DEVELOPMENT OF THE LINCOLNNET:
Key to the success of the RAP/2000+ project and the SMRLC are directors with strong regional development backgrounds. Larry McClellan and Ron Bean have been actively fostering relationships and coalitions across the region for many years. Both are highly regarded in terms of promoting regional dialogues and cooperation, and have contributed to our current reputation of credibility and reliability. However, because the key staff members of the SMRLC do not have technology backgrounds, (with the exception of Dr. Suzanne Prescott, who is a GSU professor and national expert on telephony systems), and because our main technology support comes from the Educational Computing Network, which serves four other Illinois Universities in addition to GSU, the development of the LincolnNet progressed more slowly than had been anticipated. It is also interesting to note that the idea of consensus and regional cooperation that made RAP/2000+ so successful has proven to be one of the factors that delayed the implementation of our technology systems. While in the long run our working groups and grassroots input have proven to be very effective in terms of the region’s ownership of Lincoln, this "implementation by committee" has also contributed to slow progress. In hindsight, however, we wouldn’t have approached it any other way because our commitment to "bottoms-up" has always been, and will continue to be, a strong priority and is key to any success we have achieved.
Prior to going online with the LincolnNet, SMRLC director Larry McClellan and other staff members spent a good deal of time visiting other community networks online, including Blacksburg Electronic Village, Boulder Community Network, La Plaza Telecommunity, and LibertyNet to name a few. Armed with some initial ideas, our director of administration and research, Karyn Purvis, took a crash course in HTML and web technology and began to put LincolnNet’s initial framework online. From May, ’96 to December, ’96, we continued to learn, evolve, and work with our regional groups to determine what a website for the south metro region should contain. Our most active working groups at that time were the: 1) Municipal working group; 2) Library working group; 3) Environmental working group; and 4) Health & Human Services working group. These groups grew out of the RAP/2000+ process.
During this time, Karyn worked with Mike Hanei, ECN’s technical director, on assigning Lincoln accounts to public institutions in the region, and with Adalma Stevens, ECN’s training director, on connectivity and basic HTML training for Lincoln users. These training sessions are offered on campus once per month. We have also held a number of all-day webpage workshops, where participants bring in information about their institution, and they leave with a website online. At this time, we also hired Tom Liska, a computer science major working toward his BS degree at GSU, who came aboard part-time as our helpdesk technician, and as support for our website and training initiatives. In addition to his HTML expertise, Tom also brought with him limited CGI and PERL experience.
While there was a decent framework in place by November, 1996, usage of the LincolnNet website was still rather low, with only 4,000 recorded visits since 5/96. Also, even though outreach activities had been fairly aggressive, with personal letters being sent to all the local governments, libraries, and school districts in the region, and with a well-attended "unveiling" event being held in July that resulted in significant press coverage, fewer than 70 Internet accounts on the Lincoln server had been assigned.
In November, 1996, Christine Brim, our evaluator, made a visit to GSU and we had a very definite "valley" experience. Chris pointed out that we were 12 months into our 18 month project and had a long way to go toward making LincolnNet a dynamic, "living" website. She also encouraged us to think more in terms of integrating audio components into our pages, and to continue encouraging more interaction among our RAP groups. She pointed out shortcomings that we were aware of, such as our lack of full-time technical personnel to focus on providing our users (and ourselves) with CGI components, including threaded messaging, guestbook capabilities, and search technology. But she also pointed out shortcomings that we were blind to, such as unimaginative design and lack of comprehensive content.
As a result of Chris’ visit, LincolnNet was totally redesigned and restructured by Karyn in December, and the new and improved LincolnNet went online in January, 1997. Suzanne Prescott, director of the Lincoln InfoLine, initiated a closer merging of the InfoLine with LincolnNet. She proposed adding interactive features on the website like those on the InfoLine. With her urging, ECN increased their support of CGI scripts. Suzanne and Karyn constructed a prioritized list of CGI features including guestbook, text search, threaded messaging, and statistical reporting to create opportunities for site visitors to interact with network features. While we would still benefit from a technical director proficient in PERL, CGI, Java, and web design working full-time for Lincoln, the site is much-improved and more visually appealing.
Also as part of the restructuring of LincolnNet, Suzanne proposed adding audio capacity through the use of Real Audio. Later she brought the Lincoln InfoLine and Lincoln website closer together by encouraging the use of actual recordings from the InfoLine on the website. She and Karyn worked together to incorporate .ra files into the LincolnNet in the following ways: 1) An essay contest as part of the Lincoln InfoLine was conducted in a middle school in one of our region’s lower income communities. Along with the written stories, visitors to this web page can also hear the children read their essays. See Coolidge Contest; 2) A speech given by Allen Grosboll, Senior Advisor to Governor Edgar, during our Second Annual Open Space Congress can be heard in its entirety See Open Space Congress; 3) CyberSight, LincolnNet’s youth oriented and operated webcast/online newspaper features student’s creatively using written and oral communication skills See CyberSight; and 4) Webtide, LincolnNet’s experimental webcasting site is being implemented with members of GSU’s faculty See Webtide.
Since January of ’97, all of our numbers are showing vast improvement: more than 300 Lincoln accounts have been assigned to public institutions in our region; we now have well over 24,000 visits to our site; and we have reached more than 1,700 individuals with awareness and website training (See Appendix C: LincolnNet Reports). We also continue to receive very positive comments from our RAP participants, other regional stakeholders, and people from across the nation (Guestbook Pages), and we just celebrated our first year online with the 1997 LincolnNet Website of the Year Awards, and a reception held at GSU See Celebration. The three top sites were selected as a result of online voting during the month of June. The winners were Peace Community Church, the Village of Crete, and the University Park Public Library. Among our main objectives during this next year will be to continue adding comprehensive content related to our activities and information relevant to the region, including enhanced use of real audio. We will also focus with determination on providing a more user-friendly environment for our regional groups to collaborate and communicate online. The current usenet groups are not being used. We also plan to enhance the information in our issue areas at the same time, and then to launch an aggressive outreach campaign to our regional groups to promote use.