Executive Director's Report

Board Meeting

March 9, 1999

Questa Services

  1. Server Move: The Questa move was completed on Friday, March 5, 1999.  The 3 additional lines that were to have been added are accounts under the Cisneros Youth and Family Center.  We are having those lines deactivated with the Youth Center and added to the La Plaza Questa dialin account – hopefully that is a USWest administrative action and can be completed very quickly.

    The move has ensured a much more efficient and clean host for the server, router, and UPS equipment in Questa.  The cabinet, which holds the equipment, is in a locked closet that only the La Plaza System Administrator and Youth Center director have keys.  We will have much more accessibility to the equipment than was available at the Questa High School location.

  2. Questa Service: I recommend we plan a meeting with our Questa users the third week of March in the evening.  The users will be given an update regarding USWest infrastructure, which limits La Plaza service.  Some Questa users have requested a meeting with the Board to discuss the Internet connection and service from La Plaza.

Value Added Services

The following services will be added effective April 1, 1999. Changes will be made on the web pages of Services and Support and in the Billing Policy of Registration for new accounts.  We will send out a message to all users, place an article and a paid ad in the Taos News, and post in the lobby area.

Listserves: La Plaza has been managing listserves since the beginning of service.  We have had several requests to create new lists and to make changes to existing lists.  As it is time consuming for LP staff to create and maintain the lists, we will now require a member of the listserve for management.  A curriculum for listserve management has been developed and will begin being offered April 1, 1999.

Listserves:
$50.00 for class and setup fee
$25.00 for class for existing listserve
$10.00 monthly charges
Web Support: La Plaza has provided incalculable web site technical support to private web designers. These designers are charging large hourly rates and do not have the html knowledge and skills to develop the web site.  La Plaza will provide technical assistance to these web designers but prior to the service a signed contract will be required.
Web Site Support:
$50.00 an hour for technical support
There are many users who do not pay their email account charges and after 50 days their account is deactivated.  In order to activate the account they must pay the past due charges and the $5.00 setup fee for a new account.  To encourage users to pay their bills on a timely basis a reactivation fee is being required when accounts are closed due to a past due account.  Also, if users want to retrieve their email and/or personal files there is a fee for service.
Billing
Reactivation fee - $25.00
Recovered email or Personal files - $25.00
Dedicated Service: Several users are requesting a dedicated phone line for their Internet connection.  We have discussed with Integrity Networking the best possible solution for this type of service.  Integrity is recommending an Omni Directional Antenna system which eliminates modems, routers, IP addresses, ( a large amount of equipment that would be housed in the La Plaza Smart Room).  I will bring to the Board meeting, a proposal from Integrity Networking for wireless dedicated service.  The costs will be presented at that time also.

Additional Modems for Taos: we are getting costs to add 10 digital modems to the La Plaza modem bank.  These costs are not included in the approved 1999 Budget; however, as the number of users increase, additional modems are required to provide efficient, accessible Internet access.  The costs have not been received at the time of this report.


Customer Service

There have been a minute number of complaints regarding customer service at the Help Desk.  Some of these complaints have been specific to technical support, the staff persons' attitude, the staff persons' personality, etc.  I have discussed with the staff the need for quality customer service and we all agree to that point.  I will be scheduling a customer service workshop for all staff and volunteers to attend.  We want La Plaza users to receive answers to their questions and concerns and we feel that a workshop will give us new ideas for customer service.


February Monthly Statistics

Public Access Users

Location  # users  # hours  average 
La Plaza (Taos) 1021 1212.32 1.19 
Penasco 337 345.15 1.02 
Questa 293 180.36 .37 
San Cristobal n/a n/a  n/a 

Classes

Class # of Classes # of Participants
Public Orientation 3 26
Intro to Email 4 25
Intro to WWW 3 16
Easy Web Page Design 1 2
HTML 1 6
Marketing Your Web Page 0 0
Total 12 75

Registrations

New Primary Accounts 109
New Secondary Accounts 22
Reactivated Accounts 15
Total 146

Closed Accounts

Past due balances of >51 days 35
(119 notices sent)
Per User Request 34
(7 moving)
(5 not using)
(6 poor svc/unable to access)
(4 no reason given)
(3 switch to other provider)
(5 computer not working)
(2 seasonal use only)
(2 secondary)
Total 69

Net Change In Accounts: 77 gained

Telephone Statistics

Tech Support Calls 112
Billing 56
New Accounts 44
Hours 30
Classes 28
Web Site 13
Questa 87
Penasco 22
Other 229
Total 621
The total number of calls in February appeared to have decreased by half. It appears that user calls regarding inability to connect due to problems on the LP side have decreased.  New registrants using Windows 98 platform no
longer seem to be calling with the error 650 problems.  Could it be that the problems experienced in January were caused by the problems we were having with the modem bank?

Dial-in Statistics

Location #Users #Dial-in Connect Time (hrs)
Taos 1520 102809  45822.41 
Penasco 75 3271  3033.07
Questa 101 2101  3059.38
Total 2063 1660
(80% of total users)
44236.8



Respectfully submitted,

Judith Pepper, Executive Director, La Plaza Telecommunity