Launching
the VECOCafe
May 29, 1998

The VECOCafe was launched at the end of May with an enthusiastic group cracking the champagne! Some ASTF staff dropped in before going to their other end-of-Action-Plan -Proposal celebrations (tho it was really just the beginning for them).

A note of congratulations was posted by Jacqueline Shimeld and "inability to attend" messages were received by several others.

Next to come along were a couple of coordinators from South Australia masquerading as "Harry Karry" and then we were joined by a few Queenslanders. I left them to it a bit after 5.00 to go roller skating with a bunch of 11 year old boys!

Ongoing Use of the VECOCafe

The VECOCafe is there as an ongoing facility for groups of people who want to make use of it - for social or serious purposes.

It's a real time, web-based chat facility which means nobody has to install specialist software on their computer to use it (though your browser must be "Java enabled"). As it is a free version you have to tolerate advertisements and there is no facility to "save the chat". Whatever conversation occurs in the chatroom is only visible to those present at the time.

It's easy to use and works well for 4 or 5 people but gets a bit chaotic with bigger numbers. It may be a way to reduce phone call costs if you need to contact remote people for planning and discussions etc. Please give feedback if you give it a try as it would be good to know whether there is a need for a more sophisticated version of this.

The address for the vecocafe is:
http://www.ash.org.au/community/vecocafe.asp

With any of these tools it's good to have a play with them in order to get used to them so that when you need to use them for serious purposes you are in familiar territory.

have fun,

Janine