Electronic village of Abingdon

The scheduled meeting of the Electronic Village of Abingdon "91st Day" Subcommittee held in the Johnston Memorial Hospital Cafeteria was opened by Jay Cox, Vice-Chairman. There were eleven participants present. These included:

The minutes of the 26 May 1999 meeting were approved as presented.

The next item for review was the status of new connections, including:

Jay Cox opened the meeting by reporting that he, David Taverner, Bob Franklin and Al Bradley had met briefly prior to the meeting to discuss some maintenance problems that had arisen recently involving primarily Abingdon Radiology and Dr. Moore's offices. The result of the discussion was that growth of the network included some 'hybrid' extensions that were not known by everyone. There came about the recognition of the need for a map of the EVA system which shows the facilities in detail and which identifies the most likely points of failure. Taverner, Franklin and Bradley will meet again next week to work on this map using the Town's GIS as a basis for it. Also some procedural matters for handling complaints will be worked out.

Jack White had pointed out by e-mail that an awards program carrying a potential $10,000 prize had been developed by the AOL Foundation for Rural Telecommunications Leadership. AL Bradley pointed out that the applications for this were due on July 7 and that he and Steve Galyean would work on an application for the EVA network. Steve Galyean suggested that any award money that might be received from this AOL Foundation contest should be applied towards establishing videoconferencing as an application possibility to be made available over the EVA network. This suggestion was accepted.

T. C. Phillips noted that Abingdon was involved in the recent successful application by the Tri-Cities Region for All-America City status, the first ever awarded regionally. Steve Galyean stated that the application was based upon a Youth Empowerment program, Regional Heath Care Initiatives and Appalachian Heritage projects and included 43 communities and 13 Counties.

Jay Cox discussed development of applications across the EVA network and recounted a recent demonstration of videoconferencing in Charlottesville sponsored by a Roanoke, Virginia Company. There was considerable discussion of making videoconferencing available across the EVA network. Jay mentioned that there were enough entities represented in this meeting to contribute $1,000 - $2,000 each and set up an initial acquisition of equipment and other necessities for such activities. Eric Schuler pointed out that the Washington County Public Library would be interested in being an initial setup point for any such facility as the library was open many hours of the day and could offer videoconferencing as another service to the public. The library was generally agreed as a good centralized location for any such initiative. Jack White and others suggested a regional partnership for this effort involving surrounding areas such as Grundy or Wise, perhaps made through the Regional Technology Council. Any fee rate structure for such videoconferencing activities will be established by the 91^st Day Subcommittee at a later date when costs of equipment and any other costs are known.

There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 1:47 PM.

______________________________________

Albert C. Bradley,

Secretary