[CLUE-Talk] Help Wanted: New Hosting for Virtual Community

[erbo at silcom.com]

Greetings, CLUE members.

As the Technical Director for the Electric Minds Virtual Community, I am
writing in hopes that one of you out there will be able to help our
community.  We have recently lost hosting for our server, and are looking for
someone that could help us with free or low-cost colocation for our
community's server.  I'm sending this message here because some
CLUE members might have an interest, as the Electric Minds
community runs on Linux, as detailed below.  What follows is a brief history
of the Electric Minds community and an explanation of our needs.

Electric Minds (commonly abbreviated "EMinds") was founded in 1996 by Howard
Rheingold, author of _The Virtual Community,_ a book that stemmed from his
experiences on The WELL.  With WellEngaged conferencing software (derived from
that used by The WELL) and a team of talented individuals, he created a
virtual community Web site that was named as one of the top 10 Web sites of
1996 by Time magazine.  Electric Minds also was noted for hosting discussions
for the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match.  However, in 1997, Softbank, which
had been the major investor in Electric Minds, pulled its funding, causing
Rheingold to sell Electric Minds to Durand Communications, Inc., an Internet
company from Santa Barbara, California--a company I was working for at the
time.  We used a conferencing platform of our own design, called
CommunityWare, and we adapted it to make it work more like WellEngaged.
Electric Minds became the largest online community hosted by CommunityWare,
with over 100,000 user accounts.

When Durand Communications was acquired by Online System Services Inc. of
Denver, Colorado (now Webb Interactive Services Inc.), CommunityWare was
combined with OSS' existing product and became the "WebbMe" portal system,
with Electric Minds still featured prominently.  The community continued to
function even as Webb's technological focus shifted; however, due to
budgetary constraints and the lack of available space at Webb's NOC facility
in downtown Denver, WebbMe was finally shut down at the end of January, 2001.
We of the community gathered in our temporary home, a private conference at
Cafe Utne, facing an uncertain future.

We didn't give up so easily.  My wife collected donation checks from the
community members towards a new server of our own, while I labored to create
a new conferencing environment for this server.  This software is the Venice
Web Communities System <http://venice.sourceforge.net>, and it's patterned
after the original CommunityWare, but it's written in Java using servlet and
JSP technology.  (It is licensed under the MPL.)  Venice is still under
development, to include more features from the original CommunityWare as well
as other interesting features.  Electric Minds' Community Host, Harry Pike,
continued to serve in that capacity, and a number of community members were
tapped to serve as hosts of the various "conferences" supported by the
community.

I bought our server (christened "phoenix") from DCC in Englewood.  It runs
Debian GNU/Linux, Apache, Apache Tomcat, and MySQL, as well as the Venice
software; I have described the server as "open source right down to the
metal." We had a free colocation deal going for awhile with NetWizards in San
Francisco, because its owner was the SO of one of our conference hosts.
However, recently, this hosting deal fell through due to circumstances beyond
our control, and, at the same time, the server mysteriously failed.  We had it
shipped back here to me in Denver, where it currently awaits some repair parts,
but it now lacks a home.

We're looking for someone who can host this box on a no-cost or low-cost
basis.  The server is a 4U rackmount box with a single 10/100 Ethernet
connection, and can be hooked to a keyboard/monitor switching system for ease
of management.  Bandwidth requirements are not great at present; I note that
the original CommunityWare (with vastly more registered users) was run off a
single T1 line, which also served Durand's office LAN.  The server can sit
behind a firewall; it only needs ports opened for SSH, SMTP, and HTTP (but it
may need more in the future, depending on how Venice gets expanded).  We will
deal with getting the DNS name pointed to the right address.  Other than that,
it's pretty self-contained.

The community is decidedly non-profit and non-commercial; we don't currently
run banner ads or charge for membership.  We will, of course, honor any
company or organization providing hosting with a prominent link on our
"Acknowledgements" page.  We can discuss any additional requirements you may
have.

Please do not hesitate to contact me, or our Community Host, Harry Pike
<maddog at worldpath.net>, for further information or if you can help.

Sincerely yours,
Eric J. Bowersox
Technical Director, Electric Minds Community
Project Administrator/Developer, Venice Web Communities System

-- 
Eric J. Bowersox (Erbo) - <erbo at silcom.com>
Electric Minds - virtual community since 1996. <http://www.minds.com>
"The sands of time were eroded by the river of constant change..."