I also think there has been some taking stock on community networking, a pause, a pondering, and now that Internet penetration is growing so rapidly at the local level, creates some new ways to think about how community networking can make a difference, far beyond the earlier access issues before the web really took off. I think its an exciting moment in time, and the conference in Texas a few weeks ago kind of generated a nice renewal of interest that I hope we'll be seeing more of in the months to come. I look forward to more discussion on this membership list, and perhaps on Communet too, although I sense that the older community networking listservs have perhaps seen their day as well, more interest about these related subjects popping up on the Benton Up for Grabs list for example. I've got some questions and suggestions. It seems to me that the mission and goals of AFCN are very similar to CTCnet.
Community networks focus on Internet, servers for Web pages, e-mail lists and the like.
I think of us as the techies, computer science and library science majors. Community technology centers focus on training. I think of them as the Education majors, perhaps social workers. I think there's a lot community networks can do to help technology centers and vice versa. When it comes right down to helping people, there is a need for the personal contact of the technology centers.