Incorporated in August 1990, Public Information Network, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, doing business as RTPnet.

Email Lists: RTPnet hosts 194 Mailman lists.

Membership: RTPnet Membership decreased by six during 2005 — lost 20 and gained 14. See Appendix: 2005 Membership Changes for lists of new and lost members.

"Volunteer of the Year" Awards were presented at the conference to:

• Dan Brussee, Software Engineer, Better Way Computing, Raleigh
• Jackie Helvey, Artist/Website Designer, UniqueOrn Enterprises, Carrboro

for their outstanding work on Tech LinkUp.

A special award was presented to Judy Hallman: For Years Of Dedicated Service To RTPnet and Community Technology In North Carolina.

Community Technology Awards: Outstanding contributions by individuals, organizations, institutions, and businesses to North Carolina communities in the area of information and computer technology were recognized at the RTPnet Conference. Winners were:

• Organizations:
  • Strong Parental Involvement in Community Education (SPICE), Durham
  • WinstonNet, Inc., Winston-Salem
• Businesses:
  • NOAH, Chapel Hill
• Individuals:
  • Dan Brussee, Better Way Computing, Raleigh
  • Kamira Jones, NetCorps, Durham

Americorps*VISTA Program: RTPnet has full-time Americorps*VISTA workers through the CTC VISTA Project. These positions are funded primarily by RTPnet membership fees. Vahid Nourani (VISTA #8) and Damita Chambers (VISTA #9), sponsored by RTPnet and Triangle United Way started September 2, 2004, and completed their service September 2, 2005. Their project was to monitor, coordinate, and promote Tech LinkUp and provide support for TechCoop projects. Vahid also provided extensive technology support for Triangle United Way's Teaming for Technology (T4T) as well as many local community technology centers and other nonprofit organizations. Damita coordinated numerous activities and presentations for T4T and the Triangle 501 Tech Club and also coordinated the 6th Annual RTPnet Conference and Community Technology Awards. Vahid is currently serving a second year as a CTC VISTA with Durham Literacy Center, while Damita continues service as a Public Ally with Alliance of AIDS Services Carolina.

Tech LinkUp: Tech LinkUp links together technology needs and resources to support nonprofit organizations. This service provides a way for nonprofits to describe their immediate needs for assistance and it allows volunteers, sponsors, and businesses to find opportunities to help others.

The System Administrator is unable to continue the high level of support he has provided for Tech LinkUp. Development of the current service is frozen.

A volunteer has offered to convert the system from ASP/Microsoft SQL to php/MySQL so that the system can be run on the RTPnet.org server and maintained by volunteers who maintain RTPnet services.

The primary goal of the 2004-2005 VISTA project was to monitor, coordinate, and promote Tech LinkUp. However, there are problems with the software, forms, and presentation, and it is difficult to get nonprofits to use Tech LinkUp to ask for assistance. Although there have been only a few cases where volunteers and nonprofits organizations found each other through Tech LinkUp, by monitoring the changes made to the database, the project administrators have been able to match volunteers with several projects. RTPnet's challenge to match volunteers with nonprofit technology needs continues.

RTPnet awarded Volunteer of the Year awards to Dan Brussee and Jackie Helvey at the RTPnet conference for their excellent work in developing Tech LinkUp.

RTPnet had as a Goal for 2005: Identify ways to make Tech LinkUp sustainable. That goal has not been achieved.

Collaboration with other Nonprofit Technology Assistance Providers: RTPnet's #1 Goal for 2005 was:

Expand partnerships for support of nonprofit organizations, the annual conference, and awards. Work more closely with the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits, NCyT, TechCoop members, and others to collaboratively support nonprofit organizations, the annual RTPnet conference, and community technology awards.

In addition, RTPnet continues to participate in TechCoop, a collaboration with other nonprofit technology assistance providers.

• TechCoop members participated in the conference as cohosts, sponsors, and presenters.
• The Triangle 501 Tech Club was started by TechCoop (Fall 2004). RTPnet hosted two meetings in 2005:
  • An introduction to blogging and podcasting, April 14, Brian C. Russell, AmeriCorps VISTA, at Triangle United Way
  • Know Your Data -- Data Mining, September 22, Annette Sanders, SAS Institute, at SAS Institute Inc.

Computer Classes: Since 1996, RTPnet has taught two-hour classes to teach adults basic computer skills, how to use Help, and how to continue learning on their own. The most popular classes have been Getting Around on a Computer, Exploring the Internet, and Electronic Mail.

Judy Hallman and Vahid Nourani taught several classes at Cedar Grove Library for Orange County Public Library this year..

Judy Hallman revised handouts for four classes RTPnet uses to teach basic computer skills to adults. They are linked from www.rtpnet.org/collections/comp.shtml.

RTPnet Archives: One of RTPnet's goals for 2005 was:

Archive electronic and paper records for RTPnet and community networking. RTPnet has a well organized collection of paper and electronic files, not only of its own development, but also of the development of the Internet and community networking. We will review and further improve the organization of the files and hope to find a repository for both the paper and electronic records.

In addition, it appears likely that the University of North Carolina will take the paper records for the Southern Historical Collection.

This project will be completed in 2006.

Gifts for Donations: Another of RTPnet's goals for 2005 was:

Redesign the RTPnet donations Web page. Change the RTPnet donations page to make it a model for nonprofits to obtain financial donations by check or credit card (using Network for Good) with optional gifts (using CafePress), and donations of time (through Tech LinkUp).

• Association For Community Networking (AFCN)
• Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet)
• N.C. Center for Nonprofits
• Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (N-TEN)
• TechCoop

The same issue of Community Technology Review contains an article on RTPnet's handouts for computer classes for beginners, taken from an email message to the Community Technology Centers' Network list, at www.comtechreview.org/fall-2005/000373.html.

• Judy Hallman participated in a focus group on connectivity in Durham March 1st.

• Damita Chambers, Vahid Nourani, Bob Sams, and Judy Hallman attended the 14th Annual Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) Conference, Cleveland, June 15-18.
• Damita Chambers, Vahid Nourani, and Judy Hallman attended Nonprofit Technology Conference, Chicago, March 23-25.

In 2004, RTPnet received an IBM computer grant for development work with cPanel. We decided not to use cPanel and gave the computer to another nonprofit corporation through NetCorps.

Email services: We now have several members who only use our services for email lists. Upgraded Mailman to 2.1.6.

MySQL: Usage of MySQL has increased a little. We installed phpMyAdmin and now take daily backups of the MySQL database.

Content management systems: A few members have expressed interest in content management systems. We have started exploring options, such as Joomla! and Drupal/CivicSpace/CiviCRM.

Current software includes:

• Analog 5.24
• Apache 1.3.29
• Mailman 2.1.6
• MySQL 3.23.55
• Perl DBI
• PHP 4.40
• Pine 4.21
• Red Hat Linux 6.1

Checking Account Balance on 12/31/04:    $6,642.65
Total Assets on 12/31/04:               $11,435.70

Checking Account Income:                $16,656.18 
Total Expenses:                         $16,319.90
                                       
Checking Account Balance on 12/31/05:    $6,988.93           
Certificate of Deposit on 12/31/05:      $5,293.10
Total Assets on 12/31/05:               $12,282.03
-------------------------------------------------------

Conference:
  Income:                           $6,387.00
  Expenses:                          5,590.32
-------------------------------------------------------
Profit:                              $ 796.68

Membership fees and donations:     $10,269.18

Internet Services:                  $4,800.00
SSL Installation:                      444.00
Volunteer Awards:                      500.00
Travel, VISTAs, and Miscellaneous:   4,985.58                                

• Judy Hallman <hallman at rtpnet.org> or <hallman at email.unc.edu>
  Executive Director
  
• Charles Hall <Charles.Hall at sas.com> or <chall at rtpnet.org>
  Lead System Administrator
  
• Amnon Nissan <amnon at deltaforce.net> and Deltaforce Technologies
  Provides Internet access and on-site services
  
• Roger Austin <rda at rti.org>
  Provides maintenance for Mailman email lists.
• Nancy Shoemaker <shoemaker at acm.org>
  Maintains email aliases associated with domain names
• Errol Casey <errol at nouce.net>
  Served as System Administrator from 1998 through 2001 and continues to provide support as a consultant.
• Dan Brussee <dbrussee at betterwaycomputing.com>
  Tech LinkUp Software Engineer
• Jackie Helvey <jackie at carrboro.com>
  Tech LinkUp Artist/Website Designer
• Jon Mauney, who provided support for CGI scripts since 1997, passed away this year.
• Others
  Directors, Advisors, Members, and other Volunteers provide suggestions and improvements

Membership Changes: Marjorie Fowler and Lucy Haagen joined the board. Going into 2006 there are two vacant seats.

Accomplishments:

• Conducted an audit of our accounts.
• Presented Volunteer of the Year Awards to Jackie Helvey and Dan Brussee for their work on Tech LinkUp. They each received a plaque and a check for $250.
• Started examining future directions for RTPnet.
• Offered consulting services as door prizes at the conference — not particularly successful.
• Mike Rulison resigned as Chief Financial Officer. Bob Sams resigned as Secretary and was elected as Chief Financial Officer. Marjorie Fowler was elected as Secretary.
• Revised RTPnet website: Greatly reduced number of collections of links to local resources (RTPnet is no longer a directory to local resources); removed Triangle Area Centers for Technology (TACT), grant proposals, Help Desk, and numerous sections that are no longer active. The old information is available in the archives, at www.rtpnetarchives.org.
• Participated in designing and administering a survey of technology needs of North Carolina nonprofit organizations, with the NC Center for Nonprofits and other nonprofit technology assistance providers.
• Worked with TechCoop to change the RTPnet conference to the North Carolina Community Technology Conference (NCCommTech) hosted by RTPnet, Triangle United Way, NetCorp, and Tech Action.
• Moving TechLinkUp.org from ASP/SQL hosted on 1planhost.com to php/MySQL hosted on rtpnet.org. Working on a plan to partner with Duke.
• Investigated becoming a reseller of Internet hosting services (for example, Dreamhost) and discussed how to make RTPnet hosting services better. Started exploring possibilities for upgrading hardware and software.

Members: Marjorie Fowler <marjorie at email.unc.edu>
Secretary
Electronic Projects Coordinator, UNC Press
Member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Working Group on Scholarly Communication

Lucy Haagen <lucyhaagen at yahoo.com>
Lecturer, Program in Education, Duke University

Judith H. Hallman <hallman at rtpnet.org>
President and Executive Director
Term: March 2005 - February 2008
Retired from Information Technology Services, UNC-Chapel Hill

Amnon Nissan <amnon at deltaforce.net>
Term: March 2003 - February 2006
President, Deltaforce Technologies

Michael v.E. Rulison <rulisonm at rtpnet.org>
Term: March 2004 - February 2007
Principal, DataNomics, Economic analysis and microcomputer applications development (Access), Web page design, construction and maintenance
President, Funeral Consumers Alliance of the Triangle

Robert Sams <triaes at bellsouth.net>
Chief Financial Officer
Term: March 2005 - February 2008
President, RileyHill Community Technology Center

Jerry Winegarden <jbw at duke.edu>>
Vice President
Term: March 2004 - February 2007
Senior Analyst, Duke University OIT/Technical Support

Two vacancies.

Charles Hall <Charles.Hall at sas.com>
Web Applications Developer, SAS Institute Inc.

William R. Hutchins <hutch at rtpnet.org>
Founder and President Emeritus of RTPnet

Nancy Shoemaker <nancy at shoemakergroup.com>
Principal, Shoemaker Group (www.shoemakergroup.com)
Web consultant to small nonprofits including RTPnet members
AAUW NC, AAUW Raleigh/Wake County, NC Women United,
NC Center for Women in Public Service, Women's Forum of NC, EV Challenge

Mark R. Smith <w4chl at rtpnet.org>
Parent, Citizen, Engineer, Educator, and Radio Amateur
Affiliation: Amateur Radio liaison to Phillips MS ARC and National Engineers Week

James F. Verdonik <jverdonik at d2vlaw.com>
Daniels Daniels & Verdonik, P.A.

• Chambers, Damita (personal member)
• Fowler, Marjorie (personal member)
• Haagen, Lucy (personal member)
• Laurel Woods Community Organization (email list only)
• ncacnm, NC Chapter of the American College of Nurse Midwives (email list)
• newhope, New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee
• Nourani, Vahid (personal member)
• Pink House CTC, Charleston, SC ($25 membership, no hosting)
• Purple Elephant Computer Factory for KIDS! ($25 membership, no hosting)
• slowfood, Slowfood--Research Triangle
• Technology Action Group (techaction) ($25 membership, no hosting)
• troop39, Boy Scout Troop 39 of Chapel Hill NC
• wakejcpc, Wake County Juvenile Crime Prevention Council
• WSSU Community Knowledge Centers ($25 membership, no hosting)

20 Canceled Membership:

• atwater, Ann Atwater Community School
• bluespri, Blue Springs - Hoke County Community Development Corporation
• bullcity, Concerned Citizens For Accountable Government
• cell, CELL Foundation Inc.
• choral, TriangleSings!
• cwclub, Cary Woman's Club
• Friends of the Orange County Library
• gardener, Gardeners of Wake County, Inc.
• housing, Episcopal Housing Ministry, Inc.
• justice, Office of Advocacy, ELCA North Carolina Synod
• kindred, Kindred Gathering, Cary
• mewf, Mary E. Wilson Foundation
• mhc-nc, Mental Health Coalition
• ncfats, NC Fats Mountain Bike Club
• nc99, Kitty Hawk Chapter of the 99's
• ptt, Piedmont Transmitter Tracking
• tcess, Triangle Council of Engineering & Science Societies
• vochoa, Villages of Cornwallis Home Owners Association
• wpha, Walden Pond Homeowner's Association
• yppc, Young Peoples Performing Company of Durham