Work at CTOC

So whats been going on at CTOC (community technology organizing consortium) since I started my Vista-ship back in November? Well, from November to the beginning of January I spent a lot of the time doing outreach for a Holiday event we held. That turned out to be a bit of a flop on attendance and I did feel like a bit of a failure to my organization but I got over it. I realized the causes of low attendannce were various...new event location, holiday season, etc. It was my first few weeks on the job so I wasn't too hard on myself. As soon as that was over we got a call from CTCNet to help with outreach for the Los Angeles institutes, as they were lacking in registration.  So the week and a half long tasks of phone calls, e-mails, and e-vites began again. This turned out to be much much better. The CTCNet institute was quite interesting and informative. Unlike many of the CTCVista's I lack in being "tech savvy" so I never realized the capabilities of various software components and its ability to provide access to the disabled. 

 Amidst outreach calls and two events, I spent a lot of time reading up on broadband/technology  issues - policies, capacity, its effects on society as a whole - and wow have I learned a whole lot about the need to address the various issues surroundung this! My supervisor has been great in sharing her knowledge with the issues- she really knows her stuff and has helped me a lot. I also work alongside ex-vista Sheveeta once a week so I'd have to  say that I've got pretty good support going on here. 

This week I've started some research on the broadband debate. I think I am going to be doing a mini-analyses on where the issue lies now and the importance of CTOC's position as a community and social advocate. Hopefully this will help us land some grants later on as we are lacking in funding as well. 

 If anyone has any leads as to where I can access reading material for my research i.e policies, debates, books, etc,  that would be awesome. I seem to be only finding U.K websites that cover the issue in depth. 

 To summarize, I've done outreach for two events, familiarized myself with technology as a whole,  thinking of ways to fundraise, and starting a mini research project, as well as manning the admin side to our office from time to time.

 I really hadn't felt like I was doing a whole lot but now that I've written it all down I feel a little overwhelmed! : ) All good nontheless.

Comment from lauren bratslavsky on February 1, 2007 - 2:03pm

Hi Dana-

Here's some starting points about broadband. Hope it leads you in the right direction.

PBS program on Net Neutrality (you may already know about it) - http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html You can watch the whole program or just the parts that interest you (look for the subheadings). There are also a lot of documents at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/documents.html

At the Media Reform conference, there were at least 2 panels that may be relevant - one on wireless internet networking and another on the digital divide. Look for the audio recordings on the conference site: http://www.freepress.net/conference/=full_schedule07

And if you're looking for academic research or even newspaper/magazine articles, check into seeing if your local library has access to research databases such as EBSCO, Academic Search Premiere, or Lexis Nexus, any sort of periodical or research database. If you're at the library website, it would be under research page or something like that. Or find a friend who is going to school and has access to those databases.

Comment from dana sou on February 1, 2007 - 2:54pm

Thanks Lauren ! That was definately helpful.