Chester County InterLink Chester County, Pennsylvania, USA http://www.ccil.org/ Monday, May 12, 2008

1993 - Jordan Seidel, a young man in his early 20's, read about this "Internet" thing and decided that there should be an organization created in Chester County to ensure that Chester County Citizens are given equal access to this new (Internet) resource. He read how those without this technology would be at a disadvantage in the years ahead.

He searched and found Eric Raymond, a local "hacker", to write the program and do the technical work. He also assembled a board of directors of local people to help him to form a non-profit corporation.

Perry Pepper, the President of Chester County Hospital stepped forward and allowed him to use a dormitory room in the nurses quarters to house the equipment and gave a grant of $5000. West Chester University provided our first internet feed (19k bps) and a grant of $2600. 1st National Bank of Chester County provided a grant of $6000 to purchase the equipment and modems. Later on, a friend of Eric Raymond's (Avi Freedman) provided the a faster internet feed 56K, which was shared by all users!

1994 March - The system was launched. No graphics just text. It was a glorified BBS centered around a city metaphor. We didn't have users we had citizens. You information was not in the "system" directory it was on "technology place" and the place you changed your e-mail address was of course...the "Post Office". The early days were plagued with tremendous technical challenges and the system could be down for weeks at a time while we dealt with system crashes.

1995 October - we received our first grant from the Philadelphia Foundation to launch the "FreeLink" project. Jordan wanted to make sure that EVERYONE in the community could have access to the internet. The plan was to place computers in all the locations that people gather so that it would be convenient. We would provide the equipment, the phone lines and even the people to teach how to use it. This was a very ambitious goal with just volunteers and a small amount of money to purchase equipment and pay for all the phone lines. The initial Free Link sites included the YWCA, La Communidad Hispanica, WC Community Center, WC Senior Center, Avon Grove & WC Library, and the Coatesville Community Center.

Our hopes were to expand to many locations, however the concept did not take off as we had hoped. Accessing the Internet from public places was not something that generated great demand.

We continue to offer a limited number of public access sites. The most successful ones have been those with a dedicated volunteer leader and hold regular sessions. A good example is the West Chester Senior Center who's site is coordinated by Lou Mikleson. His group meets once a week to swap stories and to learn something new from Lou.

1997 - We were met what seemed at the time our greatest challenge. The hospital needed us to move from the nurse's dormitory so they could remodel the building. Dr. Adler, the President of West Chester University stepped in and, not only provided us a room for our equipment, but gave us access to their fiber optic internet feed....10 feet from where it entered the campus. Needless to say our technical people were doing hand springs over this much connectivity this close to us. With this expanded connectivity we were able to launch graphics access shortly thereafter.

1999 - We received the volunteer efforts of a Lehigh University student, Jason Wood, who redesigned our web site and programmed many new interactive pages. We added user access to mailing lists. Also added was a new user interface for administering the system with non-technical volunteers.

CCIL is very much more than just another Internet Service Provider, however. There are several organizations that have used our system for the good of the community.

• The Chester County Homeless Shelters list vacancies so that others shelters can see were there might be an open bed that night.
• The Chester County Cerebral Palsy Society has a support group that communicates by e-mail since many can not leave home.
• We host the WC Senior Center's web page.
• We host the web site for a local fire company, several churches, a soccer team, softball teams, we even hosted the West Chester Bicentennial web page last year. We hosted a web page for the West Chester PTOC to post information about the school board candidates.