When the HelpNet Steering Committee met last week, we came up with a couple of changes for next year, and an exciting idea for a training program:
(1) Dues: Membership dues for organizations with budgets of over $50,000/year will increase from $25/yr to $50/yr. Dues for smaller organizations and individuals will remain the same. This change more fairly distributes the dues among members. I will be sending out invoices for 2002 dues, either later this month, or early in January. (2) Requirements for getting hands-on service: The Committee felt that for any organization to get direct consulting service (the kind that HelpNet bills for), there should be a signed contract for services, which could be for the entire year, or for a particular period or service. By defining the responsibilities of both the member and HelpNet, the contract should prevent misunderstandings and help protect everyone involved. (We have been working on oral agreements, and there have been no problems to date, but it's only a matter of time before this approach produces a misunderstanding.) I will send a sample contract to this list so you all can see it. One new provision is that we are going to ask each organization that receives HelpNet consulting services to designate someone as that organizations's technology contact. We plan to make training available to technology contacts (see below). (3) Technology contact training: The most exciting idea to come out of last week's meeting was that HelpNet set up a workshop series to train key people in each member organization in basic hardware, software and networking maintenance and troubleshooting. I think if we get together for a relatively small number of workshops, participants will gain enough knowledge to take care of the majority of issues that would otherwise require service calls. Not only should this save Helpnet members time and money, but there will be group of people gaining marketable skills. I hope to start working on planning these workshops this month, but we won't start anything until after the first of January. Jon Jonathan Falk Pine Tree Folk School RR 2, Box 7162 Carmel, ME 04419 (207)848-2433 <http://www.ptfolkschool.org> **Folkschool-list archives are at: <http://www.mint.net/folkschool/helpnet/archives.htm> Sponsored by Pine Tree Folk School ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84vzQ.a9gqS3 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
