One of the most exciting events to take place during TC'95 will be the formation of an International Telecommunities Organization (ITO) which will bring together all of the national groups that are now involved in Free-Nets, Free-Spaces, Community Networking, Televillages, Rural Datafication, and so forth.
Telecommunties have grown dramatically in number and diversity since the pioneering efforts of Dave Godfrey in Canada and Roxanne Hiltz and Murrey Turoff in the U.S. were followed by international networking projects, such as RAPPI, and community-based projects, such as the Cleveland Free-Net.
Although the U.S. National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) has been playing an important role both in the U.S. and internationally in bringing together a large number of Free-Nets, the international nature and growing diversity of Telecommunities has reached a point where there needs to be a peer-to-peer forum in which the various national groups can share their experiences and provide assistance on a sibnal basis.
Victoria is, in many respects, an appropriate venue to launch such an intiative. Not only did the Victoria Free-Net become the first operational Free-Net outside the U.S. and was subsequently the first Free-Net anywhere to have a 10 Mbps ATM connection to the Internet, but the city itself has some interesting geographical characteristics. Surrounded on three sides by the U.S., Victoria remains very much a uniquely Canadian city (despite the shallow, pseudo-British facade that has been used since the thirties to attract American tourists) with a climate that has more in common with northern California than the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Vancouver Island, where B.C.'s capital city is located, is also the largest Pacific island in the Americas and is drifting, albeit very slowly, away from Canada in a south westerly direction to even sunnier climes.
Please make sure that *your* national organization is represented at TC'95 this August and becomes a founding member organization of the ITO.