CyberCitizens of Oak Park & River Forest

CYBER CITIZENS OF OAK PARK & RIVER FOREST

SEPTEMBER 10, 1995 MINUTES

The first informal meeting of the "CyberCitizens" group was Sunday evening, September 10 at the home of the Webster for the Oak Park Tourist. Approximately thirty people turned out for this internet soiree, and after nibbling and imbibing, we heard discussions of the upcoming Internet Symposium at OPRF High, October 28; about the rapidly developing capabilities in the District 97 schools; the OPRFHS Home Page and in particular, the development of Physics labs on the Web; some of the Public Library's extensive plans for cataloging & internet services with their new computer systems; and we discussed community access issues and how to both convey to others a sense of what the internet might be used for, and how to make it accessible to the widest possible demographics.

One important question raised, was whether the League of Women Voters, or some other community organization, might be interested in running a page devoted to the politics of elections in the Village, much as is done throughout California. This was left open, but was a clear call for volunteers interested in pursuing such a good idea.

The meeting was a grand success (IMHO!) -- and some of the others who took part might agree too :-)

There is a tentative plan to hold another informal gathering later in the Fall at the Oak Park Library. If you are interested in the next meeting, send encouragement to Ted Field at oppltf@aol.com.

We did manage to bring two machines to the meeting and have them online - a "Baby Mac" running slip and Mosaic 2.0 or NetScape 1.1, and an Intel "Big PC" running slip and NeXTStep unix. The NeXTStep machine was configured to also be an http server, and for a brief 15 minutes, the Party Page at http://slip3-05.dialin.uic.edu was on the net! ...until the sound file we were creating for the page exceeded all known memory, and the system crashed :-) The server came back up, but the slip address was dynamic and the new one not posted.

Surfing the Web was especially cool, as several people at the gathering had their own Home Pages to show off!