Minutes 5-21-97

The scheduled meeting of the Electronic Village of Abingdon "91st Day" Subcommittee held in the Town of Abingdon Municipal Building was opened by Chairman F. H. Moore, Jr. There were thirteen members present. These included:

F. H. Moore, Jr., Chairman	Steve Laek
Al Bradley, Secretary	Daveena Sexton
Jay Cox, Vice-Chairman	Randy Boyd
Steve Galyean	Coni Patrick
Sue Ray King	Jean Luker
Ray Millsap	David Taverner
Burt Bassham

Dr. Moore noted that EVA was one of the three projects upon which the Town’s application for All-America City (AAC) status was based. Steve Galyean stated that the AAC group had just finished shooting the video portion of the presentation to be given in Kansas City on June 5 – 8, 1997. As it now stands, the videotaped presentation consists of a 1 minute introduction, 2 minutes on the Barter Theatre, 1.5 minutes devoted to the Coomes Center and 2 minutes about EVA. Daveena Sexton stated that the EVA portion appears to be the strongest part of the prerecorded presentation. The videotape is due to be shown to the Town Council at their 2 June 1997 meeting.

Jay Cox discussed two proposed Network Outage Policies for future operations. Jay explained that no outages had been experienced as of this date, but that this was a possible future problem that should be addressed. Plan A consisted of only one step; "1. Call Al Bradley". Plan B, the serious plan, had five steps to be tried first by the user to determine the nature of the problem and whether or not the problem stemmed from the network or from the user’s computer and further steps to be taken by NetAccess if the problem is determined not to be a problem with the individual’s computer. If the condition of the network warrants, NetAccess will then notify Sprint of the outage and Sprint will dispatch a technician within four hours on weekdays and as soon as possible after hours and on holidays. Plan B was found to be an acceptable method by the subcommittee. The group also wished this material as presented by Jay Cox to be attached to the customer application form for the customer’s future reference.

David Taverner discussed with the group an On-Site Work Policy. This policy was necessitated by several events that occurred with the first customers. In both cases, the network connection at the demarc had been apparently tampered with by the customer or his representative, resulting in damage to the fiber connectors. The damage to the fiber connectors resulted in the customer’s inability to access the EVA network. A Sprint technician was dispatched to both locations, resulting in charges to the customers. The

customers had protested the bills. It was determined that a part of these misunderstandings was due to the fact that the connections were tested but that the test results had not been demonstrated to the customers, resulting in confusion over the status of the individual connections. Ray Millsap suggested that EVA should be authorized to pay for these first problems but that it should be clarified for future customers that problems on the customer’s side of the connection are the customer’s responsibility as are any problems caused by tampering with the demarc equipment on the customer’s part. This policy was adopted and it was requested that this policy be added to the customer application as well.

Dr. Moore noted that Congressman Boucher’s conference "Conducting Business on the Information Superhighway: Using Computer-based Communications as an Effective Business Tool" held on 12 May had drawn over 450 attendees and had featured Dr. Moore and Nadine Culberson to speak about EVA as well as Max Herman and Jeff Ingram to discuss local uses of the Internet for business activities. Dr. Moore also discussed the Appalachian Regional Commission meeting held on May 19 and 20 including all of the ARC service area from New York to Mississippi wherein EVA was used as a demonstration of effective means of communication and was lengthily discussed.

Jay Cox noted that the Washington County Public Library had activated four additional connections and that the County Courthouse had just recently been wired for connectivity, meaning 8 or 9 new service connections in the near future.

Jay also discussed a followup article on the small town of Lusk, Wyoming, which became famous recently for its attempt at networking a small town. This attempt has been a dismal failure due to a few mistakes; namely the lack of an Internet access and the lack of any applications development by the Town. There followed some general discussion of future expansion possibilities for EVA. Business development was also discussed. Burt Bassham mentioned that businesses could be shown how to use videoconferencing as a way to save on travel costs. Steve Galyean noted that he had recently seen the use of "cybercoupons" wherein a coupon was filled in and printed from a web site and then used to redeem a discount at the offeror’s place of business.

The next meeting of the E V A "91^st Day" Subcommittee was set for 7:30 P. M. on 25 June 1997.