Quarterly Status Reports
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Project Closeout
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Last quarter's report: April - June '04
This quarter was used to wrap up project related tasks to ensure a successful close out. Tasks attempted in this quarter fell into five broad categories:
- Conducted community readiness workshops and publicized the Virtual Business Incubator and Community Connections packages offered as part of this project
- Prepared drafts for final project reports and technology master plans for communities
- Discussed and planned sustainability strategies with members of the Technology Leadership Teams (TLT) in various counties and
- Developed a user-friendly Web site creation program for use by individuals or organizations who don't have any knowledge of HTML
- The evaluation team consisting of Mike Lambur and Lex Bruce collected data for project evaluation purposes during this quarter.
Community Readiness Workshops
Though activities in each county have been described in more detail under the respective county, here is a summary of what occurred in the various counties during this quarter. Most county activities revolved around marketing their Electronic Village to encourage end users to take advantage of the services available. Dickenson County publicly launched its Electronic Village this quarter. (All other counties have had their public launches in previous quarters). Craig County launched a test version of a for-sale forum, the first such use of BEV in a Box in these counties. Accomack and Northampton Counties on the Eastern Shore view this project as complementary to the Eastern Shore Virginia Portal and are finding ways to leverage the synergies between these two projects to promote various economic and educational programs on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Cumberland County received a 3 year grant to bring technology training into the community via their public school system. King and Queen planned 5 community readiness workshops and held the first of these workshops in June. Louisa planned a bilingual outreach to their growing Hispanic community via their Electronic Village.
To date we have had 40 home or micro businesses sign up for the Virtual Business Incubator package and 27 community organizations sign up for the community connections package. We anticipate that we will see an increase in these numbers as a result of the publicity efforts condcuted by technology leadership teams in each county.
Report Preparation
We have completed the draft versions of reports which we expect to present counties in the middle of August. They are currently being reviewed for accuracy and completeness by various project team members. These reports are important sources of information to the individual county Board of Supervisors who have supported the project from its inception as well as to other community stakeholders who participated in the Take Charge sessions and/or were members of the county Technology Leadership Teams. To ensure that this county report accurately reflects activities in each county as well as the perceived project successes and obstacles in that location, the county VCE agent will receive a draft report for review, prior to final publication. The Publications Department of Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) has agreed to provide technical assistance with design of a suitable cover and attractive presentation format. We expect to provide each county with several copies of the final report for distribution to local leaders both in the public and private sector. All reports will also be posted on this project web site hosted by the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) and on the VCE Intranet site, to make it available to all VCE employees.
Sustainability Strategies
Bill Sanders (incoming Director of the BEV starting July 1, 2004) and Kevin Inman (newly hired TOP Grant Support Specialist to provide technical support to counties in the third year) visited all participating counties during this quarter to discuss and plan for sustaining the efforts of the past two years in face-to-face meetings with VCE agents and TLT members. The BEV launched its POWER (POWER offers Web Economic Resources) internship program this quarter more details of which can be found online at POWER. The program provides interns with real world experience working on Website design and other BEV initiatives. Counties participating in this project benefit from the program by receiving free starter websites in connection with VBI and CC accounts. Three interns were involved in this program this quarter: Richard Eppard and Eric Hawkens of Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Staunton, VA and Stephanie Hetzel of New River Community College in Dublin, VA.
Web Site Creation Software
We found that most individuals who signed up for Community Readiness Workshops and Virtual Business Incubator programs had little or no experience with HTML and therfore found the the task of designing and creating Web sites fairly daunting. Special efforts were therefore made to provide basic training and reach out to these individuals to help them start work on establishing their Web presence. Despite our best efforts, folks with limited computer experience found it difficult to develop their sites even with training. Feedback from the workshops indicated that something simpler might be required.To respond to this need we did two things. First we launched the Power program (described earlier) to connect interns with individuals who wanted to create a one-page "bill-board" site. We also retained the services of a programmer as a short term wage hire, to explore available software in the public domain that might be modified to support the creation of a simple Web site with easy prompts to the user. We were able to identify such software and have worked on its modification for web page development use. The program is now being tested on the Virginia Tech campus with individuals having no previous web page development experience to identify problems before widespread deployment. This program will be added to the BEV in a BOX package available to all of our participating TOP counties when refinement has been completed.
- The evaluation team is working independently of project management team and has solicited input from participants and others impacted by this project. Responses are kept confidential and individual identities will not be revealed to safeguard the privacy of respondents. The results of the evaluation will be submitted with the project close out documentation.
Other
On July 1, 2004 Bill Sanders took over as Director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) from Mathew Mathai who served as the BEV Director from July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2004. Mathai will continue as Project Director for this project and will oversee project close out procedures established by the Dept. of Commerce. Sanders will focus on sustaining the efforts of the past two years and using the third year of this project that is supported by the match amount paid by counties as a launching pad for additional activities in participating communities.
Project expenditures this quarter included those for travel by members of the project management team to each county to conduct workshops, travel by personnel on the evaluation team to gather data for the final report and travel by the incoming BEV director and the newly hired TOP grant support specialist to each county to discuss third year efforts on this project.
