La Plaza Executive Director's Report

Executive Directors Report
September 19, 2000


I. July Monthly Statistics
A. Public Access Users
    Location      Total Users     Total Hrs     Avg Session
    Taos           1186               1138            .96
(of the 1186 users who used public access 105 are registered La Plaza users)
   Penasco         161                 251           1.56
   Questa          222                 159            .72

B. Classes
Intro to Email  5
Intro to WWW    3
Web Design      7
HTML            5
Promote Web     5
Total          25

Four training sessions were held for 8 participants of the Food Sector Group
of the Taos Economic Development Group. These sessions were held August 15,
16, 17, and 30. Each session was 4-hours in duration:
 Using the Computer and Managing Files.
 Intro to Word Processing (Using Word97).
 Intro to Spreadsheets (Using Excel 97).
 Intro to The WWW.
New classes for the Community designed and conducted by Jovanna Poe:
 Intro to Email (using web-based mail).
 Parent's Guide to Safety on the Internet.

C. New Registrations
New Primary Accounts 64
New Secondary    11
Reactivated    21
TOTAL     96

D. Closed Accounts
Closed accounts per user request - 70
Moved  28  Secondary – no longer needed 10
No reason given    9                          Moved to another ISP    3
Temporary Acct    6  Unable to connect    8
Personal Reason    2  No computer     2
Temp disconnect   1  Didn’t like billing change    1

38 accounts were closed due to past due balance of >51 days
Total number of accounts closed in August – 108

E. La Plaza Service Accounts
Standard $17.50 acct 1894
Secondary $15.00 acct     60
Secondary $  7.00 acct    279
Scholarship $7.00 acct    25
Total    2258

II. Community Outreach
A. La Plaza was featured in the  August Newsletter of National Network of
Forest Practitioners.  Richard Mahler, editor, attending the Dept of
Commerce workshop I presented in May and he was very interested in a community
networks’ service in a small rural community like Taos.  I have ordered
copies for each Board member.
B. Barb Hah and Ray Vollmer have been identifying existing or potential
public access sites in Taos and Rio Arriba counties for the AMC cancer
research grant.

III. Funding Acquisitions
1. LANL Foundation and denied approval of the $25,000 request to support the
La Plaza training center with rehab of the space and purchase of 10
computers.
2. Public Welfare Foundation – denied approval of the $50,000 request to
support the La Plaza training center.
3. National Network of Libraries of Medicine and $27,600 grant proposal to
develop infrastructure for wireless service on Taos Pueblo – waiting for
notification within the next few days.
4. EBay Foundation and requested 501c3 IRS status after receiving the full
proposal for $22,500 to continue Open Studio training for local artists.
Notification will be received in October.
5. Mc Cune  Foundation - $20,000 request to for at-risk-youth training in
Arts and Technology.  Notification will be received in late September.
6. W. K. Kellogg Foundation and a letter of intent was submitted for $100,000
to develop the La Plaza training center.  If Kellogg is interested in the
project, they will request a full proposal.

IV. Personnel:
1. Jane Mc Farrland was hired as Bookkeeper effective Sept 1, 2000.
2. Loretta Suazo was promoted to La Plaza Assistant Director effective
August 15, 2000 and will be responsible for the departments of accounting,
education and training and user account registration and billing.
3. Jovanna Poe was promoted to Learning Center Coordinator and will be
responsible for the public access users, conducting current intro training,
and designing new community based classes; i.e. use of web based email,
safety on the Internet, etc.

V. Dial Up Statistics
Taos Dial Up Users
 Total Users       1890
 Total Hrs         68948
 Avg Online Time   36.48 minutes

Penasco Dial Up Users
 Total Users      65
 Total Hrs        3570
 Avg Online Time   54.92 minutes

Questa Dial Up Users
 Total Users      99
 Total Hrs        5896
 Avg Online Time  59.56 minutes

VI. System Status
- T1 to UU-Net
99% uptime
Total downtime 1 hour
- 56 K to Questa
90% uptime
Slow during peak usage time
- Penasco Wireless
99% uptime
- Omni Radio and Wireless in Taos
100% uptime

VII. Responses to Revised Fee Schedule
70 emails regarding both messages – initial announcement and the points of
clarification and several of these responses were extreme in their negative
remarks about the policy change in online time and with the new billing
structure.
-22 were comments supporting the change.
-27 were comments denouncing the change.
-21 were comments only neither negative nor positive.

Respectfully Submitted:
Judith Pepper
Executive Director