National Capital FreeNet Administrative Office 
                     Annual Report for 1995

Since June of 1993, the NCF administrative office has been located in the
Dunton Tower at Carleton University. Although NCF is an independent
organization, the support and contribution of Carleton's Computing and
Communications Services has been instrumental to NCF's growth. 

It has been my pleasure and privilege to oversee the move of the office to
new, larger quarters in 1995. Carleton has provided us with the new space,
Dunton Tower Room 402, which is double the size of the old office. They
have kindly allowed us to keep 1409, which we use for filing, storage, and
meetings. This tripling of our office space has been a great morale
booster for all of the office volunteers, who had done such a wonderful
job in the tight quarters of 1409. In the new office we have four work
stations, all connected to the FreeNet computers by Ethernet connections. 

With the move to larger quarters, we were able to reorganize the
procedures, and are now in a better position to serve the membership of
NCF. Since September, we have been validating over 500 new accounts each
week, cutting the processing time for registrants. Applications are now
processed within 1-2 days of receipt. 

Boutique sales have been streamlined, and now fall within the scope of the
administrative office, which also processes all applications, donations,
and sales, and serves as the main contact between the community and NCF.
We also provide help to the members through the help line (520-9001),
which now provides expanded information through an automated voice mail
system. Volunteers return calls as necessary, and process information from
messages left on the system. By far, the event that made the most demands
on the office staff was the switch to new dial-in modem line phone numbers
in November (520-1130, 520-1135, and 520-7835). While Bell encountered
problems in not anticipating our load, most of these are now solved. 

NCF has grown to become the second largest freenet in the world,
registering our 50,000th member, Todd Hovila, ct938, in November. We
celebrated with a reception in December, held at Ottawa City Hall. In
January of 1994, NCF had 15,000 members, growing to 36,000 by January of
1995, and now boasts over 51,000 members. The office is pleased to play a
part in organizing events for members, which in 1995 included a birthday
party, and picnic, as well as fund raising support for the auction and
challenge campaign. 

The office is also the key contact for information providers and managers,
processing applications for information provider status, and changes of
information managers, and works closely with the IP administrators. 

The success of the administrative office depends on the support and
dedication of the office volunteers. I would like to take this opportunity
to thank those I have worked with (Jason Cobill, Jody Duncan, Xia Han,
Frieda Fanni, Paddy Jones, Daniel Racicot, Jean Stalker, David Smolkin,
Marg Willis, and, last but not least, coop students: Anthony DeMarco, Li
Ding, Monika Mititelu, Zahra Musse, and Arnold Polenz), as well as those
who served before my time. 


Sheila C. Alder, Administrative Coordinator