OPN June 94                   Oregon Public Networking: Population: 838
    _
 ==| |==2400                                                    :
   | |                                                       \  |  /
 __| |__2100                  M I S S I O N                   * ! *
___|_|_________________________________________________________\|/_ _ _
 __| |__1800                                                   /|\
   | |                                    I M P O S S I B L E * ! *
 __| |__1500                                                 /  |  \
   | |                                                          :
 __|k|__1200                  Good afternoon OPN member, Your mission,
   |k|                        should you decide to accept it, is to
 __|k|__900                   assist a small struggling, overwhelmed,
   |k|                        community free-net in becoming a vital,
 __|$|__600                   staffed, technologically up-to-date,
   |$|                        fully funded and fully functioning
 __|$|__300                   organization.  See enclosed instructions.
   |$|
 __|$|__0                     As usual, should you or any member of
  /$$$\                       your MI team be captured, the secretary
 ($$$$$)                      will disavow all knowledge of this
  \OPN/                       operation... (your screen starts smoking
                              now)


ABOUT THE FUNDING THERMOMETER

You may have noticed that we're asking y'all for more money these
days.  Be assured that we're Not expecting each individual to give
larger amounts each month.  Our funding goal is simply growing in
proportion to the number of members.  We now estimate that we'll need
at least $5000/month to keep OPN and EFN running with two paid
half-time staff.  As we expand, member contributions will eventually
catch up with expenses and then we'll be sustainable.  Our new
Ways-and-Means committee is currently developing a detailed plan.

BTW, we met the $500 Key Advantage matching grants challenge. (The "k"s
in the thermometer represent the check we expect to receive very soon
from them.  Thanks go to Key Advantage and the thirty-five members who
contributed the first $500 of June.


WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Having seen OPN quadruple membership and monthly contributions in four
months, one may well ask, "What will OPN/EFN look like a year from
now?"  It's a good question and one that we volunteers and staffers ask
ourselves now and then when there's a pause in the on-going activities
and we briefly transcend the tasks at hand and contemplate the long run.

The general feeling is that in June of '95 there will be about 5,000
OPN members, 125 dial-up phone lines, 4-5 workstations, tens of gigabytes
of disk storage, a T1 connection to the internet and a full-time staff
of four or more people.  Contributions in this scenario would be running
at about $15,000 per month (about ten cents a day per member on average).

But more importantly, we'll be reaching out into rural Lane county and
Southern Oregon; we'll be helping numerous non-profit organizations get
their messages out into the World-Wide-Web (WWW), gopher-space,
mosaic-space and FTP-space; we'll be running projects to provide
walk-in public access to terminals for those who don't have computers;
and we'll be providing training and support to help net-novices get up
to speed faster.

It's a big dream and sometimes it seems like an impossible mission, but
each month seems to be bringing us closer and closer to making it a
reality.  We couldn't have gotten this far without your help and we
hope you'll continue that support as we grow through the coming year.


INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT IN PERIL

Big businesses are trying to privatize parts of the Internet backbone
on a national scale and are seriously considering "metered usage" (pay
-per-Megabyte).  This means it would be darn near impossible to go
net-surfing with Mosaic, FTP, gopher, WWW and other excellent software
tools and know how much of a charge you were racking up.  It's all FREE
now.  The internet belongs to us (the taxpayers).  Why should we give
it to big bizz and let them charge us to use it?  Ralph Nader's group,
the Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP) is organizing a letter campaign
against metered usage of the Internet.  Please drop a note to Peter
Smith (psmith@efn.org) if you'd like to participate in this protest.

                           *     *     *

Please take a moment and mail a check today (payable "Oregon Public
Networking" or "OPN") to:

            OPN, Attn: Fundraising
            PO Box 1914
            Eugene OR 97440-1914

Remember to write your user-id (login name) on the check in the "memo" or
"for" space in the lower left.  Thanks for your support.

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      Oregon Public Networking  -- "Connect Globally; Dial Locally"
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