Kansas Communities on the Web The Blue Skyways' Project

Introduction

      We are John and Susan Howell, Kansas on the Net, and we work with Blue Skyways, the web service of the Kansas State Library.  Our goal is to help Kansas communities, libraries, and organizations take advantage of the opportunities that the internet has opened.

History

      We have been involved with the web in various ways since the early 90's, building pages that were stored on Boeing servers as well as on our ISP's machines. In 1995, we stopped in Dighton and talked to Ruby Martin at the library there about the web and its exciting possibilities.  Soon after that, Rosanne Goble invited us to Dodge City to talk at one of the meetings at the regional library.  Shortly afterward, Michael Piper at the State Library contacted us and offered us space on Blue Skyways.  Our involvement grew and, at the request of the State Library, PRIDE, and the Library Network Board, Boeing lent me to Skyways as a "loaned executive" in September 1997.  Since then, we have been traveling the state, working with libraries and communities.

Activities

      Over the past 2½ years, we have visited hundreds of towns and given over 300 presentations describing the benefits the web can offer to towns, libraries, and other organizations and businesses.  We've talked to librarians, bankers, kids, mayors, senior citizens, state employees, motel owners, city clerks, city councils, sheriffs, teachers, merchants . . .  In fact, meeting people from Frontenac to St. Francis and Tonganoxie to Syracuse has been one of the great rewards of our work.
 
      Often, we've generated enough interest to warrant building a web site.  We prefer to visit the site to gather requirements and information for the new web site.  From the requirements, we can design the structure of the proposed site and build a site plan to guide us through the construction phase.
 
      Early in the project we learned that building web sites is not the really worthwhile goal, however.  Working with people to build the site and training them to build and maintain web sites is the more important goal.  To spread skills around the state, we have given about thirty workshops to over 500 people around the state, from Ulysses to Waverly and from Phillipsburg to Protection.  Watching people like Pattie Brace in Pretty Prairie, Sandy Faler in Elk City and Lori Brown in Mankato "catch fire" and vastly expand a site we started is a truly rewarding experience.  We'll probably be consulting and problem solving for people like them for the rest of our lives.
 
      One service that we didn't value enough initally was helping users configure their computers and installing the software needed for site creation and maintenance.  Now, when we give a workshop, we expect to go to attendees' offices and homes.

Accomplishments

      The real proof of the project's success are the sites that are growing, the new ideas being implemented, and the new town sites being developed using, as examples, the ones already on the web.  People all around Kansas are building exciting web pages to serve their communities.  Other towns can use these ideas for their own community's web site - and as seeds for new ideas.

The Future

      Personally, we'll continue to maintain and expand special projects on Blue Skyways such as poetry and history pages.  We'll continue to offer workshops and develop training materials, and we'll expand our commercial web development work.
 
      Most of the web sites we have been involved with are growing and evolving.  Some will become stagnant and obsolete and will have to be removed from Skyways.  In any case, the Blue Skyways/Boeing partnership has provided hundreds of citizens in towns all over Kansas with the skills and knowledge needed to take advantage of the web.
 
      Blue Skyways and its model of presenting information from a large number of people will continue to grow and prosper.  During March, Skyways got nearly 700,000 visits: the towns section alone received over 100,000 hits.  Requests for space for web sites on Skyways, continue.  Just this week, a new request for a community site promises to answer that great research question "Where's Waldo?".  The vision of the State Library in creating Blue Skyways is providing great benefits to Kansas.

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© Copyright 2000     John & Susan Howell