General Manager's report to the Board of Twin Cities Free-Net

Plan for Membership Expansion, Summer 1998

1. General advertisement: The Publicity Committee is being formed for the purpose of creating materials with which to improve the Free-Net's public image. The goal of this publicity will not be to reach people who have no existing relationship to the Free-Net, but instead to inform people who are unaware that they already have connections with the Free-Net.
   • Being listed in the Yellow Pages couldn't hurt.
   • Bidirectional Web links will ensure that if we have a link to the Star-Tribune, the Star-Tribune also has a link to us, so we're not just sending users away from us.
   • Organizations that use the Free-Net for their e-mail and Web pages shouldn't have a problem with running an ad for TCFN in their newsletters, or with hanging a flyer on their windows or their bulletin boards where people can see it.
   • Brochures should be available wherever public terminals allow Free-Net access, so people know we're here. They'd also be valuable in neighborhood organizations' offices, or in the pockets of Free-Net evangelists. When someone asks, "What's the Free-Net?" a brochure is the best possible answer.
2. Targeted projects: Nearly everyone I've spoken with agrees that SafetyNet provides an excellent model for getting new members online, since it bypasses the chicken-and-egg problem by pursuing membership and content simultaneously. Following this model would require the following steps:
   1. Identify an issue of broad appeal.
   2. Find a volunteer willing to host a conference on that issue.
   3. Actively recruit individuals and organizations in the community who have a vested interest in the issue and want to communicate with others about it.
   4. Continue to feed the conference with topics on a regular basis.

Observations of TCFN's Strengths:

• Twin Cities Free-Net is a public service provided to all area residents, without regard to sex, race, physical ability, socioeconomic status, or sexual orientation. TCFN actively works to ensure that its services are accessible by all such residents.
• TCFN serves as a forum for intelligent discussion of locally relevant issues. It brings together individuals and groups with differing perspectives on these issues and helps them to work together to resolve their problems.
• With its local focus, TCFN can enhance community spirit. TCFN has the potential to produce a sense of community that transcends boundaries of race and economics and to bring together groups of individuals who share common interests.
• TCFN is a highly democratic organization. Any member can make a public statement, share and solicit all manner of opinions, help run the system as a volunteer, and be elected to the board of directors. TCFN belongs to its members.
• TCFN is predominantly funded by individual contributions from its members. In this sense, it literally belongs to its members.

Proposed Reorganization of Volunteer Corps:

• Organizational structures:
  • Egalitarian committee: This structure is well suited to tasks which are similar yet distinct. For example, all hosts have similar tasks, yet they host distinct conferences. They may establish and enforce group norms without requiring a leader. In the event of one host's unavailability, another can step in without requiring additional training. Such committees might resent a leader if one were present.
  • Unequal-pair chairmanship: When a committee does require leadership, one person is designated as the chair. The chair serves as the primary contact person for the committee, handling questions and comments from the general public as well as committee members. The chair also matches tasks to volunteers, based on their skills, experience, preference, and availability. Meanwhile, the assistant chair strives to learn everything the chair knows, in order to provide ready replacement in case the chair becomes unavailable. The assistant chair also provides peer pressure in case work does not get done promptly or adequately.
• Selection of Volunteers
  • The General Manager will endeavor to match tasks to volunteers efficiently, in a dynamic structure that can take advantage of the volunteers' strengths without succumbing to their weaknesses.
• Assistant General Manager
  • Learns the role of General Manager to ensure skilled replacement in case the manager becomes unavailable.
  • Motivates the General Manager with peer pressure in the event that work does not get done promptly or adequately.
• Technical Committee
  • Chair serves as primary contact person for all issues regarding the server hardware and software, and makes sure that at least two people know how to do each task.
  • Maintains normal operation of the server hardware and software. Anticipates and prepares for system failure, to ensure swift recovery.
  • Establishes and maintains documentation, both online and on paper, covering the procedures for maintaining, backing up, and restoring normal operation.
  • Chair matches tasks to volunteers based on their skills, experience, preference, and availability. The General Manager will provide a copy of the volunteer database for this purpose.
• User Support Committee
  • Chair serves as primary contact person for all user questions, via e-mail or telephone, and delegates the answering of such questions to volunteers as needed.
  • Committee produces and maintains concise and approachable documentation for new users.
  • Schedules and provides face-to-face public training sessions for new users, so that questions will be less frequent.
• Publicity Committee
  • Chair serves as primary contact person for all issues regarding the Free-Net's public image, both online and in other media.
  • Scrutinizes and suggests modifications to the Free-Net's Web pages to ensure that they are useful, consistent, navigable by all browsers, and attractive.
  • Designs any advertisements, press releases, flyers, and brochures produced by the Free-Net, to ensure that the information contained is accurate, informative, and appealing.
• Member Registration Committee
  • Chair serves as primary contact person for all processes which require use of the registration database: the processing of registration confirmation, membership renewal, and lost-password forms. Matches such tasks to volunteers as necessary.
  • Ensures that the database is consistently maintained and regularly backed up.
• Organizational Membership Committee (Community Outreach?)
  • Chair serves as primary contact person for issues regarding efforts to recruit additional organizational members of the Free-Net.
  • Documents lessons learned from past recruiting efforts. Encourages volunteers to learn these lessons before attempting recruitment.
  • Works with the User Support Committee to arrange group training sessions at or near the organizations' meeting places. Works with the Hosts to ensure that newly recruited hosts receive the support they need.
• Evaluation Specialist
  • Works with the General Manager to create, maintain, and process a questionnaire to be sent out with membership renewal forms. This questionnaire should be anonymous and collect demographic data as well as quantitative and qualitative indicators of the Free-Net's accessibility, usability, and perceived utility.
  • Delegates the processing of questionnaires among evaluation volunteers as needed.
  • Processes the resulting data and presents them in meaningful ways to the board, the membership, and the general public.
• Conference Hosts
  • Take personal responsibility for their own conferences, stimulating conversation if it lags or taming it if it strays or violates policy.
  • Communicate with other hosts, creating a dynamic definition of what good hosting entails and providing peer pressure to each other.
  • Work with the Publicity Committee and Organizational Membership Committee to actively recruit community members and organizations relevant to the conference subject.
• Office Volunteers
  • Perform miscellaneous office duties, such as checking the voicemail, filing paperwork, and answering non-technical questions.
  • Selected by the General Manager as needed.