I apologize for those that are out of California, but other wise please consider helping. This is a very worth while cause. This will bring us much closer to educating all the children in our schools about what's going on on the internet. TIA eman@netcom.com ---------- Forwarded message ----------
On NetDay96, March 9, 1996, a hundred thousand volunteers in California will go to twelve thousand schools in California, and install the same Category 5 wire we use in all California business local area networks. We will connect five classrooms and the library to a central closet, in preparation for connection to the Internet. This is a barnraising, a kickstart for networking in the schools.
Every high tech employee in California should be involved. Every contractor for a high tech company should be involved. Anyone -- employee, customer, or supplier -- that you can think of who believes linking our children to the Internet is a good idea should be involved.
What do you do? Go to www.netday96.com, find a school, and volunteer to help put that school on the Internet on March 9. Go to that school on Saturday, March 9, and help ten other people pull wire from five classrooms and a library or computer lab to a central closet -- you don't need any particular expertise. That's it. You can choose a school from the twelve thousand home pages created on a server at the Well: www.netday96.com. All schools, private or public, are there; if it has more than ten children in a classroom, it's a school -- if you don't see your school, mail netday@kqed.org and NetDay will put up a home page for you.
As NetDay approaches, you will see pages go up for every company in California supporting NetDay, together with the count of participants from each company.
We're jumpstarting the schools. Our goal is to bring every school in California past the first barrier to access: interior wiring. We then use the new capability in the schools to persuade the carriers to provide Internet access. And it's working.
We now have commitments from MCI, Netcom, and ATT to provide free dialup a ccess to the Internet for every school in California. Higher bandwidth will come next.
We've talked the vendors into creating NetDay Kits that they will ship directly to the schools. A standard kit, with two to three thousand feet of Cat 5 wire, jacks, a 24-way patch panel, connectors, and cable ties will cost between $350 and $500. Pacific Bell is sponsoring 1,000 kits. Small electrical contractors are sponsoring two or three schools. Individual parents are sponsoring schools. You can. Your district office can. All details are at the NetDay web site: www.netday96.com.
Please sign up now.
Our first need is to show a groundswell of volunteers. We announced NetDay in San Francisco on January 19, at a school wired by Sun and 3Com employees on Volunteer Day in November. Vice President Gore arrived to praise the volunteers, and thank all California high-technology companies participating in NetDay. Volunteering has taken off, but we need to reach ten thousand in the next week or two.
Please volunteer today.
This Web site is the first use of the World Wide Web to organize a mass volunteer event. Please help make it a success.
Please mail this request to anyone on your mailing lists. Please ask all webmasters to put a pointer to www.netday96.com on their home page. We are organizing this in a totally decentralized way, using the Web. This is the first time this has been tried, and I believe the Net can do it.
We can do it.