NETREACH
by Peter Wingfield-Stratford


NetReach is the main organization for British microcomputer users who are interested in networking. NetReach was founded within the Association of London Computer Clubs in 1984 by Len Stuart and Sabine Kurjo following a meeting organized by Jennifer Weller at the Information center at Sutton Public Library. We are a part of the National Association of Computer Clubs, which now includes over 800 user groups nationwide.

NetReach isn't a conference on a computer system although we are busy on many conference systems. People on the networks we use may know us by various names because we are a collection of individuals sharing and making use of pooled resources. So we are all about networking, as much between people as between computers. Perhaps we are the human interface!


NetReach Activities
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Visitors are welcome to our regular evening meetings which take place in London on the second Thursday and fourth Friday of the month. NetReachers get involved in anything helping to promote the public awareness of using microcomputers by networking. We hold meetings that are a mixture of practical workshop and opportunity for debates or talks by specialists in different topics. Members can try out a variety of microcomputers, communications software, and modems; make use of large and small online computer databases, electronic mail, and electronic publishing. We have collective facilities on network systems worldwide. This group includes some of the most experienced people in this technology, with collectively more experience on more networks and database systems than any other group in Western Europe.

NetReachers also go out to demonstrate networking on the club stands at public exhibitions, in private meetings, to businesses, to schools, and to groups among all parts of society. We foster the new association of operators of (British) bulletin board systems and ourselves operate three microcomputer conferencing, or bulletin-board database services. The group recently got a minicomputer which we plan to use as a large-capacity, multiuser database conferencing system open to the voluntary sector and the public.

Members seek to interest and influence the authorities and information providers in ways that will open up networks and data services to the public simply and at the lowest possible user cost.


NetReach and International Networking
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We have an active interest group that is exploring ways to use the networks worldwide for promoting peace, education, and topics dealing with international development. This began with Sabine Kurjo working on an EIES account and has spread there via the World Peace Network, Computers for (International) Development, CARINET (see article in this issue of NETWEAVER), Computers in Education, and EIES for the Handicapped. Various NetReachers follow their personal stars roving worldwide this way.


Distant Learning Exchange Experiment
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Using the EIES system, NetReach has provided communications links for an experiment in "Distant Learning". This was an educational exchange from an elementary school in Kensington, London, to other schools in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. In the summer of 1985 there were interactions between teachers and pupils of many cultures with the U.S. "Network Nation School". A feature of interest was the computerized "Doomsday Project" involving 13,000 schools in Britain. NetReach keeps close contacts with the Information Technology development group of the Inner London Education Authority (for Schools) and with the Times Network for Schools. Schoolwork exchanges are also taking place, reaching even to Australia.


NetReach and the United Nations
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NetReachers have also been involved providing technical and organizational support for a para-official project of the United Nations to provide training in computer literacy, the International Youth Year Pilot Training Program, PTP 2001. This will bring trainees from developing countries to Vienna in 1986 where they will participate in a training workshop with microcomputers and learn use of satellite telecommunications. The trainees will return to their countries with equipment and access to the World Satellite Network. They will then be enabled to train others and build people-links to a worldwide network of help.

This incredible project has been almost entirely organized by networking on EIES. The PTP Team and NetReach have demonstrated some of the power available to voluntary effort, helping coordinate international aid projects working together with networks and a conferencing system. We have also found out some of the drawbacks! They turn out to be just the same as in everyday living.

NetReach has helped publicize PTP 2001 and find participants by sending invitations to many contacts in countries and regions including Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Algeria, the Middle East, and various parts of the Caribbean. A few minor problems of financing capital equipment and of organization remain to be solved. Public support from individuals and corporations in the U.S.A. and elsewhere is very welcome.

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Author's note: P.M.D. Wingfield-Stratford is a member of
NetReach and can be reached at Wingfield Research, 28 Lansdowne
Road, Holland Park, LONDON W11 3LL United Kingdom, (Tel. (01)
229-9544) as well as via NetReach's EIES account 620.