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Hi Computerbankers,
First a bit of good news - CB NSW will be doing the
install for the Mudgee Youth Cafe' in a few weeks time, and through kicking
our community committees into gear it looks like the Deputy Prime Minister
will drop-in for a chat and a cuppa while the install is taking place (subject
to final confirmation of his agenda, however he was involved with the Cafe' from
the outset and is keen to support the project - of course his attendance is also
conditional on there being no new political crisis!). We also have tentative
attendance guarantees form Win and Prime television as well as the local
press.
Might I politely suggest that if CB have
any specific requests for funding or other assistance from the
Minister, that you forward them to us prior to his visit so we can prepare
a "Briefing Document" for prior submission - John Anderson is quite a nice
bloke and will usually help-out wherever he can, however like most politico's he
does like to be able to walk in with an understanding of any problems and
pre-warned of any requests likely to be made on Government - just hitting him
with cold requests on the day probably won't do any good (he might think you are
trying to put him on the spot in front of the TV cameras... and believe me, that
strategy won't work - far better for everyone involved for him to be handing you
a cheque in front of the cameras ;-)
On the matter of Help-Desk support, I must confess
that I have no particular allegiance to Linux, even though I regularly use it
(along with Citrix and Unix) in the workplace - I generally use whatever it
is that works within the constraints of suitability (highest priority),
reliability (second priority), and budget (third priority) - however I did
manage an ISP for a number of years, and anyone who has ever had anything to do
with ISP's will understand the volume of support requests received on a daily
basis - you rarely get to hang-up the phone at all (what's your modem number
again?... my modem won't dial.... why can't I get into that web-site
everyone's talking about?... mum was using the vacuum cleaner and now my
Internet connection won't work... Telstra just disconnected my phone and I can't
get onto the Internet to pay my phone bill (I think you get the
drift).
Coordinated IT Help-Desk Support in a volunteer
group almost always means establishing a roster and common telephone number
diverted to people's homes while they are 'on-duty' - This is the only way you
will avoid comments like "cause i am sick of endless calls on my mobile at any
hour" - the benefit of a single number means you can also have an answering
service to tell people your hours of operation (i.e. calls are not diverted
after 6.00 pm etc.) - Maybe this is the sort of overhead you could approach the
Government to financially support? - Also, in my experience less than 20%
of support calls require a high level of technical expertise - most are
common garden variety questions that can be answered by anyone with a modicum of
computer literacy.
Rgds, Don
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