Month Seven: Rethinking

LTSC (and quite a few other CA orgs) lost out on a big time federal grant. We're facing a pretty big budget shortfall, and a bunch of projects and plans are going to have to be slimmed down or eliminated in order to keep core programs afloat.

In the past few weeks, I've been putting together a curriculum packet to train resident volunteers in networking. The plan was to offer a small stipend, but now that we don't have that to give, I'm gonna change the recruitment strategy a bit (beg beg beg, and/or possibly find a business who'd be willing to donate something).

Was also planning to fix one of the residential networks. Without any money for equipment, this will be difficult. But rummaging around, I found a bunch of unused network equipment... hope to make this work.

My plan for the next few months will include time spent on trying to figure out how to make other tech programs and projects (ones that I previously wasn't directly involved in, such as our CTCs) stay aloft and be as sustainable as possible. I feel like CTCs are often on a knife's edge when it comes to keeping open and functional, and I think we should start to explore partnerships outside of LTSC's usual realm (there's a lot of turning inward to Little Tokyo/JA organizations, I feel).

My supervisor's replacement has been hired and is going to start working sometime in March I think. Hopefully the transition goes well.

Also, these are awesome and have been a little bit useful for residents with external wifi adapter antennas:
http://urbanwireless.info/index.php/antennas/parabolic-reflector