La Plaza Telecommunity
Board of Directors Meeting
February 19, 2002

Executive Directors Report


I. January Monthly Stats

A.  Public Access Sites
	Location			Number of Users 	Number of Hours Open
Taos YFC				915			138 		
Penasco				289			36
Taos Pueblo			181			47.5
Questa		Still not open - waiting for Boys and Girls Club action.

B. Classes
Individual Training sessions - 6 sessions
Basic Computer Maintenance - 5 students
Virus Protection - 1 student
Questa Training - 14
Total	28 attendees

C.  New Registration
Primary Accounts		34
Secondary Acct		  4
Reactivations		23
Total			61

D.  Closures
124 letters were sent for 51 days past due balance and 33 accounts were closed due to lack of payment.

Per User Request
Moved		17		Other ISP	8	Not using	5
Work Acct closed   1		Could not connect  2	Broken comp   1
Temp acct		  1		No reason given  7  	Discipline for child	1
Total 43	

Total closures 33 + 43 = 76 accounts

E. Online Hours
Total Hours	61817
Total Users	1793
Average Online Time	34.47 hours

II.  Ongoing Grant Projects
A. CyberYouth Project - 5 participants remaining in the project.  Listed are the research
 projects the youth have chosen for the website, these projects will each be a webpage on the
 tobacco prevention website.  The name of the site is "Teens Unfiltered."
* Effects of Smoking
* Development of website
* Quitting Strategies
* Individual Costs
* Chemicals inhaled in the body.

B. AMC Cancer Research Project - developed timeline for hiring and training the COT's for Taos
 and Rio Arriba counties, interviews scheduled for the Taos COT's (hiring within the next few
 days.)  Training begins the second week in March.

C. Town of Taos Youth and Family Center - Community Outreach Trainer, Evan Landaw, was hired and
 is providing facilitation of the computer lab.  LANL Equipment program approved our request for
 a printer in the lab and delivered it on Feb 8, 2002.

D. Training Center - progress has been made in the following:
* Training brochure completed - have gotten bids for printing and will begin printing for marketing the training center.
* Village of Questa 14 employees have been assessed and training schedule developed.  (This is part of a McCune Grant)
* Jovanna Poe - coordinator has begun self-training in Excel and Online Training for Microsoft Office Trainer Certification.
* M.E. Healy Foundation - a grant will be submitted in April to Healy Foundation for operational funds for the training center.
* Met with Don Curnett, owner of the Traicorps Training program that has decided to locate and
 build in Taos.  Traicorps provides comprehensive training to municipal employees and engineers
 needed for planning and development of municipal services.  Mr. Curnett and I discussed collaboration of our two training services and how La Plaza can provide
 the computer literacy training.  More discussion is forthcoming.

III.  Funding Acquisition
A. TechFoundation -  $35,000 grant submitted in January, grant committee is meeting on Feb 27 and notification will be sent thereafter.
B. Gates Foundation -  $55,000 grant submitted in January, notification of status in early March 2002.

IV. Proposed Funding Acquisition  
A. Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation - will submit a Letter of Intent to train 50 Taos
 County Housing Authority clients and 11 employees.  This project will assess, train, and follow-up
 the 50 designated clients for job readiness in basic computer and software classes.
  The Housing Authority Director, Connie Ochoa, requested training for the 11 employees, as most
 are computer illiterate and are not able to perform the simplest of tasks using the computer.
B. McCune Foundation - a Letter of Intent will be submitted to continue the Community Outreach Trainer at the Taos Pueblo.  
C. Daniels Fund - Letter of Intent will be submitted for a digital lab at the YFC involving the youth with the equipment and digital story telling.

IV.Technology Update - will be provided at the board meeting.
A. Ski Valley 
B. Decker Tower
C. La Plaza system upgrade.

V.  Public Relations
A. Community Technology Center Network Review - "Success Story" - La Plaza submitted an article
 about Mike Ortiz who began as a volunteer at La Plaza then zoomed quickly up the technical ladder
 to a much sought after tech consultant.  Our story was one of 4 chosen by CTC Network.  I sent the story via email to the Board and Taos News for publication. It is
 listed on the La Plaza homepage and will be sent out in the March newsletter.
B. Horse Fly - Teri Ludvigson, reporter, has written an article about La Plaza using the angle
 of economic development - she notified me that the article will be published in the March issue.
C. Submitted an article to Taos News regarding the newly elected 2002 Board and officers.
D. Represented La Plaza at these community events:
* January Taos County Chamber of Commerce Nuf Fun party.
* Grand Opening of the Penncro Call Center.
* Enchanted Circle Day in Santa Fe at the Legislature session.
E. Taos News advertisements for the new Training Center in the Tempo - many inquiries for classes have resulted from the ads. 

Respectfully submitted,
Judith Pepper