BrookLynX -- A Guide to Getting Your Communities on the Net

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BrookLynX -- A Guide to Getting Your Communities on the Net
By Elizabeth Cahill, BrookLynX Manager
BRIC/Brooklyn Information and Culture

BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture, formerly The Fund for the Borough of Brooklyn, is a nonprofit organization founded in 1979 to present cultural, educational and information programs that reflect Brooklyn's diverse population, support the Borough's growing neighborhoods and economic revitalization, and provide programs that enhance the quality of life of Brooklyn residents. A project of BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture, BrookLynX is designed to help Brooklyn communities establish a presence on the Internet by:

providing Internet access and graphic capabilities to three community computer centers, in addition to our own at Brooklyn Community Access Television (BCAT);
offering free Internet training & World Wide Web publishing classes to Brooklyn's nonprofit organizations, small businesses and neighborhood activists;
providing technical support to local organizations wishing to reach more diverse and larger constituencies through the Internet; and
maintaining www.brooklynx.org, a Web site built upon a model of active citizen participation providing information about Brooklyn neighborhoods and their civic, community and cultural resources.

Initially funded by a Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, BrookLynX was established to serve as a national model of a grassroots community network project that might be replicated easily. Additional support for BrookLynX is provided by grants from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Bell Atlantic, Brooklyn Union, and software from Showcase NY and the Adobe Philanthropy Program.

We seek to share with others what we've learned in creating and delivering this program. What follows is a guide, based on our own experience, outlining key steps for you to follow in preparing community computer centers to deliver an Internet access and training program for your communities.

Technical

Assess hardware, interconnection, and software needs at your center. You will need: an established LAN, at least one phone line and one computer with a modem, a scanner, Internet browser software, graphics software (such as PhotoShop or Adobe Photo Deluxe), and Web publishing software (for example, Microsoft FrontPage, a program that enables web page creation without having to program directly in HTML).
Determine which level of Internet connectivity (Telephone Service, ISDN, or T-1) you will be able to provide.
Contract with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for access to the Internet. If you are working with limited resources, you can use Deerfield's Wingate software (about $215) to allow up to ten users simultaneous access to the Internet with only one modem. Globix, a Manhattan-based ISP, has a program tailored for nonprofit organizations.
Ensure that you have the staff to maintain and supervise your computer lab.

Training

Conduct formal training for your staff. As technology is constantly evolving, personnel training will have to be ongoing throughout the life of the program.
Develop a curriculum for the public. Topics covered in the six-week BrookLynX curriculum include Introduction to the Internet and the Web, Search Engines, E-mail, Newsgroups, and Web publishing.
Prepare to offer ongoing hands-on assistance with Web page creation and maintenance.

Outreach

Develop an outreach campaign to reach your targeted communities. We created partnerships with community computer centers linked to larger organizations which already had significant economic development, social service and housing programs; we then worked with them to conduct outreach to their constituents by means of distribution of brochures and targeted mailings.

Success Factors
If your nonprofit organization wants to bring Internet access and training to community computer centers, you must have a strong commitment not only to bringing the appropriate technology into the centers, but also to ensuring that it is properly integrated and maintained. While implementing BrookLynX we contributed extensive human and material support to upgrade and maintain our partner centers' computers and LANs, train staff, and conduct outreach to their constituents.

For more information, to apply or refer Brooklyn-based people or organizations for training, contact Elizabeth Cahill via e-mail at bklynx@brooklynx.org or telephone at 718-855-7882 Extention 28.

About TIIAP
The Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) of the U.S. Department of Commerce is a highly competitive annual grant program that seeks to bring the benefits of an advanced national information infrastructure to communities throughout the USA. TIIAP grants play an important role in realizing the vision of an information society by demonstrating practical applications of new telecommunications and information technologies serving the public interest.

Throughout the TIIAP process, it's understood that grantees, such as BrookLynX, will help spread what they learn in implementing their projects to as many other communities as possible.

TIIAP's website is at www.ntia.doc.gov or call (202)482-2048.

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