December 1996 ECTC Status Report
The Electronic Communications Technical
Committee went on vacation in December, like most of the working world. We expect activity to pick up again in January and return to normal. Most of the highlights of the ECTC this month occurred near or at the end of the month, capped by a flurry of activity in discussing the new home page for the ASI web site. That topic had seen a lot of activity last May, but had been sitting on hold ever since due to scheduling and workload issues. Another flurry of activity, this one on artemis-list involving political discussions about a lunar colony, sparked a request for a new ASI mailing list, which will be created soon. December also saw the alpha-testing of TeamSite Lite, a freeware version of the CyberTeams TeamSite product, which will be used to maintain the ASI web site in the future.
The ECTC grew by one member this month. Les Weber and Chuong Tran departed the team, but we added John Wertz, Scott Dion, and Matthew Thompson. Several people changed e-mail addresses: Kaylon Daniels, Dale Amon, and Michael Wallis. You can find the complete ECTC membership listing at http://www.asi.org/adb/09/01/ectc.html. There were no changes to the ECTC task list this month, but there is still plenty of room for new volunteers for tasks that are already on that list. If you would like to join the ECTC and help with any of those tasks, you can use the form on the ECTC task list page at http://www.asi.org/adb/09/01/ectc_tasks.html.
Here is the latest status information from the individual work areas within the ECTC:
Help Desk
Nanci Brasket continued answering questions directed to the Comm and Info Center. Candace Dicks continued working on the New Volunteer Interview System, but has been waiting for additional feedback from all of you on interview questions.
Listserver Mailing Lists
There were several surprises as a result of last month's change in the mailing list configuration to add subscription address checking. Several people received bounce errors as they tried to send e-mail from addresses other than the ones they used to subscribe to a mailing list. We have been updating mailing list subscriptions accordingly as those events occur but it will likely be several more months before the subscription lists stabilize. Towards the end of the month, a heated discussion on artemis-list about politics sparked a request for a new ASI mailing list, art-gov. That list will be created as soon as the list configuration is defined.
World Wide Web Server
Several members of the ECTC were involved in the alpha-testing of TeamSite Lite this month. TeamSite Lite is a reduced-feature version of TeamSite, the CyberTeams product that will be used in the future to maintain the ASI web site. TeamSite Lite is a utility for maintaining files in a particular part of a web server. The ASI web site will be a beta test site for TeamSite Lite next month when the beta release of the software is installed in several directories on the ASI web site. One of those directories will be under the ECTC section of the ADB and will be used to share documents that are still being worked on within the ECTC. More details on using TeamSite Lite will be available when the software is installed.
Candace Dicks updated the OSF web pages on the ASI web site. Vik Olliver produced several new images that can be used on ASI web pages. Dana handled a variety of update requests for the ASI web site.
During the month there were several comments made about the design of the current home page on the ASI web site. The general consensus was that it was long overdue for an overhaul, which should be no surprise to those of you who have been around since last May. Early last year we had a major effort underway to redesign the ASI home page and we came close to having a completed solution ready to implement on the web site. That effort stalled, however, when the Artemis '96 conference kept everyone involved in the effort busy with other activities. The recent comments, however, prompted a reopening of the discussion and the original proposals were dredged out from mothballs and a new proposal was added by Simon Rowland. We have given ourselves a deadline of the end of January to finish the new design, so you should see some news from this area in the next few weeks.
WWW Conversation Pages
No progress to report this month.
Usenet newsgroups
No progress to report this month.
On-line services
Chris Eason managed to establish a link to the ASI web site on the Space forum on America OnLine. If you are an AOL user, use the following path to get to that link:
Keyword: SPACE > Wormhole > Space Activist Organizations > The Artemis Project
Bulletin Boards
No progress to report this month.
Real-time Meetings
The ECTC held it's regular monthly IRC meeting on December 8. With four IRC meetings now under our belts it is safe to say that the meetings have been effective and should be here to stay. This month's meeting had improved attendance, with five people showing up at some point during the meeting, but had a minor hiccup with a short disruption in the IRC network halfway through the meeting.
Miscellaneous
Tom Hopper started compiling the information needed to generate the statistical records for the ASI communications environment.
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