wfn.org | Online Friends Meet in Person

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

18-June-1997 
GA 97068 
 
                          Online Friends Meet in Person 
 
                                by Jane Hines 
 
SYRACUSE--A group of 80 people, who have met each other online but rarely 
in person, gathered for the PresbyNet dinner on Tuesday, June 17.  The 
program was really an open meeting, with everyone in the room introducing 
themselves and talking about their favorite online meeting. 
 
     Barry Creech, coordinator for Churchwide Communication Services, 
compared the current PresbyNet host to a room that is packed wall to wall 
with participants.  "We must expand the walls to let others in," he said. 
He announced to the group that the Board of Directors of Ecunet, the 
ecumenical online community, has set an aggressive pace for finding a 
software platform that can support more members.  "By the end of September 
the Ecunet board hopes to select the host software that will carry it into 
the future, and then by the end of the year, we hope to make the transition 
to the new platform," he said. 
 
     Creech said the goal is to have a platform that can increase PresbyNet 
to ten times its current size.  That will help to accommodate the needs of 
Presbyterians in places like Wyoming, where all the churches are online in 
a meeting called "Wyoming Talk."  That meeting, made possible when the 
presbytery bought computers for all the churches that did not have one, was 
brought to the attention of dinner participants by Chris Schutz, a 
commissioner from Wyoming Presbytery. 

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