One is tempted to write one of those sweeping, throat-gagging New York Times lead about how Ana Sisnett, executive director of Austin Free-Net and Elnita Fennell, account manager for Southwestern Bell, are changing the flow on the Austin information superhighway. Both would wince at the brightness of such a floodlight on their work and the preemptory praise.
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Ana Sisnett and Elnita Fennell |
But imagine Internet access for anyone in all the libraries in Austin, 11 East Austin community centers, and six police substations. Imagine: middle-schoolers going to research a paper at the neighborhood police substation; a neighborhood group looking across the country for solutions to traffic problems; retirees obtaining super-saver airline tickets to visit relatives and being able to e-mail them ahead with a schedule. There’s nothing imaginary about it. It is reality right here in Austin. Information is getting into the hands of the people, and that’s pretty revolutionary.
Still, let’s don’t go there. Yet.
Let’s start with the history.
It begins on December 5, 1995 in Washington, D.C. Sue Beckwith, at that time technology manager for the City of Austin’s environmental department and now the city’s internet services officer along with Julie Gomoll, owner of GoMedia Inc., and now the local director of Excite.com’s Austin office, attended the Internet World Conference and began talking about creating public access to the Internet in Austin.
“The city was about to go online with a Web site,” says Beckwith. “And the way our charter is written, everyone in Austin has to have equal access to the city’s information. So we had to find a way for everyone to get on the Internet. Julie and I sketched out the idea for Austin Free-Net.”
When Beckwith returned to Austin, the city reassigned her to focus solely on making Austin Free-Net a reality. “Very quickly, I incorporated Austin Free-Net as a nonprofit and wrote a grant to the Texas State Libraries,” says Beckwith. “By February, 1996, we received $250,000 to put all the libraries online.” A month later, Beckwith put out a request for proposals for Internet access in all the libraries. OuterNet Connection Strategies, an Internet service provider here in Austin, and Southwestern Bell presented the best proposals for Internet access and telecommunication services, respectively.
“What was great about those bids was Elnita Fennell,” says Beckwith of SWB’s account manager. “First, OuterNet was her client. She was their account rep, so she already knew everyone over there. Second, she navigated the corporate monolith on our behalf and made everything easy. And third, she’s amazing; she’s a powerhouse of information. We put 22 libraries online in eight months. We kicked butt.”
Fennell is what one might call a Southwestern Bell lifer. She started working for them in high school in San Antonio, continued throughout college, and has been with the company for 20 years. She has watched the industry grow and change and knows about every cutting-edge connecter and cable. When Fennell got ahold of Beckwith’s idea, she understood exactly what Beckwith wanted and could give her not only an idea of the cost but also suggest better technology in order to make sure that the project would keep pace.
Even more than that, Fennell is a community person, a people person. “I think it has something to do with growing up in the Army,” says Fennell. “I went a lot of places and met a lot of people. I love people. I remember rounding up all the kids on the base to go to church on Sunday.” When Beckwith told Fennell her idea, she loved how it would benefit the community. “I really want our kids to grow up in tune with the world they’re living in.”
By February, 1997, 22 libraries were online and the Texas State Libraries grant was winding down. Then Austin Free-Net received another quarter-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to create Internet access in 11 community centers throughout East Austin. Again, Beckwith, Fennell, and OuterNet got the ball rolling. One year later, all those community centers had access.
By this time, the city wanted to expand Internet services and the city manager wanted Beckwith to lead that effort, so she went looking for someone to replace her. “I had really gone as far as I could go,” says Beckwith. “My skills are in setting up the telecommunications infrastructure. Austin Free-Net was ready to be integrated into the community, and I’m not a community builder by nature.” But Beckwith knew who would be perfect for the job. And she called Ana Sisnett.
Again, luck was with Free-Net. Sisnett had left her job with the Foundation for a Compassionate Society a few months before and was looking around for her next job.
“I had known Ana for years,” says Beckwith. “We had worked on a lot of the same social justice issues. But Ana is better at it; she’s a trainer by nature. I knew she’d be great at actually getting people to use these centers. This was her community.”
So in March, 1998, Sisnett became executive director of Austin Free-Net. “And immediately people started noticing my shoes,” says Sisnett, smiling, understanding her community’s trepidation of people who have titles. Obviously Sisnett squints and grimaces under the glare of the limelight. “You really ought to be talking to librarians,” says Sisnett. “To focus on me eclipses what the whole project is all about.”
And the whole project is what Sisnett thinks about. The Big Picture is what she is good at. “Until I worked at the Foundation,” says Sisnett, “I didn’t realize that seeing how things are interconnected and how to bring people and projects together was one of my abilities. But as building manager where seven social justice organizations worked, I had to keep everyone and everything together.”
Working at the Foundation also allowed Sisnett to get involved with as many issues and causes as she wanted. “I loved working on gay and lesbian issues, human right issues, and issues for people of color,” says Sisnett, who ultimately, however, felt that she became ineffective. At one time she sat on 10 community boards. While it was great for the ego, she felt useless and spread too thin. So she took a break and allowed herself more time to write, to think. During the break one of her poems was published into a children’s book, Granny Jus’ Come, and she relaxed. Then Beckwith called.
Sisnett hadn’t really thought of herself as a computer person. In fact, most of her training is self-taught. “I remember when I saw my first computer. I was at the university and it was a Mac 512. Some guy came up and told me I’d be able to write all my letters and put all my recipes on it. Recipes? I just wanted to write my papers on it so I wouldn’t have to cut and paste anymore.” Once Sisnett got her hands on a computer, she started to figure.
So when Beckwith called to offer her a job that’s one part advocacy, one part computer science, one part management, Sisnett didn’t hesitate about being able to do the job. She knew she could. “I have to say I had a great education. My family moved from Panama to Los Angeles when I was 13 and enrolled me in a Immaculate Heart Catholic Girl’s School where my teachers were these intelligent, committed women who encouraged us to think and challenge everything and do everything. And we didn’t defer to men. I left that high school thinking I could do anything. Sometimes I wish I had more telecommunication knowledge. But if I need to know the meaning of one of those six-syllable words, I can call Elnita,” she laughs.
Fennell supplies the information and access to the six-syllable telecommunication words while Sisnett provides the street sense of what’s needed where and how to get there. “My job is to get people to the computers and on the Net so they have the same access to information as everyone else. And I make sure they know how powerful the tool is. One of the first things I have newcomers do is look up their name. They don’t think it will be there. When they find it, it makes them think how this thing which they assumed was not relevant to their life has already touched them.”
So when I suggest to Sisnett that what she is doing might be the most revolutionary work yet, she smiles, “You know, I have to say I feel more like a community activist now than I ever did while working at the Foundation. And that was how I was identified for years. But here, my role — to provide public access to the Internet — is a lot more activist in nature.”
As for Fennell, she giggles at the thought that what she might be doing is revolutionary and subversive to corporate America.
“This is about the children. This is about giving all our children equal access.”
Go ahead, you write the lead. I’ll bet you’re tempted to write the same sweeping statement.
This article appears in December 25 • 1998 and December 25 • 1998 (Cover).