Dirk Slater travels around the country sharing his technology skills with
very small non-profit organizations empowering very low income and
minority persons.  His most innovative project described below connects
the leaders of a grassroots Missouri organization with each other to
allow for better and richer communication and hopefully a stronger and
more developed organization.  the program uses free donated computers and
the free Linux operating system and its applications to achieve its
goals.  While not blindness related, Linux screen readers are free and
offer the same prospect that Dirk Slater has with his project:  increase
the effectiveness of leaders and active people through access to the
Internet at a very low cost.
Kelly

From: "Dirk Slater" <[log in to unmask]>

What follows is a summary on our Linux project. Thanks for all the
support! For more information on the LINC Project subscribe to
LINC-hot-news:

http://lincproject.dyndns.org/mailman/listinfo/linc-hot-news

or visit our website at www.lincproject.org

---------------------------------------------------------

USING LINUX IN ORGANIZING - AN INITIAL SUCCESS!

The Low Income Networking and Communication (LINC) Project of the
Welfare Law Center has helped many low-income led organizing groups
acquire access to the Internet and use technology more effectively.
While these groups have increased their abilities to communicate with
one another and their allies by using the Internet, one communication
hurdle remains, communicating with their leadership via the Internet.

Despite many "digital divide" initiatives addressing access to the
Internet in low-income communities, access is still an issue.
Public Internet access points, such as libraries and schools, are not
sufficient. Many low-income leaders do not have access to the Internet
where it would make the most impact -- in their homes. The need for
Internet communication is particularly great for rural groups whose
members live far apart and cannot have frequent face-to-face meetings
because of distance, time and money constraints.

We began to explore the idea of using Linux, a free operating system
that works well on older computers, when we learned of Microsoft's
decision to discontinue support of its older operating systems like
Windows 95. We had also been troubled by the frequent problems that
occur for Windows users just by having Windows run on its own. Giving
a person who lives in a rural area an older computer with Windows
seemed like we were just asking for trouble. We also attempted to
identify similar projects but had limited success.

What did LINC set out to accomplish? We wanted to increase our ability
to provide stable desktop systems using donated computers for board
members and leaders of  low-income led organizations that LINC serves.
Our goal is to increase the ability of LINC Project partner groups to
use open-source software (for a definition on open-source see
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html) to support their
organizing work. We also wanted to document the project as much as we
possibly could, so we could provide details of our experiences for
others doing similar projects.

What did LINC actually do?

- identified a partner in GRO-Grass Roots Organizing in Mexico, MO,
  for our pilot project organization

- identified Linux as the operating system that would run on older
  donated computers

- installed Linux on 10 computers and prepared them for use as
  stand-alone workstations in people's homes

- installed Linux on a brand new stand-alone computer to work as the
  main computer in the GRO office

- set up the main computer (in the GRO office) as a terminal server
  to work with one or more of the lower-end donated computers as clients

- established a relationship with the Mizzou Linux Users Group for
  ongoing local support

- conducted a group training for an introduction to the system

- conducted one-on-one trainings for people getting computers in
  their homes

- established a listserv for support issues

- documented our experience in daily journals which were disseminated
  over listservs and the web (www.lincproject.org/toolkit/linux)


What were the necessary components in making this project work:

- GRO - an organization with strong technology saavy and a clear goal
  for what these systems would do (allow members to access the Internet
  and have word-processing capability), and people within GRO that were
  willing to make local connections and acquire donated computers from
  the local university

- 14 Pentium II 2OOmhz computers, with 64 megs of ram and 2 to 3 gig
  hard drives donated by University of Missouri Outreach & Extension

- a Microtel PC (from WalMart) with a Celeron 1GHz processor and
  128 megs of ram also donated by University of Missouri Outreach &
  Extension

- Linux software:  Distribution:  Red Hat 7.2 - additional software:
  Open Office, AbiWord, Ximian Red Carpet.  IPCOP on the firewall, and
  the Linux Terminal Server Project in GRO's office

- Technology Assistance Providers (the LINC Project Circuit Riders)
  with solid training backgrounds and a clear understanding of what GRO
  is trying to accomplish as an organization.


What were the challenges (and our solutions):

- Identifying good training materials on Linux (we compiled and created
  our own)

- Finding modems that are compatible with Linux systems (we used
  external modems)

- Older hardware that kept failing (a lot of creativity)

- Identifying ways to speed up the software installation process (we
  tried several methods settling on disk "cloning")

- Windows users, transitioning to Linux, becoming frustrated by having
  to do more steps for tasks than they are used to and items being in
  different locations (we urged patience and practice but we continue
  to try to identify better interfaces)

- Securing phone-lines for project participants so they can connect to
  the Internet and securing those phone lines for a period of time (GRO
  is trying to secure funding to assure that their board members keep
  phone lines in their homes)


What's left:

We still have a long way to go before we can call this a completely
successful project. After a period of a few months we will assess
whether the board members are actually using the computers to
communicate more effectively. We also need to identify and develop
training materials to smooth the transition process for users who
were used to working with Windows. We need to schedule another trip
to Mexico, MO, within the next couple of months to do follow-up work.

We will also be working with a couple of other LINC project
participating groups to see if we can replicate the success we've
had with getting GRO's leaders online.

To view the daily journals on our project with GRO please visit the
LINC Project Linux pages at http://www.lincproject.org/toolkit/linux

--
Dirk Slater
Senior Circuit Rider
Low-Income Networking and Communications (LINC) Project
Welfare Law Center
[log in to unmask]
www.lincproject.org
212-633-6967 ext. 22


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