / regulation (UK/EU)

Legal action (cf. Demon)

Newham too small to have critical mass (e.g. expertise gleaned from clustering). 

 

 

Functions of Newham Online

·        Co-ordination

·        Sharing information

·        People networking

·        Marketing the opportunity / vision

·        Providing leadership

·        Giving information on Fundraising

·        Telling the story

·        Building the Strategy

·        Facilitating organisational / organisation change

 

Ideal Office

Three staff:

E-envoy - Director

Project development and fundraising opportunities officer

Technical person

 

 

Gaining resources

·        Fundraising – but would need to become, or work with, a charitable company eg Computer Access.

·        Secondments

·        Becoming a subscription organisation – where institutional members pay significant subscriptions eg £10,000 a year

·        Selling consultancy to local organisations to help them utilise new technology effectively and the profits used to fund other work

Action:

RS to check out if CA would be eligible to receive NOF funds. Also to contact David Fitzpatrick re possibility of increased CA role in NeOn activities. John Lock, Rik Lewis and Peter Chauncy would be prepared to offer services as directors.

 

What we can learn from the SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis is about transition from a network (NeOn) to “formal structures that permit receipt of income of all kinds to enable development within context of continuing network and according to its established values”.   Thus

 

  1. Establish network and its values (done)

 

  1. Set-up vehicles to develop resource base (part-done)

 

  1. Achieve resources to run vehicles

 

  1. Gain surplus resources/infrastructure from vehicles

 

  1. Apply these to delivering network values.

 

Key questions are about democracy, checks and balances, rights/responsibilities of Newham people/organisations, of network members, of board members/staff of resourcing vehicles.

 

 

The way ahead

 

  1. Sketch out business plan

 

  1. Define offer – three organisations?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The whole = Newham Online (NeOn)                               

 

Surpluses generated by Newham.net and Newham Ventures go back to Newham Futures. 

 

Each needs own board, but can be overlap.  [Query:  to what degree is this open, ie doesn’t become self-perpetuating group who can’t be removed if things go wrong….]

 

Charity would, eg, relate to local forums LBN is setting up and could provide online services (lists, bulletin boards, etc).  Would also support expansion of NYPO etc.

 

Model provides for means to earn income from grants/earnings from virtually any source and to undertake virtually any kind of activity related to purposes of NeOn.

 

Funds could come from earnings (sales, commercial investment from invescos or corporate partners), grant (LBN, lottery (various), ERDF O2, SRB, trusts/charities, covenants and donations.)

 

3.  Consult partners/achieve high level support

 

4.  Revise business plan

 

5.  Formalise support

 

6.  Finalise structures, operationalise

 

7.  Generate income