The paper below was presented at the annual meetings of the Urban Affairs Association in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in April 1997. The first section of the paper discusses community networks in general. The secon section describes the Urban University and Neighborhood Network (UUNN), one of the CATNeT partners. The next section describes CATNeT and the final section makes a comparison of CATNeT and the UUNN.

This paper chronicles the creation of the Urban University and Neighborhood Network (UUNN), and one of its offshoots, the Coalition to Access Technology and Networking in Toledo (CATNeT). The UUNN--a network of researchers from the public universities in Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown--formed two years ago to link themselves with neighborhood-based organizing and development groups (NBOs) in their cities. This network of NBOs and university researchers then researched NBO computer and Internet access in each city. At a statewide planning meeting of NBOs and university researchers, we began outlining an action plan. Projects began in some cities to build local community networks, provide computer and Internet training, and help NBOs and other excluded groups find and afford computer and Internet access. Funding shortages and participant turnover, however, led to disunity and internal conflict. CATNeT is a Toledo-based offshoot of the UUNN which includes a broad cross-section of Toledo residents in creating a community network and access to computers and the Internet. The emphasis of CATNeT is to involve and serve people normally excluded from power and participation: public housing residents, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and children living in poverty. In contrast to the UUNN, increasing diversity in CATNeT was not as disruptive. In evaluating our experiences with the UUNN and CATNeT, we use a model that integrates the collaborative research, popular education, and community-based planning literatures, concluding that the project is strongest when it is directed and controlled at the grassroots. We also look at some of the issues and difficulties involved in implementing and maintaining such a grassroots model across seven cities compared to just one city.

INTRODUCTION

 The rise of importance of the Internet and the development of Internet-based "community networks" has produced yet one more way that poor communities can be excluded from power and resources. We already know there is unequal access to the information superhighway. People of color, people living in poverty, and their organizations, lack the resources to access the Internet (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995; Working Group Against Information Redlining, n.d., Anderson et al., 1995, Buck, 1996). These are also groups that have serious identified information needs that Internet access could help fill (Urban University and Neighborhood Network, 1996).

One of the strategies for helping excluded groups get Internet access is to build community networks, sometimes referred to as community-based computer networks, civic networks, public access networks, or free-nets (Morino 1994; Beamish,1995; Schuler, 1996a). The common goal of all community networks is to provide its members access to relevant information and to local residents, issues, businesses, and government officials. A community network connects the people who live in a specific geographic area. Many of the community networks provide access to the Internet for free or at a low cost as an additional resource to information access, but a local community focus is more of a primary goal for community networks, not providing access to the Internet (Guy, 1996). Community networks are often developed in conjunction with local institutions such as universities, colleges, grade schools, libraries, non-profit organizations, and local government agencies (Schuler1996:25).

There is concern that community networks mirror the exclusion of the poor and marginalized throughout society. Studies of community networks show that participants are overwhelmingly those who already feel empowered. Many community networks are constructed by relatively educated middle class people and attract the participation of other relatively educated middle class people, and there is a shortage of evidence that the community network increases community involvement. (van den Besselaar, 1997; Patrick and Black, 1996).

There are examples of community networks that serve those normally excluded from access to information and influence, including "Plugged In" of East Palo Alto, California, and the Austin Free-Net. Plugged In focuses on helping low income community organizations and families in East Palo Alto get access to computers and the Internet. A wide variety of training is provided in conjunction with local agencies, and uses range from online research, to resumes, to homework (Plugged In, 1997). The Austin Free-Net is a community-based project providing services for youth, families, and communities, and it's 11^th and 12^th Street project is specifically targeted to promote community development in one of Austin's poorest neighborhoods (Austin Free-Net, 1997; Rhodes, 1997).

Importantly, while there are people who are excluded from access to the Internet, in contrast to housing, education, and employment exclusion, exclusion from the Internet is not institutionalized. There is no history of laws or practices to actively exclude people from the Internet that must be overcome. Furthermore, the lack of regulation of the Internet means that for perhaps the first time in history we have the opportunity to create a social force that is inclusive from the beginning.

In the state of Ohio an initiative has been underway for two years to focus specifically on helping poor communities get access to the Internet. More recently, an offshoot of that statewide project has developed in Toledo. This paper will present the history of those two cases and will then compare them, looking at the importance of collaborative research, popular education, and community-based planning as the foundation for projects such as these.

TWO CASES OF COMMUNITY NETWORK DEVELOPMENT

A. The Urban University and Neighborhood Network

In 1994 the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center received a small grant (about $5,000) from the State of Ohio Urban University Program (UUP) to build a network that could research community organizing and development, and asked Randy Stoecker to facilitate the creation of that network. Angela Stuber quickly became involved first as a student/community resident volunteer, and then as the project's lead graduate assistant. The goal was to build a network that would have core groups of NBOs and academic researchers in each city linked also across the cities.

Because this project began as a university-based effort, establishing grass-roots participation was challenging. Randy had NBO contacts in Cincinnati, and was able to find researchers with strong neighborhood contacts in some of the other cities, but really started the network through the researchers. We tried to hold meetings with NBOs in each city in early 1995, inviting them to bring their ideas of what to research. For example, in Toledo, our meeting of about 20 NBOs generated a list of nearly 30 research ideas. These meetings were less successful in the other cities or did not occur at all.

The next step was to bring researchers and NBO members to a state-wide meeting in Columbus during Mother's Day weekend (Randy's dumb idea). The meeting was to choose our first research project and outline the grant. All expenses were covered by the small grant, but none of us were able to convince neighborhood groups to come. Thus it ended up being a meeting of researchers (two researchers were also missing). Thankfully, both Phil Nyden and Darryl Burrows of PRAG (Policy Research Action Group in Chicago, 1997), whose model we were attempting to expand upon, were there. We used the meeting to do training in participatory/collaborative research, since it had become clear that Randy knew a lot more about what participatory/collaborative research meant than the other researchers and was not that successful at communicating that meaning.

We needed to choose a research project in order to have any chance at the next round of UUP network funds. We decided to do a survey of NBO computer hardware/software/skills and Internet access, which was one of the ideas generated by the prior meetings with neighborhood groups in two cities. Our thinking was that one of the reasons NBOs were not at the meeting was that they did not have access to communication technology like e-mail, and had to get information second-hand from researchers. By focusing on identifying their communication/information needs, and then using the research results to leverage resources to fill those needs, hopefully communication access would be equalized. The goal was to shift more and more control over the network to the NBOs.

We drafted the subsequent grant proposal and sent it out to all of the researchers, encouraging them to share it with NBOs, and used the responses to revise the proposal. The result was a $69,800 grant for the project from the UUP. With those funds we first began in earnest to build "core groups" of researchers and NBOs in each city. We had funds to pay a $200 honorarium each for up to five neighborhood group participants in each city to attend core group meetings--hoping that each city would then have a solid base of five NBO participants and one researcher. The purpose of the core groups was to design the research, recommend questions, and build a survey that would have a core of common questions as well as allow individual cities to add their own questions . Some core groups developed faster than others. At our second statewide meeting in Toledo, in November 1995, there was still a shortage of NBO participants (though at least they outnumbered the researchers) and two cities were missing from the meeting. The project had also slowed down some. Even though we had $5000 in the budget to buy "release time" for each researcher, some couldn't get the release time when we needed it because of institutional restrictions. So we used the meeting to trouble shoot and carefully redesign the scope and timetable of the research project.

By the beginning of 1996 six cities had strong, stable core groups. The core group process was very effective in developing the NBO computer/Internet survey--which was redrafted about six times. We took the initial recommendations from each core group to construct the first draft, and then revised it with feedback on each draft coming from the core groups.

The researchers administered a mail survey to the population of NBOs identified by the core groups in each city--30 in Akron, 162 in Cincinnati, 160 in Cleveland, 70 in Columbus, 68 in Dayton, 104 in Toledo, and 19 in Youngstown. Each four page survey was sent with a cover letter and consent form. The consent form asked the neighborhood organization for permission to use a portion of the information in a database accessible via the UUNN's web site (1996). After various combinations of mail and phone follow-ups, the returns ranged from approximately 20 percent to 33 percent across the cities. In total, 189 surveys were returned. Much of the lack of return can be accounted for by the fact that many very small organizations were included in the populations we surveyed. If we look only at those organizations believed to have 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, the return rate probably ranges between 50 percent and 90 percent across the cities. The smaller and less stable the organization, the less likely they were to return the survey.

After the researchers gathered the results the core groups reviewed and commented on a draft of the research report. Randy revised the report based on their comments. The main findings are not surprising. Only three NBOs had full Internet access. Only about half of all NBOs had computers (Urban University and Neighborhood Network, 1996). And nearly all had important unmet information needs.

On May 17 and 18 of 1996 the UUNN held its first fully collaborative conference, bringing together over 50 NBOs and researchers from the state universities. We began with the presentation of results from the computer and Internet access study. Each city chose a presenter, in many cases an NBO representative, to discuss the relevance of the results for their city. The following day was devoted to accomplishing four objectives: 1. developing an implementation plan to secure computers and Internet access for NBOs; 2. evaluating the research process of this last year; 3. developing a plan for next year's research project; 4. writing a mission statement for the UUNN. We divided the approximately 60 participants into four working groups (people indicated their first or second choice and we built the groups from those choices). Each group spent the morning developing recommendations on one of the four objectives, and presented them to the entire group in the afternoon. The implementation group came up with an extremely detailed plan for everything from obtaining software and hardware to outlining training programs. The plan was adapted in the afternoon to write a large grant proposal that would also include funding to establish an NBO computer consultant in each city. The evaluation group identified a number of issues that complicated the research process, including communication and budgeting difficulties, a lack of institutional support, and difficulties in maximizing NBO participation. The next year's project group came up with two options. The first was to study the state of community organizing across the cities, identifying successful problem solving models and funding sources. The second was to study the degree and types of coalition activities among NBOs both within and between the cities. The afternoon meeting arrived at a tentative consensus to pursue the second project, seeing it as a natural outgrowth of our attempts to use research as an organizing process (see below), but agreed we should send that decision out to everyone involved in the UUNN for further input. The mission statement group arrived at a very succinct mission statement that was adapted by the large group: "to collectively provide tools for the betterment of neighborhoods and their residents."

The mission statement, and other recommendations from the implementation group, became part of the UUNN (1996)Web site. The Web site also currently includes a categorized database of all consenting Ohio NBOs, with "clickable" e-mail addresses allowing NBOs to send e-mail to each other right from the page. Finally, there are extensive links to NBO resources within the state of Ohio and beyond.

The UUNN began its second full year with hope and energy. We very quickly ran into difficulties, however. First, our initial attempt to obtain a second round of UUP funds failed, cutting off our funding until November. We reapplied for funds with the UUP's encouragement, but for only $28,000 to support a half-position graduate assistant in each city (compared to the $69,800 we had for the first year). Unable to raise matching funds, we had no money to buy faculty release time, no time to reimburse NBO members for participating in the core groups, and no money to support travel to statewide gatherings. Our goals, we thought, were also correspondingly modest-- train NBOs to use the Internet and recruit them to use the UUNN web site and listserv, evaluate the website and listserv, and write a major grant to the federal Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) to get up to $750,000 in matching funds to support community networking efforts.

In addition to the funding loss, we also lost two of our academic partners. In one case, a new academic partner who had been familiar with the project took over. In another case, we recruited an academic partner not familiar with the project at all but very familiar with participatory approaches and university-community collaborations.

With new partners and less funding we quickly fell behind. Three cities were unable to find student assistants. Two of those cities made almost no progress toward the project objectives. And with no resources to arrange and support meetings, the active cities began to chart either no course or unique courses. In Toledo, CATNeT formed and expanded its sights far beyond just serving NBOs to building a full-blown community network (discussed below). In Cleveland, always far ahead of the rest of the cities, their NeighborhoodLink project kept expanding. Youngstown brought together a strong core group around a computer recycling program. Dayton also brought together a strong core group around computer recycling and community computing center development.

By the time it came time to apply for the TIIAP grant, in March of 1997, there was little unity among the cities and little communication between the cities that was not filtered through the University of Toledo hub for the UUNN. We relied on the UUNN listserv to try and organize the proposal, but only a few NBOs were on the listserv, and there was very little participation from more than three people. Our first attempt to write a proposal involved each city sending their ideas of what they wanted in the proposal. What became apparent was that each city wanted something different and wanted a lot of money, far more than was available through TIIAP. At that point what little discussion we had was focused on narrowing the scope of our proposal to networking NBOs across the state and supporting that networking effort with staff. At that point, CATNeT no longer saw the proposal as serving their needs and decided to write their own grant proposal. The split was amicable, but nonetheless uncomfortable for those of us in Toledo who then had to find ways to split resources and issues between the two proposals. The more narrow UUNN focus was upset again at the last minute with a push to expand the proposal to include community computing center development and a massive computer recycling campaign, based on last minute matching funds.

We failed to complete the TIIAP proposal, ultimately, because we were unable to meet the bureaucratic requirements for the proposal in time--a circumstance exacerbated by our inability to come together as a UUNN. In the last moments of constructing the proposal it became apparent that we had four cities and at least two distinct visions. Youngstown and Dayton were very focused on computer recycling. Toledo and Cleveland were very focused on building a community network. Having lost the communication channels we had established the previous May, the UUNN ended up in disarray.

B. CATNeT

The idea behind CATNeT began in multiple places at multiple times. The Toledo chapter of the UUNN had discussed the importance of computers and networking to community groups and had surveyed community groups about this issue. At approximately the same time the Toledo UUNN was completing their survey, Vistula Management was surveying residents of the public housing they managed to determine the level of resident interest in having public computer labs. Vistula Management successfully applied for funding from the HUD Neighborhood Networks program. As John Kiely from Vistula Management was telling others about Vistulas computer project, he found a multitude of organizations and institutions interested in equal access to technology. In the fall of 1996, he invited these people (including the Toledo UUNN) to a meeting to discuss our common interests. Over 30 community-based organizations, institutions, and residents of Vistulas subsidized housing sites offered a description of their program or their perception of the equal access issue. The result was a decision to meet again to discuss how to collaborate and tackle the issue.

John, Randy, and Angela began organizing monthly meetings to define the groups goals and determine exactly how we wanted to accomplish them. Working under the auspices of the Toledo UUNN, and its meager resources, Angela sent out the notices, called interested individuals and organizations, and prepared agendas. We began calling ourselves CATNeT the Coalition to Access Technology and Networking in Toledo. The attendance at the meetings varied but there were always at least 20 people present. Some individuals and organizations were involved at every meeting while others came and went. We always had at least a couple new faces at each meeting, due in large part to John Kiely spreading the word about our group. With up to 40 people at a meeting, we decided to use a working group model to more effectively discuss the issues and set goals. After much discussion we split into the following target groups: children and families, seniors, disabled, non-profits and small businesses, and technology. The working group model allowed greater participation for all present. Each working group came back to the larger group with similar results. All groups recognized the inequality of computers, software, and Internet access. They all wanted to find ways to make these items available to people who could not afford them. Among other things, the groups suggested establishing public access sites in locations close to the people who needed them, giving low-income people used computers, and providing all target groups with hardware, software, Internet, and web design training. Each group also discussed issues relevant to their particular target population. For example, the disabled group emphasized the need to obtain assistive technology for disabled individuals.

Using the University of Toledo computer training lab, we held three Internet training sessions. The first was to show people what was possible with a community network similar to what we wanted to create. The next two training sessions were held because the group asked for them. Each training session started out as an Internet training session and transformed into a basic computer usage, Windows, and WWW training session geared toward those present.

The CATNeT meetings were often long (between 2 and 3 hours), tedious and repetitive. A few members became irritated with our participatory method. The meetings were usually facilitated by John, Randy, or Angela. Each of us tried to hear the comments of as many people as possible, making sure the low-income people present (our target end users) were heard by all. The administrators of large organizations and institutions found our process very slow. It was only after five long meetings that we were able to succinctly state our mission and goals. And they will probably be revised yet again. The current CATNeT mission statement is "to contribute to the empowerment of low income citizens and community based organizations by providing or facilitating access to the technological tools that are more routinely available to our community's more affluent citizens and organizations." Our objectives are to help low income citizens and community based organizations get access to computers, computer software, local networking, and Internet connections; and to get access to the training and technical assistance necessary to use the technology effectively.

We also organized steering committee meetings to discuss the results of the group work. Each group nominated a representative to attend the steering committee meeting. In the smaller group we were able to ask each other specific questions about the group work and clarify ambiguous points. Our regular schedule was to hold one steering committee meeting a few weeks after each monthly general CATNeT meeting. When the time came to prepare the TIIAP grant application the steering committee meetings were scheduled more frequently.

In preparation for the TIIAP grant proposal, but also as part of the CATNeT planning process, we began a series of research projects into the needs and desires of senior citizens, small businesses, people with disabilities, and disability service providers. We developed a research partnership of students from a graduate research methods class taught by Randy, Vistula Management staff, and CATNeT members. This partnership ran focus groups, sent a mail survey to small businesses, conducted a phone survey of disability service providers, and conducted a phone survey of local Internet service providers. This research was to verify what we had already been learning through the CATNeT planning process, recruit more participants into the CATNeT process, and provide some baseline measures for later evaluation. For focus groups, Vistula staff brought in four laptop computers for people to use the day before the focus group, since many of the focus group participants had no experience with computers , thus combining the focus group research with beginning computer training. The phone survey of disabled service providers helped bring two representatives of those organizations to CATNeT meetings.

The press of the TIIAP grant application deadline, however, disrupted our participatory process. The grant required specific information about our project and the deadline required some decisions be made quickly by John and Angela. The bulk of the proposal consists of ideas and projects determined by the larger group, but the finer details, such as the type of computers to ask for, were not. We will use the proposal as a working document for the group to revise. Future grant proposals can then be based on the revised document.

To recover from the disruptive effects of the TIIAP proposal process, and based on our experience with the UUNN, CATNeT then began implementing parts of our proposal even without funding. CATNeT had already received funds to bring in Dough Schuler (1996), in internationally known author/expert on community networks. His appearance will coincide with a CATNeT kickoff event showing off a CATNeT computer lab and new computer recycling program, and generating publicity for the program. CATNeT is also preparing for its first "field demonstration" at one of Toledos many spring and summer festivals, to recruit volunteers and generate publicity.

COMPARING THE CASES

We will compare these two cases using the collaborative research, popular education, and community-based planning literatures.

In the last few years, a push has been underway to enhance the relevance of universities to communities and non-profit organizations that have not benefited from higher education resources (see for example, Nyden and Wiewal, 1992; Nyden et al., 1997; Marullo, 1996). University professors talk about poverty in the classroom, but very few actually touch it in the real world. At the same time, those who experience such problems on a daily basis don't have access to the theories that can help develop strategies for attacking their root causes. When only community members have the experience, and only academics have the theories, both forms of knowledge are weakened. "Service learning," "participatory education," "action research," "participatory research," "collaborative research," and many similar program all have a central value: the need for academics and members of poor, disinvested, or otherwise neglected communities to engage in joint projects for the solution of social problems. This means engaging community members in defining the research question, developing the research methodology, compiling and distributing the research report, and acting on the results (Hall, 1992; Stoecker and Bonacich, 1992; Petras and Porpora, 1993, Stringer, 1996). This model produces programs that are more sensitive to the needs of poor communities. It recognizes that poor communities not only have needs, but also have resources to build on (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993). It emphasizes solving social problems by focusing on decision-making input processes, not just program outcomes. When the research subjects are full partners they have a sense of ownership over the research process, and contribute more extensive and more accurate data (Plaut, Landis, and Trevor, 1992; Gaventa, 1991). This model also recognizes that grass roots participants and researchers each bring expertise to the table and that the inclusion of everyone's expertise in the research process ultimately produces not only more useful research but more accurate research.

The popular education (sometimes also referred to as adult education) literature is very closely related to participatory research. Popular education, following the teachings of Paulo Freire and Myles Horton (Horton and Friere, 1990), focuses on building a community-based education process that empowers people. The goal is not to teach, but to facilitate self-learning (Williams, 1996). Probably the most famous U.S. example of popular education has been conducted through the Highlander Research and Education Center. Shortly before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, she had participated in a Highlander workshop on implementing the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision. The experience she had at Highlander was one of the most important factors in giving her the power to stay in her bus seat that day in Montgomery (Glen, 1988). The popular education model emphasizes that everyone has something to learn and something to teach, and that the process of learning is as important as the product of learning.

The community-based planning literature is very similar to the first two, except that it focuses on how community plans are created through a participatory process. The popularity of neighborhood planning increased through the 1980s, and continues to be popular (Rohe and Gates, 1985; Jones, 1990). In community-based planning, community members literally sit down and construct their own plans for their own community. The planning process is designed to be an empowerment process (Reardon, n.d.). In the case of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis, residents color coded model houses, moved them around, and changed streets all on a big map of their neighborhood (Stoecker, 1994). While the focus of community-based planning is on land-use planning, any planning process can be based on this model.

These models help establish standards against which we can compare these two cases. First, to what extent have the information gathering processes been participatory--how much did each project involve end users in gathering information to serve the project? Second, to what extent have people developed knowledge of the Internet through an empowerment-based education process? Third, to what extent have the plans that each of these projects produced been participatory and reflect the diversity of members in each case?

In both cases the research processes were quite participatory. The UUNN process was explicitly developed around a collaborative research model. Core groups paid careful attention especially to survey development in each city. Academics were truly learners in this process, and we learned as much through the core group meetings as through the survey. For example, in the core group meetings we learned that a very important barrier to NBO use of the Internet was the lack of time to get training and the lack of convenient access to technical assistance. Even after multiple redrafts of the survey, we did not capture that need. It was only when we were writing up the survey results and the core groups were discussing the results that everyone began talking about the crucial need for training and technical assistance.

Collaborative research is an organizing process. Both the most important and the most difficult thing about this kind of research is the two agendas it serves. One goal of the research is to produce knowledge. But an equally important goal is to bring people together. In both cases, the research brought people into the planning process. The UUNN made the longest strides with a participatory research process, partly because UUNN participants were so isolated from each other, spread across seven cities and involving them all in the research process was not easy. NBO members in most cities were intimately involved in the research process. Even in CATNet, people who would otherwise never had a reason to work together found themselves around the table together building the research outline. The early survey of public housing residents organized by Vistula Management conformed most closely to a participatory model. Vistula staff at each site, who already knew residents, organized each complex to do its own survey, directly involving residents in the process. The later CATNeT research was much more constrained by the looming TIIAP grant deadline. Randy's inexperience with using "service learning" (Marullo, 1996) in a collaborative research setting also made the process less participatory. The CATNeT working groups came up with research ideas, and in some cases outlines, for the research, but graduate students actually conducted the research and wrote up the results, and Randy sent a summary of them to Angela to incorporate into the grant proposal. Community-based participants outlined the basic research process through the working groups, but were cut out of a final review of the research results incorporated into the proposal and were not involved in conducting the research.

The quality of community-based education was probably comparable in each case. In both projects we conducted a number of hands-on Internet immersion sessions. In the case of CATNeT, which occurred later, we knew much more about what we were doing and thus may have been more effective. We organized two main UUNN training sessions, one at each statewide meeting. Both were immersion experiences--putting people in front of computers and helping them learn how to browse the web. The most successful of these experiences was during our May 1996 statewide meeting where we had four laptop computers with Internet hookups available for people to use when they took breaks from the two-day meeting. Our hope was that these experiences would help people participate in designing a UUNN program to get NBOs Internet access, because it would give them at least alittle exposure to the Internet. The UUNN training sessions were all conducted as part of larger meetings rather than as separate events. The first CATNeT Internet training session was also part of a larger meeting and was probably more focused than the UUNN trainings, organized to show people what was possible with a community network (using Philadelphias LibertyNet as our example). One example of the sense of empowerment participants felt was that they requested second and third CATNeT training sessions. Angela was unsure of how to organize these sessions but the participants ended up leading both sessions by asking questions and learning computer usage and the Internet through simply working with the computers.

If it is community-based planning success that is being compared, CATNeT clearly comes out ahead, but mostly because the planning the UUNN did in May of 1996 disintegrated through the loss of key figures and the passage of time and lack of communication exacerbated by a loss of funding. The UUNN actually had a fairly detailed plan for helping NBOs get Internet access, but the passage of time and turnover of members meant that the plans (which included both hardware and training as goals) were all but forgotten by the time it came time to write the TIIAP grant. Even if the UUNN could have moved directly into implementation, however, its planning process was weak. The UUNN planning process occurred in a "charrette" format over two days. The CATNeT process used a five-month planning process fitting much more closely with the community-based planning model. CATNeT had the advantage of being locally based. Gathering people was easier and cheaper with CATNeT than with the UUNN. Public housing managers, disabled service providers, people with disabilities, public housing residents, senior citizens, computer experts, grant writing experts, and a variety of others were brought together by the planning processThe CATNeT working group model allowed the large number of people involved to all participate in the creation of the CATNeT mission and goals. John, Randy, and Angela created a list of tasks for the working groups. Tasks included listing goals, means to achieve the goals, research needs and community members we should involve in CATNeT. Each working group, consisting of between 3 and 8 people, discussed each of the tasks and wrote down the consensus of their group. After the meetings, Angela typed up the working groups results. The steering committee (consisting of 1 member from each group) discussed the similarities and differences between the groups and asked the groups for clarification. The process then began again at the next general CATNeT meeting with additional tasks and clarification requests from the steering committee. This process did not work perfectly--some groups repeated themselves and others changed ideas as their members changed--but it did insure full participation by the CATNeT members.

If we compare the historical trajectories of these two efforts, it is very clear that as CATNeT became more unified and developed a clearer vision, the UUNN became more splintered and lost its clarity of vision. Diversity was more divisive in the UUNN than in CATNeT. While the debate over whether to emphasize computer recycling or training and technical assistance was very destructive in the UUNN, a debate over whether to concentrate on organizing CATNeT as an Internet Service Provider was not divisive, resolved through careful data gathering and discussion. There are crucial differences between CATNeT and the UUNN that can help explain their differing trajectories. First, the UUNN is a network dependent on the participation of academics. Academics are not used to working in democratic settings and are not used to working on strict deadlines. They are also, for the most part, unfamiliar with the literature and the practice of collaborative research. As a consequence, the UUNN has had trouble with academics either not following through or not attending to the importance of relationship building and participation at the grassroots. CATNeT has had only one academic, Randy, participating. Furthermore, Randy has taken a facilitation role but not a leadership role in CATNeT. Leadership has been in the hands of Angela, John Kiely, and the steering committee.

Second, CATNeT's location in Toledo makes face to face meetings much easier. As a consequence of having relatively frequent face to face meetings, it is much easier to build relationships that can withstand controversies and setbacks. In the UUNN, distance, and the lack of funding that can help overcome the disadvantages of distance, has maintained isolation of people in one city from people in the other cities. As a consequence, what unity we had the first year disintegrated under funding decline. Funding decline has even hurt the maintenance of relationships in individual cities, as academics in at least three cities have not had time to use local core groups for local program building. There are exceptions to this, of course, as at least three cities have developed their own momentum in developing university-community partnerships around computer recycling and community network development.

The effects of academic influence and distance can be seen most clearly in CATNeT's and the UUNN's differing responses to the TIIAP deadline. While CATNeT has come through the TIIAP pressure with a program kickoff planned regardless of the success of the TIIAP grant, the UUNN has been brought to the brink of collapse under the pressure and the internal conflicts the TIIAP deadline caused. Unity broke down almost completely, and even the original mission of the UUNN, "to collectively provide tools for the betterment of neighborhoods and their residents," was replaced by some with a mission to get computers. There was nothing contradictory about the two different visions in the UUNN for the TIIAP proposal (building a community network and getting computers to NBOs). The problem was identifying and trying to combine those two visions at the very last minute because the UUNN had inadequate communication and planning processes. CATNeT was able to continuously incorporate diversity over a five month period leading up to the TIIAP grant and was planning for such a deadline from the beginning. The UUNN only really began working toward TIIAP in earnest a few weeks before the deadline. TIIAP has been a secondary concern for CATNeT, while it became the primary focus for the UUNN.

CONCLUSION

Is it possible or even desirable to attempt to do collaborative work across large distances? The lessons, so far, of the UUNN and CATNeT indicate that attempting to do participatory research, popular education, and community-based planning across large distances requires a high level of funding and a radically decentralized structure. The UUNN has helped build strong local processes in at least three cities where the core group has taken charge of the local process. It is only on those strong local foundations that something like the UUNN can be built, however. Something like the UUNN that is built as a statewide, regional, or national network will not be community-based and will not be participatory. Only a network that is built on strong locally-based networks can have those characteristics. And only a network that has those characteristics can gain legitimacy and sustain itself.

Of course, the question could be asked if it is necessary to have so much participation and whether any network is better than no network. Our response to this is that for a network to have any influence, it needs to have a real base. Academics lack cultural legitimacy both in poor communities and among power holders. If all you want to do is write research reports and testify in front of legislators, then no community base is necessary. If you actually want to change the conditions of power, then you have to build grass-roots relationships and grass-roots mobilization. A statewide network will have little influence unless it can back up its statements with many voices who can hold together when the going gets rough. Ultimately, those voices have to be brought together in local settings.

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