[Cu-wireless] Tech Day. April 21st. Springfield. Be there.

[Michael Brunelle]

So is anyone planning to come to this?

If you need more incentive to make the drive, I'm also inviting the 
interim director of the Illinois Century Network to come and talk about 
such things as how community organizations can get access to the ICN 
infrastructure (a discussion that I hope can lead to promising things 
like a cheap T1 for the UC-CWN).

Also, one our partners in the Illinois Community Technology Consortium 
has recently been named to the Governor's taskforce on broadband, and 
it would be great to bring the work happening in Urbana to his direct 
attention so that the potential of this project can be clearly 
communicated to policy makers at the state level.

Lunch will be free, and there may even be a lobbyist for the telecom 
industry there that we can, um, talk nicely to about big DSL providers' 
positions on bandwidth sharing :-)

--Mike


On Apr 1, 2004, at 2:49 PM, Michael Brunelle wrote:

> Tech Day is an informational/advocacy event being held in Springfield 
> on April 21st with the support of the Illinois Community Technology 
> Consortium and CTCnet Chicago.  The purpose of the day is to reinforce 
> the relevance and value of community technology centers and community 
> technology programs to general statewide policy initiatives.  We're 
> inviting representatives from community technology centers from across 
> the state to come and share their experiences with legislators and 
> each other, and we'd be pleased if you or someone from your 
> organization could attend - program participants are also welcome!  
> People will start gathering for donuts and informal discussion between 
> 10 and 11am in room M1 in the Stratton Building (the bug ugly building 
> just west of the Capital).  At around 11am there will be a forum 
> featuring speakers from the state legislature, the Lt. Governor's 
> office, and hopefully someone from the Governor's office as well.  The 
> afternoon is being left more open for those attendees who wish to make 
> appointments to speak with elected representatives from their 
> districts, but I'm also hoping to organize a policy 
> discussion/planning session to talk about things like the Illinois 
> Century Network, the Eliminate the Digital Divide Fund, and broadband 
> Internet access.  Please let me know if you can make it!
>
>
> Michael D. Brunelle
> Technical Outreach Coordinator / ILCTC Circuit Rider
> Prairienet Community Network
> Graduate School of Library and Information Science
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> phone 217-718-4549, email brunelle at prairienet.org
>