Field Report #8: A Leader's Visit to the Oakland Technology Exchange

This past Friday I had the quiet pleasure of visiting one of our program sites, the Oakland Technology Exchange. I had the opportunity to hang out there for nearly two hours talking shop with one of our VISTAs, Naomi Jimenez. I also got to visit a VISTA Alumni from my class, Jeff Benton AND even had a surprise visit from D.U.S.T.Y. Director and Co-Founder, Michaelangelo James, who won the 2006 Toni Stone Innovative Initiative Award at the CTCNet Conference I attended during my first VISTA year!

When I arrived, I was warmly greeted by Jeff Benton who walked me in and gave
me a brief tour of the OTX computer recycling warehouse. From OTX's website, "OTX-West is dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in Oakland, California. [They] do this by refurbishing surplus computers, educating families and providing ongoing access and support to those who have received our computers. The experiences of OTX-West over the past 6 years has [sic] demonstrated both the need for home computers in the community and the reuse model as a green way to meet the need."



Their warehouse was stacked full of old computers and hardware from all around the Bay Area. Bits of circuit boards, mice, keyboards, towers, monitors, hard drives and just about any other computer component you can think of were stacked, strewn and than stacked again about the warehouse creating mazes of a reused technological past awaiting to build the future. In deed, OTX's mission statement proudly claims, "Reusing the past...to build the future".


At the center of all of this was CTC VISTA Naomi Jimenez. Before I met Naomi, I had the pleasure of reading Danielle Martin's copious notes on previous conference calls with Naomi and was pleasantly affirmed in my positive proclivities to Naomi. From her reiterations on the necessity of recycling technology for a sound ecological, political and economic future, to her beaming proudly while explaining the so called 'grunt work' she had done there as a VISTA, it was clear that Naomi embodied the very spirit of what OTX was all about. I could tell by the way the staff interacted with her that she was a very valuable asset to OTX.



The continued tour Naomi gave me was wonderful. We walked about the warehouse and Naomi showed me many of the other rooms and spaces at OTX's facility. From the ghosting stations opposite the 'store' where people could 'pay' for refurbished computers with volunteer time to the 'mini-museum' of old Commodores and Atari computers near the kids room (where parents could leave their kids so they could volunteer and take classes!) - I was treated to a very comprehensive tour. As a former Food Bank Warehouse Operations Coordinator (who's now a CTC VISTA!), I was duly impressed by the tight integration of recycling and reusing supposed 'technological detritus' with community empowerment. OTX is in deed a wonderful example of community technology at it's finest.



As a final treat, we had a surprise visit from Michaelangelo James, Co-founder and Executive Director of Digital Underground Storytelling For Youth (D.U.S.T.Y.). I first met, Michaelangelo at the 2006 CTCNet Conference in Washington D.C. where he was presented with their annual Toni Stone Innovative Initiative Award. He was simply dropping some computers off to get looked at but ended up staying a bit to watch an innovative digital story that Naomi had created using nothing but Audacity and Open Office's Impress - another shining example of what VISTAs can create with limited resources - which as we all know, many non-profits need, D.U.S.T.Y. notwithstanding. As a VISTA myself, I of course took the opportunity to tell Michaelangelo a bit about the CTC VISTA project and the possible placement of one with his org. For now however, that shall the topic of another field report...

Until next time, this is Morgan Sully reporting straight from Oakland signing off.

peace!