Eloise Lee spoke with Be the Media and Media Action Marin about digital inclusion and the upcoming ODIS in January. Check out the video here. Entitled Community Internet for All: Internet Access as a Public Utility, this show was the first part of a two-part series on community-driven Internet initiatives. The second part of the show, covering various community Internet solutions around the US, will be taped at ODIS on February 15th.

Oakland is full of awesome organizations that give all they’ve got for the wellbeing of their community. These organizations recognize the importance of digital inclusion in their mission, whether that means incorporation of digital inclusion activities in their programs or full dedication of their mission to digital inclusion. We at ODIS headquarters are psyched to see so many of Oakland’s community organizations signing up to speak, present examples of their digital inclusion activities, host a booth, or simply attend the ODIS in February. One such organization who will be speaking and hosting a booth at the Summit is Eastmont Computing Center.

Eastmont Computing Center (ECC), directed by Tony Fleming, is a community technology organization that provides direct training, education, and free computer and high-speed broadband Internet access to over 300 East Oakland residents per week. ECC delivers high-quality, technology-focused employment training to members of Oakland’s under-served communities, provides technical assistance designed to create community technology centers throughout Oakland, links Oakland’s under-served communities to advanced technology applications and infrastructure to enhance community-building and economic development, and catalyzes action on community technology issues in Oakland.

“Since 1998, ECC (a project of OCCUR) has offered many innovative programs in technology literacy and training to the residents and organizations in East Oakland.” Their “employment-focused, cutting-edge technology training has been a model for community technology centers worldwide.” ECC delivers CNA, MCSE, and A+ employment certification to underserved communities, as well as provides technical assistance in community technology startup and ongoing operation. ECC’s Intel Computer Clubhouse provides a safe, welcoming environment for after-school activities focusing on the “creative discovery and skill-building in the areas of graphic design, web design, robotics, multimedia, video editing, digital storytelling, computer programming, and music production” for 10 to 18-year olds. ECC reaches out to all ages, though. Check out TechSoup’s video on ECC’s senior citizens program:

One of ECC’s current projects, in collaboration with EBALDC, OHA, and One Economy Corp., is to create a “hub-and-spoke architecture of learning centers serving community and residential stakeholders through a connected network of shared resources, best practices, key goals, and vital objectives.” The first phase of the project will be launched in Oakland’s former “6-9 Village,” now renamed Lion Creek Crossings. The “Lion Creek’s Neighborhood Network Center” will serve as a national model “for placing computer access and training in residential developments.” Look for the official Grand Opening of the Lion Creek Neighborhood Network Center in February 2008!

To learn more about Eastmont Computing Center and how you can contribute to the organization’s mission, visit their website at www.eastmont.net.

The ODIS speaker lineup has grown into an exciting assortment of digital inclusion experts! These speakers are sure to get the Oakland wheels turning toward a digital inclusion strategy. Get to know the speakers a bit:

Joshua Breitbart

In addition to being People’s Production House’s Policy Director, Joshua Breitbart is a principal of The Ethos Group, which advises municipalities and civil society on broadband development, and a producer of the Allied Media Conference, the premier national gathering of community media hosted in Detroit, Michigan. He was a founder of Brooklyn’s Rooftop Films, now one of the largest film festivals in New York City. From 2001-2004, he worked with Clamor Magazine as a Consulting Editor and from 2000-2005 he helped organize the global Indymedia movement. Josh writes about media and technology on his blog, A Civil Defense, and is a regular contributor to GovTech’s Digital Communities.

Bruce Buckelew

Bruce Buckelew is the founder and Director of Oakland Technology Exchange (OTX) West, a large noncommercial refurbishing program dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in Oakland, California. Bruce is a retired IBM engineer who began doing volunteer tech support in an Oakland school near his home 12 years ago. The poor quality and lack of equipment in this inner-city school caused him to start a refurbishing operation in the basement of Oakland Technical High School. Bruce is one of the veterans of the field, running a 2,500 computer per-year refurbishing program. He is still an unpaid volunteer, but has three full-time staff members who run the administrative office and production functions. OTX West is a large model program that operates out of an 18,000 square foot warehouse and attracts visitors from all over the country to see how this work can be done optimally. OTX West supplies computers to the Oakland schools and to the families of low-income students in the schools. OTX West program also has a CTC training lab that families must use before they can acquire their computers.

Davey D

Davey D is a Hip Hop historian, journalist, deejay and community activist. He’s been down with Hip Hop since 1977 in the Bronx where he started out as an emcee for two crews: TDK [Total Def Krew] out of Co-op City and the Avengers out of the Marble Hill Section of the Bronx. Later Davey D came out to Cali to go to school at UC Berkeley and started deejaying in the Bay Area. His mobile deejay work and community activism eventually lead him to deejaying at radio stations including KALX, KPFA and later KMEL. Davey D is a proud member of The PROs Record Pool where he served as director for several years in the late 80s -early 90s. He is also a co-founder of the Bay Area Hip Hop Coalition [BAHHC]. Davey D is also a member of the Bay Area Black Journalist Association [BABJA]. Currently he’s the webmaster for what is considered one of the oldest and largest Hip Hop sites on the web Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner– which can be found at www.daveyd.com. The writings on his website are frequently referenced and quoted by journalists, scholars and professors and fans from all around the world. He writes for numerous publications and magazines and puts out a popular Internet newsletter called the FNV Newsletter, which has a subscriber base of 100 thousand people. His newsletter, like his website, is frequently referenced and quoted. In early 2002, Davey D launched another newsletter called HHPN [Hip Hop Political Newsletter].

Davey D’s been featured in documentaries, magazines, newspapers, videos and TV news shows like Rap City Rhapsody, CNN’s Talk Back Live, ABC’s Nightline, Australia’s Lateline, BBC Radio, Internet Cafe, Computer Chronicles, BET Television, VH1 Television, Soul Beat TV, KRON TV, KTVU TV, Bay TV, KPIX TV, KBHK TV, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Laura Flounders Show, E-40’s Charlie Hustle the Blueprint of a Self-Made Millionaire, 2Pac’sThug Angel documentary, Straight From The Streets documentary, Jahi’s Redefinition documentary, Impact Magazine, Radio Facts Magazine, Rollingstone Magazine, Washington Post, The NY Times, The NY Post, Oakland Tribune, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian Magazine [London], The Vallejo Times Herald, The SF Bay Guardian, Vibe Magazine, Stress Magazine, Redeye Magazine and The Source Magazine to name a few. He was profiled in the January 2003 edition of The Source Magazine as being one of the Top 10 most Influential people in the country when it comes to dealing with Hip Hop and politics. In 2000 Davey D was nominated by the Bay Area’s City Flight magazine as one of the Bay Area’s Most Influential African Americans. In 2001, Davey D was voted by the East Bay Express Newspaper as the Best On Air Personality in the Bay Area. The daily radio show he co-hosts, Hard Knock Radio, was voted Best Radio Show in the Bay Area. Davey D is originally from the Bronx and now a native of California. He graduated from UC Berkeley. Davey D also pens a Hip Hop/Political column for the San Jose Mercury News. Davey D also hosts a weekly Hip Hop/Political TV talk show on Oakland’s Soul Beat television. Davey D sits on the advisory board for civic organizations like Black Youth Vote as well as Rock the Vote. Davey D was also the guest curator for the Rock N-Roll Hall of Fame Hip Hop Nation Exhibit when it came to San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center in June of 2001. Davey D has been a featured speaker at high schools, universities and community centers throughout the country. He speaks on topics ranging from Hip Hop to Politics to bridging the Digital Divide.

Lauren-Glenn Davitian

Lauren-Glenn Davitian is Executive Director of CCTV Center for Media & Democracy based in Burlington Vermont. For more than twenty years she has worked to secure free speech and public access for Vermont communities through the start up and protection of 43 public access TV channels across the state. In an effort to secure public access to all technologies of the information age, she worked to establish the state’s first community technology center (1995) and is now actively involved in state and national policy efforts. In the past year she edited the People’s Guide to the Telecommunications Act of 2006 and Community Media Centers 2.0 for the Alliance for Community Media’s (ACM) Community Media Review. In additional to local efforts, Lauren-Glenn serves on the Board of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and the Media and Democracy Coalition - which includes 20 regional and national organizations working to ensure that local communities maintain control of the airwaves and public rights of way that belong to them. In recognition of her dedication to community media and free speech, the ACM awarded Lauren-Glenn the George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communications.

Tony Fleming

Tony Fleming is the Executive Director of Eastmont Computing Center, a community technology organization that provides direct training, education and computer access to over 300 East Oakland residents per week; delivers high-quality, technology-focused employment training to members of Oakland’s under-served communities; provides technical assistance designed to create community technology centers throughout Oakland; links Oakland’s under-served communities to advanced technology applications and infrastructure to enhance community building and economic development; and catalyzes action on community technology issues in Oakland.

Xavier Leonard

A Zero Divide Fellow, Xavier Leonard is Founder and Executive Director of Heads on Fire, an organization teaching multimedia tools to disenfranchised people in turbulent political environments, such as homeless youth and California women prisoners. Since graduating from Columbia University, Xavier Leonard has forged a career that has merged his efforts as a multimedia artist, community educator, and technology ambassador. Beginning with work in West Africa as an International Artist Fellow under the auspices of the Institute for International Education, he has gone on to present conceptual multimedia works, create award winning commercial designs, and develop community-based technology training programs on five continents. Leonard has been featured in museums and galleries, nationally and internationally, including the Pamela Stockwell Gallery, the Knitting Factory, and the Kathryn Bache-Miller Theater in New York; the Henry Gallery in Seattle; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Painted Bride Art Center and The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; Intermedia Arts-Minnesota in Minneapolis; The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England; the Treppentheater Festival in Florsheim, Germany; and the Centre Culturel Francais in Burkina Faso. His community programs have been recognized and supported by national institutions in several countries including the United States Department of Justice, and he has garnered awards from the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest International Artists’ Program, The Pew Fellowships in the Arts, Franklin Furnace Emerging Artists Program, New American Radio, The International Association of Webmasters and Designers, The Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, and The Western States Arts Federation. In 2003, Leonard was honored with the ET3 Tec Champion Award by the Congressional Black Caucus. His work is profiled in the book Parallaxis: Fifty-five Points to View by Lucy Lippard and Rina Swentzell.

Dr. Faye McNair-Knox

Faye McNair-Knox is the Executive Director of One East Palo Alto, a community-based convener, broker, advocate, capacity builder, and resident leadership incubator. One East Palo Alto improves the overall quality of life of residents in the community, especially those in need, by bringing together its vast knowledge of available resources, relevant/applicable work conducted by CBOs and neighborhood groups, key local players who are or should be involved in a given issue, and funders that are invested in and/or want to invest in EPA.  It is uniquely positioned to bring its knowledge and relationships to bear on efforts to find solutions to critical community issues. As a native of East Palo Alto, Dr. McNair-Knox has had a long term association with Stanford. She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford in ‘72, her Masters in ‘73, and her Ph.D. in ‘85. While finishing her Ph.D., she became Assistant Dean of Students and Director of the Black Community Services Center. She filled this post from ‘81-’87 and was known as a tireless worker, an advocate for students, and an ambassador for community service. Dr. McNair-Knox, a Fulbright Scholar, later became Assistant Director of African and African American Studies where she taught classes on African American English and Language and Social Issues in America. She left Stanford in 1991 for a teaching position at William Patterson College in New Jersey but is remembered as the consummate intellectual, teacher, mentor, and friend.

Sascha Meinrath

Sascha Meinrath has been described as a “community Internet pioneer” and an “entrepreneurial visionary” and is a well-known expert on community wireless networks (CWNs) and municipal broadband. Leading news sources, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Nation, and National Public Radio, often cite Sascha’s work in covering issues related to CWNs. Sascha is the Research Director for the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program. Additionally, he coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership of open source wireless integrators, researchers, implementors and companies dedicated to the development of open source, interoperable, low-cost wireless technologies. He is a regular contributor to Government Technology’s Digital Communities, the online portal and comprehensive information resource for the public sector. Sascha has also worked with Free Press, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), the Acorn Active Media Foundation, the Ethos Group, and the CUWiN Foundation. Sascha holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University and a Master’s Degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in psychology. He is a Telecommunications Fellow at the University of Illinois in the Institute for Communications Research, where he is finishing his PhD on community empowerment and the impacts and interactions of participatory media, wireless communications, and emergent technologies.

Craig Settles

For 20 years as president of Successful.com (formerly Successful Marketing Strategists), Craig Settles developed and executed innovative marketing campaigns for technology companies that educated audiences about the business value of clients’ products. In 1994, he began writing about and implementing Internet strategies to improve marketing, general communication and overall business operations. His clients for these services included companies such as Microsoft, AT&T, Lotus Development, and Symantec. His first wireless industry client signed on in 1993 for PR services. Several years later he became Director of Electronic Commerce for Metricom, which marketed the Ricochet wireless Internet access service, the pre-cursor to today’s municipal wireless networks. He has since provided strategic market development services to Nextel, AT&T Wireless, AppForge and others. In 2002 he wrote Wireless, Inc., a planning guide that helps organizations use mobile and wireless technology to make money, save money and run a better business. His 2004 book, I Only Have ROIs for You(first of three published by Hudson House Publishing), updates that information. Pilots to Profits, co-authored in 2005 with Intellisync Chief Marketing Officer Rip Gerber, is a guide to help organizations manage more effectively the logistics of deploying mobile and wireless applications. Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless is Mr. Settles’ latest book. It tells the Philadelphia Wireless story and presents a roadmap that helps cities and counties use municipal broadband wireless and mobile workforce applications to improve government efficiency, responsiveness and fiscal strength. A staunch advocate of creative yet practical uses of technology to improve business operations, Mr. Settles keeps abreast of new developments, tactics and techniques that will help organizations thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Laura Valdez

Laura Valdez is the Executive Director at Caminos Pathways Learning Center in San Francisco. Caminos uses computers to provide educational and employment opportunities to low-income, immigrant women of the Bay Area. Classes in technology and a job skills program help to strengthen the self-reliance of each participant and contribute to the greater health of low-income communities in San Francisco. CAMINOS staff and volunteers provide tuition-free education and job training opportunities for women limited by low literacy, poverty and inadequate English language skills. CAMINOS addresses the challenge of helping the unemployed or underemployed immigrant community move from manual or service labor to desktop publishing and technology work.

Esme Vos

Esme Vos is the founder of Muniwireless.com, the portal for news and information about citywide wireless broadband projects around the world. Muniwireless.com has become the resource for city officials and IT directors, systems integrators, wireless ISPs, vendors, community wireless advocates, journalists, legislators and policy makers. Esme is an intellectual property lawyer who has put her legal practice on hold to focus on delivering valuable and timely information about municipal wireless networks. In addition to running Muniwireless and speaking at conferences, Esme writes research reports and delivers consulting services to cities and companies in the wireless industry.

A terrible chasm divides communities in the United States into those that have access to high-speed Internet and those that do not. This problem exists across regions and cities, isolating communities from the information super-highway and crippling sustainable growth. From Oakland to Ocotillo, California faces a bold challenge to bridge this digital divide and ensure that all Californians have access to affordable Internet technology and the training needed to customize that technology to meet their local needs. 

Media Alliance – in partnership with the City of Oakland, OTX West, the Community Technology Foundation, and the California Consumer Protection Foundation – gladly accepts that challenge. On February 15, 2008 we will bare it all – displaying in full force the opportunity that lies before the city of Oakland in furnishing neighborhoods with little to no access with reliable, affordable, and relevant high-speed Internet. We hope that you will join us at the Oakland Digital Inclusion Summit (a.k.a. ODIS) in paving the next steps to achieve this bold and achievable goal.

To capture the full potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) like the Internet, initiatives must not only promote access to technology, but must also incorporate digital inclusion in their strategy. This means that communities must have access to the hardware, skills, resources, and technical support necessary to make ICTs like the Internet meaningful to daily life. In addition, these tools should be affordable, reliable, and available in the first language of the community. This ensures that the community is indeed empowered by a local and practical technology rather than encumbered by a new external or luxury good.

 Right now, we have an incredible opportunity to advocate for digital inclusion. Over three hundred cities, towns, and counties across the United States are pursuing greater access to Internet technologies for their communities. We will highlight some of these and other digital inclusion initiatives, like CUWiN, as we approach ODIS in February. It is crucial that these initiatives include digital inclusion programs that live up to the potential to bridge the digital divide, and not simply accepting or dismissing these divides as fact.

 The good news is that community advocates are already creating sustainable digital inclusion programs. For example, various advocates have convinced their elected officials that when public resources such as utility poles and streets are being used to set up new high speed Internet projects, municipal governments must guarantee that the public receives significant and meaningful benefits. Look for examples of these community advocates on digi-I within the next few weeks.

 Working towards a just and democratic society is an ongoing struggle, and technology provides no “magic bullet” solution for alleviating poverty, racism, or other problems we experience on a day-to-day basis. However, digital inclusion programs that put underserved community members’ needs first and that are managed in a fair and thoughtful manner can make a difference in how we are able to participate in the world around us. Digital inclusion programs move us closer to ensuring all community members have the resources, skills, and support to advance social, political, and economic equality.

To learn more about digital inclusion, check out A Digital Inclusion Advocacy Toolkit and Bridging the Digital Divide.

In the next post, look for more information about Oakland digital inclusion initiatives and the upcoming ODIS!