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Project Activities of the Chelyabinsk Civic Network
http://www.ccn.org.ru/
Executors of the Project:
Director of the Project: Dmitry Latukin
Description of the Project
The Chelyabinsk Civic Network is an extension of the "civil" base of
Internet in Chelyabinsk and Chelyabinskaya oblast is the main purpose of
the following project. It is going to be implemented by launching a
specialized network that will unite individuals as well as different
corporate and public organizations. The network will assist in attracting
a greater number of various organizations and individuals into creation of
common information space and providing an access of all sections of the
population to network services.
The project is designed to promote a broad dialog among various
organizations and individuals in this district of the Moscow Region. Using
the telecommunication network sponsored by the Russian Civic Network and modern
technologies, the project aims at demonstrating the way social
organizations can help stimulate people for the improvement of their lives
and of their community, and to serve the needs of disadvantaged citizens -
refugees and newly arrived re-settlers from CIS countries, demobilized
military, unemployed and others - through access to electronic information
services, specific training and various opportunities.
Because the Chelyabinsk Civic Network (CCN) is rooted in public networking
activities of over five years duration, they have an already well
established technical base for their efforts. The CCN project has enabled
them to enhance this infrastructure with new equipment, an increased number
of phone lines, and additional public access sites. But the
accomplishments of CCN have been more focused on development of information
services, on training, increasing number of users of local network, and
developing greater public awareness of the civic network.
Examples of their accomplishments over the first 7 months of this project
(June � December) include hosting over 22 seminars training over 250
individuals on topics related to Internet use and Internet publishing;
developing the primary CCN web server with information about the CCN
project, public access locations, training schedules, directories of local
resources and links to similar projects; maintaining the "Internet for
everyone" public access center which is open 8 hours each day and providing
access, email and web publishing services to students, scholars, teachers,
journalists, scientists, NGO staffs, etc.; providing special focus on
increasing number of NGO organizations on-line; and publishing two
electronic journals concerned with important issues of local community life
(one on local legal/government issues; the other on local cultural news and
issues).
Project organizers have worked diligently to improve local communications
infrastructure � establishing peering agreements with local Internet
service providers (providing for better local network infrastructure),
increasing network capacity from Chelyabinsk (to Moscow and the rest of the
world), improving local equipment (both hardware and software), providing
additional phone lines for dial-up access, adding wireless Internet
connectivity to a local pedagogical university, and dramatically improving
local public access infrastructure.
Description of the Grand Opening Ceremony
The grand opening ceremony of the Chelyabinsk Civic Network (CCN) was held
in the "Internet for Everyone" center at Southern Ural State University
(SUSU) on March 17, 1999. The 52 participants included Greg Cole (F&P),
Chris Kedzie (Ford Foundation), Sergey Agapov (Samara Civic Network), Tanya
Stepanova (F&P), staff of regional center of FREEnet (The network For
Research, Education and Engineering), reporters and special guests such as
"Independent Forum of Women", "Youth Social Movement", Frieburg-Chelyabinsk
Society, local government, scientific and educational institutions in
Snezhinsk, Miass and Chelyabinsk, libraries and so forth.
After greetings of SUSU chancellor German Vyatkin there were speeches of
Oleg Loginovsky, head of Information Department of Administration of
Chelyabinsk oblast, Chris Kedzie, Dmitry Latukhin, Sergey Agapov and Greg
Cole. All of them described aspects of the RCNP and, in particular, CCN
project, their civic and democratic purposes, first results and, to a
certain extent, technical details.
The event was widely presented in the city newspapers as well as TV and
radio programs. Two main local newspapers "Evening Chelyabinsk" and
"Chelyabinsk Worker" published reports on their first pages on March 18 and
weekly "Business Ural" - on March 26. Regional TV and East Express
channels (the most popular in the city) made reports on their evening news
programs on that day. Regional radio station reported about the ceremony
twice - on March 18 and 22. Ural Press and Southern Ural Information
Service agencies prepared their own short news. The CCN projector
director, Dmitry Latukhin, was interviewed by the Algo Press agency in
Moscow.
The ceremony achieved its main goal of generating wide and sincere interest
in the project, attracting lots of interested local citizens, as well as
local media which subsequently shared news of the project. The event got
good resonance in the University and among non-commercial and
non-governmental organizations. The ceremony has generated a lot of
interest, phone calls, and requests from new users who wish to publishing
using CCN infrastructure.
Planned activities for the next quarter of the project include creating a
better organizational structure for governance of the project; obtaining
better involvement of local government and other local organizations in
support of the CCN; increasing work with volunteers; developing more formal
policy for user services and support; improving relationship with local
commercial ISPs; and, very importantly, improving information content of
the civic networking server.
More information about Chelyabinsk can be found at Russian Communities
on the Net page.
[English]
[Russian
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