Hardware and Network Infrastructure
Finally, Really Low Cost Computing?
The ever-falling price of computer hardware provides an additional reason to procrastinate your purchase. Of course, other reasons—tight budgets, maintenance costs, training—are ever present.
Helping Your Computer System Grow Up
This workshop will focus on how to assess an organization's computer resources for maturity and appropriateness, and then how to work with board, staff, computer support people, and constituents to make the system vibrant, robust, flexible, and a true support in reaching the organization's goals. Steve will focus on the data issues, Adam on the hardware, security and maintenance issues.
Participants are encouraged to bring detailed descriptions of their computer network for discussion.
Moving Forward
The Organizers Collaborative wants to help its members develop reliable, sustainable, and efficient computer networks to help them pursue their missions. To help you, this year’s Grassroots Use of Technology conference features a founding workshop—that is, a workshop intended to be the first in a series of Boston-based collaborative workshops to help participants grow their computer systems.
The 5050 Project (draft)
A project to ... .
The Need
The Project
Who's Involved?
Value Proposition
Opportunity
(add link to sponsor packet for program (not breakfast))
How to Get Involved
Set up a small computer network
Networking a Small Office
A local network is a connection between two or more computers that allows the computers to share files or printing services. The equipment needed is now so inexpensive that a network usually makes sense even for a small grassroots organization with two or three computers. Wireless networks are also becoming affordable -- although at the present time there are still unaddressed concerns about the security of these networks.
Inexpensive networks come in two speeds: 10Mb and 100Mb. Networks that can handle the faster speed are used to be more expensive, but that is no longer the case. You won't need the faster of these speeds for browsing the Internet, as the "broadband" connections now available are far slower than 10b (Mb stands for megabits per second, and one MB per second is about 25,000 words of text per second). But it will come in handy if you ever use your network to back up or transfer the contents of one computer to the other (an extremely handy capability).
Get fast Internet service for a small office
Technical Tips for Small Nonprofits and Social Change Groups:
Sharing a High-Speed Internet Connection in a Small Office
Sharing a High-Speed Internet Connection in a Small Office
[last updated 9/30/02]
Many non-profit groups with 2-10 staff or interns use plain old modems and phone lines for their Internet connections. These phone lines operate a speed of 56K, which means that if you want to download updates to the virus protection on your computer it can tie up a phone line for 45 minutes or more.
Moreover, if your staff is logging into Hotmail or surfing the web for 15 hours a month, your phone bill is easily incurring $70/month of Internet expense. This money can instead be used to buy you something much better.