The Transformative Vision of Dave Hughes
An Interview by Gordon Cook


Introduction
============

In April of this year I was fortunate enough to visit Dave
Hughes on his home turf in Old Colorado City. Now while I have
been a follower of Dave's stories since early 1981, at breakfast
the first morning, Dave told me a new one which in many ways was
the most inspiring of all. It is the story of how he got
started in a new career after retiring from the command of Fort
Carson in the early 1970s. It is the story of one man acting as
a catalyst to affect an entire community--one man who knows how
to listen and lead better than most. It is the story of politics
and money being used to benefit many people rather than a select
few. It reflects a vision that the Democratic Party should be
expressing on a national level, but isn't. Finally it
emphasizes the importance of listening to problems as one's
first step and reflecting on the application of the appropriate
technology to the solution of those problems only as a second
step.

Seeing how the pieces fit together and walking down the
picturesque four-block-long section of Old Colorado Avenue that
is framed by the majestic snowy crown of Pike's Peak eight
thousand feet above and perhaps 15 miles away as the crow flies,
I was deeply moved. Where else could an easterner walking
through the main street of the "wrong" side of the tracks of a
city of 400,000, enter a shop and say to a total stranger: "Hi,
I'm here visiting Dave Hughes!" and get instant smiles and warm
reminiscences about how the combination of leadership and
technology returned to a decaying part of town, the ability to
become a community and take control of its own future?

Excited and inspired, I said to Dave how could you have told me
all this without a tape recorder? I badgered him without mercy,
until on the last day of my stay, he relented and repeated the
tale again, on tape in Roger's Bar. Herewith is the transcript
of Dave's recollection of the project that got him going down
the road where he has met so many of us. It embodies so well,
his metaphor for what he is doing when he says: "like Voltaire's
Candide, I have retired to cultivate my own backyard and enrich
my own community. Only I use a microprocessor as my hoe and a
modem as my wheelbarrow!"

It's time to let Dave speak.

Old Colorado City History
=========================

Here we are with Gordon Cook in what is now world famous
Roger's Bar. To understand about revitalization of Old Colorado
City, you must understand the context. Colorado City was
founded, as a gold rush town, right here at the base of Pike's
peak, on Ute Pass, the only way to get to the mountains between
Denver and Pueblo. However they didn't find any gold short of
Fair Play which is over 100 miles away. Now in the 1850s this
was part of the Kansas Territory and the 25,000 people who went
out here in the gold rush of 1859 had problems with land
claims. When you bought a lot, you had to go 600 miles back to
Kansas City to record the deed. So the El Paso Claims Club was
founded. The Club was a group of businessmen substituting for
government. They ran the town, hung horse thieves and recorded
deeds. After a few years, the club began to lobby along with
Denver to create a new territory which would be called
Colorado. The Club was successful and Colorado City also
outhustled Denver to become the first capital of the territory.

However, when the Civil War broke out, because no gold had been
found nearby, the town had begun to die. The wagon trains no
longer came up from the south. But Gilpin, a fellow West
Pointer, at the little Gettysburg of the West in 1862, using a
draft on the federal treasury in Denver, raised the Colorado
territorial militia which marched 96 miles in 36 hours over
Raton pass and kicked the hell out of 4,000 Texas Confederates
who didn't know whether they were Texans or Confederates.
Despite his acheivement, Gilpin was in for a surprise, the
drafts he drew were refused by the Treasury in Washington. As a
result the businessmen in Denver got Lincoln to fire Gilpin for
political expediency. Then Evans of Evans Illinois sent his
hoods down here in 1862 and stole the capital away from Colorado
City. Without gold and without travels, it almost died. But
farmers from the south taught the easterners how to irrigate and
kept the town alive as a little agricultural community.

After the Civil War General Palmer, with yuppies from the East
and people from England came out here and founded Colorado
Springs (where their ain't no Springs) right next to Colorado
City. He then reached over and created Manitou Springs on the
other side so that the rich ladies of the East would use his
railroad, the Denver and Rio Grande, to come out and take the
waters. At this point Colorado City gained a sort of second
breath and it's inhabitants became the iron workers and stone
cutters, the working class for the "upscale" developments under
way on either side of them.

Twenty years later, one of the characters of the town was Bob
Womack who could, while riding his horse at a dead gallop,
snatch a whiskey bottle from the ground on Colorado Avenue out
there Now Bob knew there was gold in Cripple Creek up near the
top of Pike's Peak. But no one would believe him, because you
see the know-it-alls are always down town in the Springs. They
wear suits and ties and are highly educated. But the real
people who were in Colorado City were a lot more practical and
smart.

Finally some folk investigated, found Womack right and the
great Cripple Creek gold rush began. It lasted from 1891 until
1915 as the greatest gold camp in the world with 50,000 people.
The problem was you couldn't get there in one jump. You had to
change railroads in Maintou Springs. Colorado springs was dry.
So everyone came out here to Colorado City as the jumping off
spot for Cripple Creek. You had 21 saloons in a row on the
south side of Colorado Avenue out there. You had the only
morality play which I know of in the 900 ghost towns in Colorado
in which the dividing line between good and evil ran right down
the middle of main street. The red light district was also on
the south side of the street and tunnels were built so that the
"decent" men of Colorado City could slip across without being
seen walking across the street. It was during this era that
these Victorian brick buildings were built as this became the
democratic and union side of town.

Furthermore a lot of the the people from Cripple Creek moved
down here because you had to roast the ore to drive off the
sulpher so that the cyanide would work. The coal to do the
roasting was up toward where the Air Force Academy now is. So
the smart thing to do was bring the ore down from the mountain
rather than the coal up. So consequently Colorado City became
the great golden Mill town, adding mill workers to the railroad
workers already here.

----

1973-1975
Running an Information Age Business
===================================



From running my information age business, Enjoy Colorado, I had
come to know this history. I knew what people wanted: history
and a flavor of the West. I sold knowledge about Colorado and
started by asking people what THEY wanted to know about the
state. They want to see the Rockies, and so you give them a
brochure and they come out and "see" the Rockies. But if you
ask them carefully you find out that their dog had a cardiac,
and they don't want to go over any passes higher than 8,000
feet, and if they are a German family, they want one kind of
discipline, while if they are a scientist from Sandia Labs they
want something entirely different. Well I could give them
answers to any question. For example, if the wife were
handicapped, precisely where on the south rim of the Back canyon
of the Gunnison they could stop their care and let her see clear
to the bottom without getting out. That precise. Got it?

So in 1973 I opened a company where I sold people my
knowledge. I charged for time and materials. Within my little
company I went out and learned 100% of the state. I can put you
within ten meters of any boulder and tell you what kind of rock
it is. And the question is do you want to fish or catch fish?
There's a big difference. So we determined what people wanted
at a psychological experiential level. I was running a pure
information store. We file everything in the state by place and
time, including duration. To give you an example, in 1976 for
the bicentennial I organized a climb of all the 55 14,000 foot
peaks in the state. All 55 peaks were climbed simultaneously by
645 people in 100 climbing parties during the worst storm we
ever had. I arrived on the top of my peak with Senator Gary
Hart within 15 minutes of my predicted time.

I kept seeing this repeated theme. Everyone who comes to
Colorado is looking for the possibility of moving here because
it's the great western experience, where one can live in the
great outdoors, in a community with some character to it and do
business and be successful. For example one man wanted to
travel through towns with no more than one accountant per every
thousand of population, because he was an accountant and was
looking for an opportunity to move. I had to unearth as my
capital knowledge of Colorado. Of course my business theory was
kind of "kooky" because in most companies you start out in the
field and you work your way to the main office and then you
spend all your time earning money so that you can go the hell
back out in the field and vacation. In Enjoy Colorado, it was
the opposite. The chairman of the board, namely me, spent all
his time out in the field experiencing Colorado, while you had
to start in the central office, learning the files and the
information and then once you got good, we'd risk you in the
field.

1976-1981
Developing and Executing a Revitalization Plan
==============================================

So underneath the grime of old Colorado City and its 6,000
households in 12 square miles, I knew what was going on.
Colorado Springs was so dumb meanwhile that it had destroyed its
downtown. Damned dumb easterners come out here and they repeat
the East. They tear down the downtown and urban "renewalize"
everything and destroy its charm. As a result, not only was
there no historical downtown, but Manitou Springs had turned
into tickey tackey tourism as well. It seemed to me that here
was an opportunity to revitalize a commercial district and
essentially create a win-win situation for everyone.

What was the city's interest? The city of Colorado Springs had
to do something because the tax base was declining. The
delivery of municipal services to this side of town was starting
to cost the city more than what it was delivering to the city in
terms of sales taxes and property taxes. Furthermore jobs were
declining. So the city was willing to come out here and do
something, but it only had two ideas. Urban renewal. Slash
burn and let someone invest some money on the good old
Republican trickle down theory. Or noblesse oblige. Charles
Dickens all over. Pat the poor folk on the head and give them a
little welfare.

But west siders were proud people. Surplus City was a
million-dollar-a-year venture employing 30 people. That wasn't
a bad business. Nevertheless on January 1, 1976 you had 8
linear blocks, 98 buildings 45% vacant. You could rent any
building for $2.50 a square foot and you could buy any building
for 10 dollars a square foot. Sixty-two businesses with with
362 employees were doing $2.5 million retail sales per year.
There were only two eating places in the whole area.

So I took a look at it and said "wait a minute. This is a
capital short state. All the capital has been extracted and
shipped back East. Nevertheless, people move here and want to
go into business for themselves. They want to get away from big
business and big government. They have a good business idea
but, as a consequence of the lack of capital, the bank makes
them put so damn much down that they don't have enough for
operational expenses. So six months later they go under and we
all stand around and say 'small business is unsound.'"

Then I began to read David Birch of MIT who was pointing out
that our biggest increase of jobs would come from businesses of
under twenty employees. So I said "if the future is in small
business in terms of leveraging jobs and if the city wanted only
three things: removal of slum and blight, an increase in the
tax base, and additional jobs, what could I do?" Well I
treated the city as an investor in the west side entitled to a
return on their investment of what they asked for. Then I
looked at the people and asked "what do they want? Capital to go
into their own small business." And I looked at the people who
lived here and visited here. What do they want? They don't
want to come all the way to Colorado, look up at Pike's Peak and
see a shopping mall, and they also don't want tickey tacky
tourism because it doesn't wear well. So I asked: "Was there
any reason we couldn't have small business to bring back Old
Colorado City without making it too upscale and gentrifying it
and driving out the old timers?" I wanted a place in my front
yard I could be happy with.

What I did was intervene in the process and simply went up and
down the street and talked to business people because I knew one
thing from my federal background. You cannot spend federal
dollars without talking to the citizens. It is required by law.
I recruited the local business people who were already here:
Clark Service Station here 50 years. Kenny Limmens who had
bought the Matress factory. (He paid 30 thousand for it. He
now wants 300,000.) Gene Brent the character down here who ran
the gun shop. So we got together and resuscitated the West
Colorado Springs Commercial Club. The result was a citizens'
group made up of the new and the old businesses out here which
could talk to other entities with a united voice.

I sat down and studied the thing and listened very carefully to
what people wanted. And good ideas came from the people. And
then I looked around and found this SBA 502 program. A Small
Business Administration Program that in 1976 said this: If you
form in a community a non-profit economic development company
and if it can come up with 20% of the capital needed for the
fixed capital assets of a business, then it, the SBA, would
guarantee any financial institution like a bank that made the
loan 90% of the remaining 80% out to a limit of $500,000 for
twenty years.

But since capital was short where was the first 20% going to
come from? The allure was fantastic because I could see that if
we set up such an instrument where the SBA would guarantee a
bank 90% of the first 80% AND could find ANOTHER way of
providing the remaining 20%, then people in Colorado Springs who
couldn't borrow there to set up their own business, will come
out here because we have financing. And then I did something
really new. No one had ever used federal block-grant monies to
cities as the first 20%. Even the SBA assumed that you were
going to go get a bunch of businessmen to put it up. But in a
place that's flat on its ass, the businessmen don't have any
money to put up -- another stupid federal assumption, as a
result of which SBA 502 had never worked properly. Therefore we
got the city to loan, through the development company, the
first 20% of the capital taken from its Federal block grant
funds.

Now lets take one example. Suppose you wanted to open a
restaurant and you had both some operating capital, maybe 10 or
15 thousand dollars, and the ability to run a restaurant. Well
we took this data and in early 1978 put it on a Radio Shack
Model 1 microcomputer running visicalc and looked at projections
on this early computerized spreadsheet. Well if the projections
made sense, then we could figure the loan to buy the building
for 50,000, improvements to the building at 25,000 and heavy
kitchen equipment at another 25,000. You needed 100 thousand
but only had 10 or 15 and none of what you did have could be
spared for fixed capital investment.

Well the city, through the development company would loan you
20,000 dollars at 8% interest for 20 years and take a second
mortgage on the property. Then we had no trouble finding banks
willing to loan you 80,000 dollars because the SBA is
guaranteeing 90% of it and the damned bank turns around and
sells the loan on the secondary market and makes points to
boot. It's risking only 10%, so when you take the points and
add it to the interest that they are going to charge, it comes
out to about 30% interest on what's at risk. Not because they
are great bankers, but because they are making money, the banks
were happy. And so by helping the banks make money we helped
their self-interest. And meanwhile YOU got 100% of 100,000
dollars on a long term loan.

However if you wanted to borrow the money from us, you had to
fix up the exterior of the building to go along with the
architectural theme of the history of Old Colorado City. And
then we turned around and got the city to pay for the
architectural rendering out of the money that was for the
project. Even if your deal didn't go through, the building
didn't change and the drawing could be used for the first loan
on the building that did sucede. And the drawings were done by
an architect in town. It was just an elevation drawing done on
the exterior of the building. So you got 100,000 dollars and
architectural assistance.

While all this was going on, I spent my time not only putting
all this stuff together but also telling you about the history
of the place. When Whitey Pine down here bought the old
building that was really ratty, as a result of my immersing him
in it, he respected the history of the area and he named his
restaurant Thunder and Buttons after the two elk that carried
Laua Belle, the Queen of the Red Light district, thundering down
into Colorado Springs. The horses carrying the fine ladies of
Wood Avenue would smell those rangy elk, bolt, and dump their
ladies in the street and the police would arrest Prarie Dog and
Laura Belle who would walk all the way back trailing their gowns
in the middle of the street...... By telling these tales, I was
bringing the real true history was back as a function of small
business investment.

But one of the businessmen said "if I fix up my building, my
taxes will go up." Well we told him "it's in the interest of
the state of Colorado that you fix up your building, so if they
don't raise your taxes for a period of 5 years when you do it,
will you fix it up?"

"Well you can't do that!"

"Want to bet?"

"Well you've got a deal buddy." And in Old Colorado City a
deal's a deal. You're a dead man hung from a tree if you break
your word.

So we had to convince the legislature. Well nothing helps like
a little morality play. We formed outside the old log cabin
out there and had Gene Brent fire in the air with his Colt 44.
We had citizens around. The press was there. Michael Garman,
who makes the porcellan statutes that go to the White House and
everywhere else, was there on his horse. We wrote a petition:

We the hard working, vote-casting people of Old Colorado City
which was once the capital of the state before it went to Denver
where Colorado government has gone down hill ever since, invite
the legislature to come down here and reenact its first five
days. We then clattered off down the street and two days later
road up the steps of the capital in Denver and called out to the
Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, and handed
them the petition. Well, a week later the House and the Senate
adjourned and came to Colorado City in a melodrama to reenact
the early days. Everyone had fun and we had a parade for the
first time in years. (The parade is now an annual event. It's
called territory days, every year at the end of May.)

Then we walked the legislators up the street and said we want a
tax law that says if you fix up a building more than 30 years,
old historical or otherwise, that you don't pay increased taxes
for five years. The guys from Grand Junction and Grand Lake
and Denver said: "you know, that would work in our town too."
The legislation was passed and I went back and said fix your
dang building up. You don't have to pay increased taxes for 5
years! He swallowed his cud and sold his building and the guy
who bought it from him fixed it up.

-----

The Transformative Vision of Dave Hughes
An Interview by Gordon Cook
Part 3

Economic Outcomes and Impact of the Microcomputer
=================================================

The thing took off like a shot. We made 55 loans. The city's
never lost a cent, not one penny even though some of the
businesses haven't worked. The last time I checked the 98
buildings are 95% occupied. The empty ones are only empty in
transit to new businesses. You had all the restoration done and
the area declared a National Historic District. I had to fly
back to Washington and put a boot up the ass of the Feds because
they said: "oh this isn't elegant enough." I said: "this is
Main Street Buddy.," and in order to find out how to work with
Washington I began to use telecommunications.

In the meantime this was a small organization that I was
heading up. Small organizations have the problem of having
either a director or a secretary, but seldom both until they get
pretty big. In outfits without a secretary the board has to do
too much. Well I brought my first computer in Radio Shack in
1977 two months after it came out. I brought it over here and
I was able to run the Commercial Club and keep track of every
building and every floor and so on with a little database.

I simply stole the management ideas from shopping centers which
offer centralized management in return for some of the gross to
pay for public improvements like parking. The city was putting
in the public improvements. But I had to coordinate it, to tie
it together. We expressed our political clout through the Board
of Directors of the Commercial Club who were all businessmen.
This by-passed and out-flanked the bureaucrats. So every time
THEY tried to give us a hard time, we'd go right over their head
to the city council.

You must also understand that when the city came out here, part
of the money was spent on the amenities necessary to make the
place go. Parking lots, behind the buildings, and pawnbroker
lights that you see up and down both sides of the street that
further help to unify the diverse character of the buildings.
And that was about two million dollars of federal money. The
question becomes whose going to take care of it. Well in most
of these communities you end up trying to do a mall type
approach. Often you take the approach that the adjacent
property owner's responsible. But in a mall, if a light in a
public area burns out you can be assured that mall management
will fix that thing NOW! You've got the security question
also. But the mall also provides for this.

Well again I just stole their idea. When the city wanted to
put meters in he parking lots, I said "wait a minute. We just
spent all this money to put up free parking lots to compete with
the malls and now you want to put meters in them?"

"Well we've got to have money for maintenance."

"So you've got a revenue problem, you DON'T have a meter
problem. So let's back up and lets create something new. Lets
create the Old Colorado City Maintenance and Security District."

There had never been one before under state law which thought
only in terms of capitol improvement districts. So we
researched it and had a board of advisors to the city council
created to be a feedback loop to this district once the tax was
levied. We established the idea that you had to have the
approval of 51% of the property owners before the city can
impose an improvement district of any type. I said I will
deliver the signatures necessary if you don't screw the
businessmen by trying to make them pay back the 2.5 million in
physical improvements.

Then we had the ultilities people and parks people come up with
a good estimate of what it would cost to maintain the eight
square blocks of improvements, the pawnbroker lights and the
electricity they use, snow removal in the winter and so on.
Well a good $50,000 bucks a year. So I sat down with my model 1
and using a spreadsheet took the total assessed valuation of the
seven square blocks and the mills valuation of each building as
a percent of the total. I divided it into 50,000 to get the
dollars and then converted that back into mills of tax increase
and came to the conclusion that a 38 mill property tax increase
would pay for the district. Furthermore, since the last block
wasn't done yet, the base would go up while the millage would go
down and might flatten out at 25 in the future. But how to talk
small businessmen into agreeing to what amounted to a 40% rise
in their total property taxes?

Well I took my computer and converted it into dollars and cents
for services rendered per month. For example Herb Parry had
come into see me and said "Gee Dave I am going to hire an off
duty policeman to rattle my door at night and it's only going to
cost me $50 a month." I said "Herb take a look at these
figures. If you buy them not only will you get the security of
the rattled door, but also you will have a free but controlled
parking lot behind, and snow removal, and the pawnbroker lights,
and it will only cost you $23 22 per month."

"Well what if it costs $60,000?"

I did the what if on my spread sheet and it came back with
something like $27.50. So the what if gave him the confidence
and he signed the petition. Seventy percent of all the property
owners of Old Colorado City signed my petition to raise their
taxes by 40%! It's working well, especially with our board of
advisors watching to see that the city doesn't pull any
shenanigans.

We took care never to ask for anything that the city shouldn't
want to do. What we did take care was to tell the city HOW to do
what was already in its own best self interest. We had better
ideas and a working concept that highly-paid planners developers
did NOT have.

Using National Telecom to Expand the Beginnings
===============================================

When the Source first existed, I was having to fight some of
the big boys downtown who suddenly didn't like this because it
was getting popular. Little business people were coming out
here and pulling up their bootstraps with a public-private
partnership while the downtown had fallen flat on its ass. The
big "studds" couldn't make downtown go. Urban renewal had come
in and torn down the buildings and the ground was still flat 10
years afterwards. There was a lot a jealousy and to make this
thing work. I had to basically be a Lone Ranger out here doing
things for the local businessmen who otherwise would have been
retaliated against by the local power structure because we were
making the economy work WITHOUT the power structure. And his
REALLY bothered some heavy weights in town who weren't as smart
as they think are. Some men have grown up in this town, made a
million dollars and couldn't do it again if their lives depended
on it because they have confused what God gave this place,
called Pike's Peak, with their business sense, OK? And they
aren't as smart as they think they are.

But neither was I because I didn't know how to do this
completely. I had some concepts and activism and understood
these themes but the nitty gritty was tricky. I didn't know the
SBA and historic preservation that well. So I got on the Source
when it first came out and I asked questions because I
understood that the Source had a whole bunch of professional
people on it. I wasn't getting good answers. So I said well
what's exciting about this place? And the answer of course was
obvious the history. So I started telling stories. I can write
a little bit so I told stories of the area and of Colorado City
in particular.

For example the glass factory right across from here was
co-ventured by Jerome Wheeler of Aspen fame, General Adams of
the Meeker Massacre fame and a man named Adolph Bush. Well one
night three doors down here Bush came in downstairs in the
Templeton Building, where my office is now, and Dr Winterness of
the old Winterness family was upstairs and somebody went in to
say Mr. Bush would like to see you downstairs and he went
downstairs. Bush confronted him because he was angry about
what the good Dr had put on the death certificate his daughter
who died from suspicious circumstances. Bush shot the Dr. but
didn't kill him. Well this was the very same Bush who went on
to found Budweisser.

So when I would tell these stories on the Source to pick the
brains of people on how to do it. I would tell stories, and
gather a crowd and then out in this crowd would be engineers,
lawyers and so on. I'd ask questions of my crowd and they would
tell me about this contact or that agency in Washington. But at
the same time the Source was the perfect place to develop my own
ideas of the use of it to do such things as electronic
publishing, and education when I taught the first class for
college credit over the Source in 1981. Then I realized that
this use of telecommunications could become the basis for people
who could move here and go not into retail or service but into
information age businesses. But in the meantime the problem is
still the chronic underemployment.

Well we solved the problem of investment and we solved the
problem of small business. In fact I'll give you the hard
numbers. By 1984 Old Colorado City had gone from 2.5 million
to 20 million in retail sales and from 62 businesses of which
half were really marginal to 180 businesses with not a single
business coming in from an out of state headquarters. We
created 500 new jobs at a capital cost of 5,000 dollars per
job. We put people in the ownership position of their own
business and the city never lost a cent. Why? Because when an
occasional business failed, and the property was passed on, with
values going up it was always passed on at a higher price than
that for which the loan was made. We didn't finance real estate
speculators because for the building to qualify for the loan,
classed as business capital equipment, you had to occupy at
least 51% of the ground floor. We did the historic preservation
because it was good business to do so.

Not a single condemnation of a single building under the police
powers of colorado springs took place. There was not a single
ordinance passed telling what you couldn't do in historic
preservation because the community worked. It worked because we
made the economy work in everyone's best interest. And finally
the increased sales tax from the city is paying off in ten years
100% of all the federal money involved. This is one half the
time of the scheduled 20 year loans. We did what government is
supposed to do in economic development with no bullshit and we
did it for a lot of little people not a few fat cats. And I'm
damn proud of the way it was done because it blew virtually
every theory out the door that you've got to go outside the
state to get an investor, that its got to be big business and
not small, that everything should be trickle down. There's not
a keystone business there.

So round about 1983 I said ok I have worked long enough and
hard enough and you business people can take care of yourselves
now. Now I am going to add personally the third level of
economics: retail on the first floor, service on the second
floor, and pure information business on the third floor. I did
this by setting up my own bulletin board called the Old Colorado
City Electronic Cottage and putting on it politics called
Roger's Bar because this is the place where west siders have
always discussed democratic politics. It will become a metaphor
for the virtual community that reflects the real community.

Then I stepped back a little, and these little west siders whom
you wouldn't think had two nickles to rub together loved it so
much that one of them left us $110,000. We're going to use it
to set up a museum, maybe in the church that's next to my house
over here right across from Bancroft Park.

The Future: Global Visions
==========================

I have evolved with my first partner Louis Jaffe onto Chariot
which is a dial-in subscription business. And I still tell
stories on places like the Metanet and the Well and elsewhere.
And by this time the fame of this place began to spread. So the
Wall Street Journal shows up, the New York Times, Stern Magazine
and McNeil Lehr. And so the people here don't get too excited
when they walk in here with their cameras. The good old boys
at the bar held the lights for them and never missed a beat.
And they don't get too excited about my saloon journalism when I
come in here and write stories datelined: Third Bar Stool
Roger's Bar and the step over to the telephone there and upload
them any where in the world, because these are the salt of the
earth people, the lower middle class. This is the place where,
if telecommunications doesn't work, the failure will polarize
our society. So step-by-step we have made this a total
community with the online community adding a cross section from
the highest tech.

Nevertheless when you come in here, you are a westsider. It
doesn't join you. You join it. And this is very appealing
because this is what a lot of people want out of America. This
is what a lot of people want out of the west. This is what a
lot of people want out of their town where there is a sense of
community -- public works, private works, works together
sometimes, nonprofit works. So we just made AMERICA WORK in 8
parallel blocks and called it Old Colorado City. It was the
first capital of Colorado. Before I am done it will be the last
capital of Colorado. It is already the electronic capital of
Colorado. And it's also becoming something of an international
center. The west Germans have come with Stern Magazine.
Japanese have come and a lot more will do so when I'm through
with them in Sendai latter in the month. The the Russians are
coming the first week in June when Sergei Alexandrov of Novosti
in Moscow arrives and we are striking a business deal between
Novosti News Service and Old Colorado Ciy Communications. My
youngest son is now in Dalien China with his lap top teaching
conversational English to the Chinese and getting ready to dial
out from there. And we hope to get Gorbachev on the screen here
to talk to the good-old-boys at the bar. And we'll probably
have a summit meeting here with Margaret Thatcher and
Gorbachev. When I am in Moscow and my son's in Dalien and we
get Montana into this circuit too, it's my hope Gordon, that we
can go either to Siberia or Mongolia and set up the Genghis Khan
Bulletin Board out there. We'll just use these techniques to
make their little communities work too.

I've got my feedback mechanism working well enough that all I
am doing is emulating Ghandi when he said: "There go my people.
I must hurry and catch them if I am their leader." All I can do
is implement their visions in their own context in my own
community which makes it a better place for me to live in. But
just remember also that it was not just me and the knowledge in
my head. Without that computer and the knowledge in there, and
the ease and speed, no secretary, no accountants and without


telecommunications to pick brains elsewhere and to promote it,
it also could not have been done.

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Author's note: Gordon Cook, trained as a Russian historian has
been a technical writer in the computer industry for the last 6
years and a user of conferencing since 1980. He is about to
begin his third year as Science Editor at the John von Neumann
National Supercomputer Center in Princeton NJ (609) 520-2000
where he runs a Caucus conferencing .system. He is a member
both of EIES and The Meta Network. He is the author of
"Strategic Analysis of Computer Conferencing" published by the

Gartner Group. He hopes eventually to become a principal in the
implementation of computer conferencing at the corporate level.