CTCNet Planning Retreat

On May 14, 2004 a retreat was held at Project H.O.M.E.'s Honickman Learning Center to give the community organizations in the Delaware Valley an opportunity to build consensus for the creation of an official CTCNet Chapter. Many organization that aspire to effectively provide their community with access to technology were involved in this process. The retreat feature a talk by Kavita Singh, Executive Director of CTCNet.

The steering committee would be comprised of a group of self-nominated or nominated individuals that would govern subcommittees comprised of one person representing the three groups (advocacy, info clearinghouse, and staff development/networking). These three groups would execute their goals (described in a previous email) with leadership and management from the steering committee, and the leaders of these three groups will either be self-nominated or nominated by others.

Below are notes generated from each break-out group:

Professional Development:
-survey of ctc's to take place over the summer. Will include assessment of technology needs and training/development interests. Format will be online and via phone call.
-Facilitate Regional Mentoring Relationships
-Create standardized best practices for physical locations and equipment i.e. - what is needed equipment and software wise to offer particular types of training
-Create tiered best practices for curriculum - i.e. - word processing basics will teach a particular set of objectives
-Offer site visits for monitoring of progress
-Create portal for sharing curricula
-Look for natural partnership opportunities in terms of services and potential funding
Professional Development Membership Benefits:
-Create a simple web presence for all CTC's with a minimum of one page including services offered, physical location, contact info and mission statement. These can be pages off of the CTCnetDV website
-Offer training classes like current T4T CTC track and award credits/increased level of membership for agencies that complete each tier of training - offer training on line as well as in person. Some suggested that training is more attractive when it is in intensive workshop increments rather than multiple sessions over several weeks/months.
-Material resources - a direct mail appeal appeal that each organization could personalize and send to constituents
-Newsletter boiler plate that each org could personalize with its own testimonials
-Boiler plate proposal that could be customized
-create forum/discussion board
-technical support - CTCNet hub
-message boards
-regional mentoring relationships
-Penn-GIS mapping - ask to include a layer for regional CTC's
-website to query frequently asked questions

Clearinghouse/Resource Exchange:
-build upon listserv - provide profile of each person on list (Communishare)
-compare with other CTCNet groups
-CTCNet website should be both informational to people unfamiliar with CTCNet and should also provide information specific to our region's ctc's needs.
-How to pay for this - should we have a CTCNet membership fee or run on volunteers?
-create a content committee that will maintain updates
-determine functionalities of website (i.e. different types of searches)

Advocacy/Awareness:
-policy and general media outreach
-first, identify needs for CTCNetDv as well as define what a CTC is
-initial question of capital vs. program development for CTCNetDV
-aim to work with state legislation, government officials, city officials, and CTCNet national
-education for our own members
-question - where is the CTC field going? Home computers and their environmental impact are in question (argument similar to car vs. public transportation)
-find out if there's a way to get school credit or internship credit for time spent in CTC
-concentrate more on grassroots outreach
-Project H.O.M.E's ctc as raising the bar for other CTC's
-developing content, neighborhood sites - ctc's as hubs for independent media
-create public service announcements through involvement with clearing house
-have CTC week in Philly - open house of all ctc's, highlight programs, etc.

Governance
-agreed that CTCNetDV would benefit from a support organization for CTCnet
-determined that now is not the time to incorporate
-idea of first starting a steering committee that would ideally be comprised of 2/3 CTC representatives.
-CTCNet national has the capability to provide fiscal management, management of listserv, templates for marketing materials.