1996 WIA meetings

The organizational meeting.
John Caywood, of Atlantic Coast Internet Consultants, discussed "E-mail problems and their solutions." He also provided extensive information about finding people's e-mail addresses using the various search methods available on the Internet. You can also view Mr. Caywood's own notes.

Featured Presentation - Dr. William Winter spoke about the Southeastern Virginia Regional Free-Net (SEVAnet), a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the world of on-line information to Southeastern Virginia.
Breakout Session (Beginners') - Cathy Curtis, of the WIA staff, gave a colorful Powerpoint presentation that introduced the World Wide Web. This presentation had great appeal to anyone who is interested in exploring this new technology. The way the Web works was briefly explained. Statistics on who uses the Web and why they use it were provided. Basic terminology of the Web was defined. She then explored various Web sites that should stimulate a variety of interests. No previous knowledge of the web and little previous computer experience was required to be able to enjoy this session.
Breakout Session (Advanced) - A General Overview of Internet Security and Related Issues, as they pertain to the end user.

Featured Presentation - Digby Solomon of the Daily Press discussed Building the Digital Community - Why local news and information still matters in the age of global communications
Breakout Session (Beginners') - The first segment of PBS' "Internet" videos was shown. Subsequent segments will be viewed at future meetings.
Breakout Session (Advanced) - "Using The Internet to Teach," presented by Cathy Curtis, focused on using the WWW as a resource for instruction.

Featured Presentation - Gary Warren, President of Unified Research Laboratories was our speaker for October 15. His general topic was Internet activities in K-12 schools. Gary lives in Williamsburg and also spoke about the Williamsburg schools.
Breakout Session (Beginners') - Ben Loyall, President of Widomaker Communications Service
Breakout Session (Advanced) - I-Phone, a 2-way voice communications program was downloaded, installed, debugged and demonstrated.

Featured Presentation - Berna Heyman, Assistant Dean of University Libraries for Automation and Bibliographic Control at the College of William and Mary , presented "Let your fingers do the walking: Online information from the Swem Library"
Breakout Session (Beginners') - Ben Loyall, President of Widomaker Communications Service presented E-mail from A to Z, in which he covered every aspect of using E-mail, from the initial setup of the E-mail program to solving the problems that many new users encounter . Ben has made his presentation available online.
Breakout Session (Advanced) - a "roundtable" discussion of various Internet related topics

Featured Presentation - Keith Basil, Vice President of iTRiBE, discussed their "christmas.com" web site. ITRiBE obtained the christmas.com domain name over 2 years ago, and has a year-around web site that contains a variety of Christmas items, including sending e-mail to Santa Claus. Among the seasonal goodies are:

- A real-time counter of the number of months, days, hours, minutes and seconds left until Christmas
- Calendar for December events
- Santa's personal "hot list" (those sites that point to christmas.com)
- Santa and Scrooge's PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) keys

At this time last year, iTRiBE had personally answered over 200,000 e-mail letters to Santa and as Christmas arrived, the site was receiving over 200,000 hits a day. Christmas.com is located at http://christmas.com
Breakout Session (Beginners') - Ben Loyall, President of Widomaker Communications Service presented Part 2 of his ongoing series of introductory lectures. The topic was "Netiquette."
Breakout Session (Advanced) - Ed Fang, of Visionary Systems (visi.net) discussed the infrastructure of the Internet: how it was built, how it works now. In other words, "Backbone" type of information and explanations of how your information gets from place a to place b.