dana sou's Field Reports

Six Months Into My Vista

dana sou — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:58:48 -0600

As I sit here looking at my things to do and my calendar I've realized that its just just about six months into my VISTA -ship already. Wow, times really flown. There certainly have been a lot of obstacles that my organization has been facing in the six months I have been here including funding, moving locations, and a few other internal matters. We've still been working through things and doing what we can do though. I've been doing my share in helping to write out certain areas of our strategic plan mainly focusing on ways to implement better community involvment and awareness in the technology/broadband policy debate. I also wrote a letter of inquiry for grant not too long ago but haven't heard anything about that so far. Right now I'm also organizing our "Meet the Funder" event that will provide community organizations to hear from grantmakers, get the scope of the grantmaking and grantwriting process and just ask general questions on the grant proccess.

All in all its been an interesting six months. Great nontheless. I've really learned a lot about the non-prof world.

Work at CTOC

dana sou — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:06:24 -0700

So whats been going on at CTOC (community technology organizing consortium) since I started my Vista-ship back in November? Well, from November to the beginning of January I spent a lot of the time doing outreach for a Holiday event we held. That turned out to be a bit of a flop on attendance and I did feel like a bit of a failure to my organization but I got over it. I realized the causes of low attendannce were various...new event location, holiday season, etc. It was my first few weeks on the job so I wasn't too hard on myself. As soon as that was over we got a call from CTCNet to help with outreach for the Los Angeles institutes, as they were lacking in registration. So the week and a half long tasks of phone calls, e-mails, and e-vites began again. This turned out to be much much better. The CTCNet institute was quite interesting and informative. Unlike many of the CTCVista's I lack in being "tech savvy" so I never realized the capabilities of various software components and its ability to provide access to the disabled.

Amidst outreach calls and two events, I spent a lot of time reading up on broadband/technology issues - policies, capacity, its effects on society as a whole - and wow have I learned a whole lot about the need to address the various issues surroundung this! My supervisor has been great in sharing her knowledge with the issues- she really knows her stuff and has helped me a lot. I also work alongside ex-vista Sheveeta once a week so I'd have to say that I've got pretty good support going on here.

This week I've started some research on the broadband debate. I think I am going to be doing a mini-analyses on where the issue lies now and the importance of CTOC's position as a community and social advocate. Hopefully this will help us land some grants later on as we are lacking in funding as well.

If anyone has any leads as to where I can access reading material for my research i.e policies, debates, books, etc, that would be awesome. I seem to be only finding U.K websites that cover the issue in depth.

To summarize, I've done outreach for two events, familiarized myself with technology as a whole, thinking of ways to fundraise, and starting a mini research project, as well as manning the admin side to our office from time to time.

I really hadn't felt like I was doing a whole lot but now that I've written it all down I feel a little overwhelmed! : ) All good nontheless.

This PSO IS Better

dana sou — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:31:16 -0700

This PSO is definately better than the corporation's PSO. Great to meet everyone!