Stopping by Benton
by Phil Shapiro
The Benton Foundation, located at the Farragut West Metro stop in Washington DC, has been a longtime friend of CTCNet. The Foundation’s work takes place via various projects. The following profiles explain about work of several Benton staff members:
- Jillaine Smith, project manager for Communications Capacity Building, takes a strong interest in how communications technology can enhance the capabilities of nonprofit organizations. She is the author of the Best Practices Toolkit on the Benton Web site. In the past two years she has also been helping build the Nonprofit Resources section of the Helping.org Web site. As part of her work, she is involved in writing profiles of nonprofit organizations where she gets organizations to explain what works and doesn’t work in their communications strategies. Smith is frequently called by the media to comment about the social impacts of communications technology, and speaks regularly at conferences around the country. She says the greatest satisfaction in her job is seeing the positive results that happen when she connects two people who can be of help to each other.
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- Andy Carvin is a Senior Associate in the Communications Policy and Practice program. He is the manager and editor of the Digital Divide email list. This rapidly growing email list brings together people from around the world who take an interest in bridging the divide. He is also the editor of Digital Beat, a bi-monthly communications policy publication. Carvin majored in rhetoric and loves seeing how ideas emerge from online and offline dialogues. The greatest satisfaction he finds in his work is the interdisciplinary nature of digital divide work, ranging from adult literacy to international development to grassroots community initiatives.
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- Maria Finison came on board at the Benton Foundation to help finish the five-year grant project, Open Studio—The Arts Online. Open Studio’s mission was to give assistance to artists to put their art on the Web, to market their art on the Web, and to think of the Web as a new medium. Open Studio also provided funds for “access points,” where the public could access the arts online Finison is transitioning to work with Jillaine Smith in the Communications Capacity Building project. A trained photographer, one of Finison’s favorite Web sites is Indivisible: Stories of American Community.
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- Norris Dickard is a Senior Associate in the Communications Policy and Practice program. Dickard comes to the Benton Foundation from the U.S. Department of Education where he developed and designed the community technology center grant program that has grown from an initial $10 million/year to $32.5 million/year. He also initiated the America Connects Consortium, of which CTCNet is a partner. At Benton, Dickard is the director of the E-rate Project and takes an interest in the intersection of political policy and educational policy.
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Phil Shapiro is a long-time CTCNet activist and contributor to the Community Technology Review, specializing in low cost, easy to learn, effective multi-media and technology culture commentary. Phil is Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Arlington, VA Public Schools; his work can be found on his multimedia exploration site, his official school site, and his personal presentation page. Asked to elaborate or summarize all of this, Phil chose to point away from himself, to others in general and, in particular, to Ken Wyrick.
I first met Kenneth Wyrick at a computer recycling conference in Washington DC five years ago. He had flown in from Los Angeles before the conference was to begin and was helping set up tables. Had he not mentioned that he was from out of town, I might have thought that he was one of the conference organizers. Not because he was telling other people what to do, but because he was taking care of so much himself.
When I shook his hand, he made me feel that not only had a new friendship formed -- but a new cross-continent connection had been made.
Three years later at the CTCNet conference in Chicago I ran into Kenneth again, before the conference, helping set things up. The rented computers in the public area of the conference did not have a web browser on them. "We can download Netscape using the ftp program built into DOS," he explained. "Here, let me show you how." I watched in amazement as he performed this minor miracle, in the process saving the day.
Was it a coincidence that he showed up at both conferences early to help ensure their success? No coincidence at all. He's a person who shows up where the needs are, and he attends to those needs. That's who he is.
I do not know the details of the community-building work he does in Los Angeles, but I can tell you that Kenneth Wyrick is tops in my books. I admire the breadth of his knowledge and the depth of his sincerity. He is a builder -- a creator. It's impossible to build a national technology access movement without people like Kenneth Wyrick. And with people like Kenneth on board, anything becomes possible.
