An ecumenical community was building, primarily on the Unison Network. It began even before September, 1985 when we were joined by the "Refugees from Presbynet", because there had been some important contacts made in a Conference on the Source network called "Religious Associates".

 The ecumenical community was gaining momentum during the first congenial consultations on UNISON to set up a special religious network.

 It gained momentum from the joint response from four denominational representatives to the Challenger tragedy.

 For the most part we had built this community without laying eyes on each other. We were overdue for a very emotional encounter - which happened at the first Camcon Conference in Los Angeles, March 6 - 8th, 1986.

 When we checked into our rooms at the Hyatt at the Los Angeles Airport, we soon made telephone contact and in some cases, eye contact with people who had previously known each other only as CACKLEY and HHODGES.

 We found out quickly that CACKLEY was truly the Rev. Curtis Ackley of Linfield, Pennsylvania and HHODGES was the Rev. Houston Hodges of San Francisco, California. There was a lot of back-slapping, joke-telling, and even pie-throwing, when we met the now famous DIANA, Diana Campbell, one of the management of UNISON.

 More than one person confessed that he met a "Username" in the flesh, with tear-filled eyes.

 David Lochhead's room [Room 847] became the meeting place and we were regaled with stories, gossip and information.

 Room 847 was also where a new Unison Conference: "Live From Camcon" was born. This became an electronic forum where over 600 notes from people within the conference were mixed with notes, comments and request from all over North America.

 In effect there was an unofficial conference progressing simultaneously with the "Live" conference at the Hyatt - a conference which included a lot of people who could not make the trip. This unofficial conference carried on beyond March 8 to include comments on the return trip and weeks of continuing evaluation of the implications of Camcon.

 The official part of the conference went very well. The three featured speakers were:

 

Our David Lochhead - who had prepared two texts and had tested both "Online" with a number of us. He chose to deliver: "Does God love Computers?" - a discussion of the theological implications of computer - which followed from his previous booklet - "Theology in a Digital World".

Jack Taub - who was billed as the "Founder of the Source, the original 'information utility'". Jack thrilled us with his imagination for the future - in which he forecast school students communicating with anyone anywhere in the world for five cents. Jack's predictions were so fantastic that we had to remind ourselves of his excellent record of performance so as not to dismiss him as a "computer nut".

Ezra Shapiro - West Coast Bureau Chief of Byte computer magazine. Ezra reminded us of the history of the computer and speed of change. Ezra seemed to be somewhat overshadowed by the other two excellent presentations, but the concerns he raised about sociology and power aspects of computer access gave us much to think about. Ezra also joined us later in "Live from Camcon" and joined us in dialogue about his presentation.

While the official program progressed, important meetings were taking place which would shape the future of ecumenical teleconferencing.

At a roundtable meeting we had in one room an excellent representation of those who had been communicating together over UNISON: Among the 30 or 40 people were: Jack Sharp, Houston Hodges, Ken Blair, Lew Wilkins and others from the Presbyterian Church [USA], Donel McClellan Gene Schneider and Curtis Ackley of the United Church of Christ, Chuck Austin of the Lutheran Church of America, Bob Cramer - the 'dean' of electronic news, Diana Campbell from UNISON and Paul Mullen, David Lochhead and Gordon Laird from the United Church of Canada.

 Fred Dudden, the major owner of UNISON, met us later and joined in a number of the meetings and discussions.

 Many months later, as we asked each other: "How did Ecunet come into being" this meeting was mentioned, as were the times in Room 847, and the Memorial Service for the Challenger Crew.

 Nothing was quite the same after Camcon I. We had jointly taken an ecumenical step, almost unconsciously, in that we had become personal and important to each other, and now had met 'in the flesh'.

---

 

Chapter 11

Summer, 1986 - Parti becomes a "Moveable Feast"

After Camcon I in Los Angeles the conferences on UNISON grew quickly with all the new recruits, many from Presbynet, but also from the United Methodist and a number of other Churches.

 Fred Dudden and Diana Campbell continued their roles of encouragement of this fledgling Church network by their contributions and suggestions. We had prompt replies to any desires of our "programmers" - David Lochhead, Jim Collie and Curtis Ackley, for revisions and changes to the way conferences were arranged and the type of notes received by those joining for the first time.

 Houston Hodges continued his role of welcoming of the newcomers to this strange new world of electronic communicating.

Bob Cramer began adding a daily summary of Church News which he culled, electronically, from the NEWSNET information utility in New York. Suddenly we were able to keep up to date, daily, on world Church news, which few of us were getting in our local newspapers.

 Together we had participated in creating something which promised a paradise of communication.

 Soon there was 'trouble in Paradise'.

 The comments we were seeing from Fred and Diana indicated that the trust level had broken down between them. There were other indications that the UNISON network was in some financial jeopardy.

 We soon realized that our Church communication network was in danger of collapse, because we had relied so much upon the UNISON network. We were in the unenviable position (which happens all too often in computer situations) of having no "back-up" position.

 We were communicating with our ecumenical partners primarily over the Unison network. We felt that in these new circumstances we had to find a totally secure way of talking to each other which was clearly distanced from the issues and problems of the UNISON network.

 Our solution was to include a representative group of our ecumenical partners on the Envoy 100 system, a Canadian system, which is run in a very business-like way and which gave us the confidence that we could speak openly and at length with each other. We needed to plan a strategy against the possibility of an entire collapse of the UNISON system.

 While Envoy 100 was fine for this kind of consulting it was not a candidate for our "back-up" system for the same reasons which had led us to UNISON in the first place. We wanted to continue to use the "Participate" system which we had grown to value and which was, in our opinion, unexcelled for flexibility.

 We began testing out other systems - "the Well" in California along with many others.

 At the same time the Presbyterians had signed a new contract with Neti, Inc. for their system which was called eForum. Some of our Presbyterian members on UNISON took accounts on NETI and helped to make the system work. The problem for some of them was the fact that their Church had made what seemed to many to be a uni-denominational decision which ignored the growing ecumenical reality on UNISON.

 While the Presbyterians talked officially of ecumenical cooperation, and even offered accounts on NETI to people from other denominations, their system was awkward, in the opinion of those using Participate software on UNISON, and the conversations lacked the excitement provided by significant ecumenical involvement.

 Gradually we narrowed our consideration to those Networks which were offering Participate software.

 An excellent candidate emerged - a young system called, at first - NSI, then NWI.

 NWI is an "information utility" which is owned and operated by NWI, Inc., 800 Connecticut Boulevard, East Hartford, Connecticut. NWI, Inc. is a subsidiary of the North American Holding Corp., which is a publicly-held diversified financial services and information firm.

 What attracted us to NWI was the fact that they were offering the latest version of Participate Software and were very amenable to our suggestions regarding price and billing, and configuration of our conferences. Sherwin Levinson, the Manager of NWI, was known to us in previous teleconferencing, and had been a presenter at Camcon I. Sherwin knew exactly what we needed and now had the place and the resources to provide them.

 By October of 1986 the situation at UNISON had deteriorated. There were times when we tried to log-on and found that the UNISON computer was down for extended periods. We wondered if it had already gone out of business and we had lost our database of discussions for the previous 12 months.

 While at first we had been looking for a "back-up" system to UNISON, it now seemed that we had to relieve ourselves of the uncertainty for the benefit of the growth of our ecumenical communication.

 Meanwhile a search was underway to find a new owner for UNISON - to inject new capital and make it a more stable venture.

 We had begun preliminary discussions with each other and with NWI management on the NWI system and found, indeed, that the Participate system worked much as it did on UNISON. In fact the equipment present and promised was more than we were accustomed to on UNISON.

 The result was that in early November, 1986 we decided to move to NWI.

 Almost the same week, an arrangement had been made with a new party to purchase the UNISON network. Unfortunately there were some disappointments for the new owner who must have anticipated that she would be inheriting many more customers than turned out to be the case.

 This was a very difficult transition.

 Each Church had many new participants who had just become familiar with UNISON. Our membership position was very precarious and the news that they now had to change to yet another system was more than some were willing to endure.

 It took our UCHUG group over six months to recover from this move to get the level of member input that had been experienced previously on UNISON.

 It was a costly yet necessary move. And later we realized that it was our first major joint decision as an ecumenical group!

 With this decision ECUNET took on form and substance. The structure of our conferences reflected the new reality.

 We now had a root 'trunk' called "ECUNET" off which the various denominational conferences branched.

 When we profile the branch structure in October 1987 it revealed this structure: "ECUNET" by GATEKEEPER, Nov. 6, 1986 at 0:49 Eastern about THE ONLINE ACTIVITIES OF THE ECUMENICAL COMMUNITY (208 notes)

1: "UCHUG (26 notes)
2: "PRESBYNET" (13 notes)
3: "UCCHRISTNET" (36 notes)
4: "DISCIPLENET" (28 notes)
5: "UM CIRCUITWRITER" (4 notes)
6: "MENNONET" (3 notes)
7: "ABNET" (5 notes)
8: "FISHNET" (32 notes)
27: "NAESNET" (16 notes)
28: "FRANCISCANNET" (82 notes)
29: "CCUN" (16 notes)
30: "THE NEWS" (7 notes)
31: "CRAMER CONFERENCES" (7 notes)
32: "ECUNET TELECOMMUNICATIONS" (12 notes)
33: "LECTIONARY" (81 notes)
34: "SERMONSHOP" (76 notes)
35: "ECUNET BUSINESS" (3 notes)
36: "COMPUTERS AND THE CHURCH" (17 notes)
37: "THE PARISH" (10 notes)
38: "CHURCH AND WORLD" (12 notes)
39: "THEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS" (1 note)
40: "CURRENT JOURNAL ARTICLES" (4 notes
41: "ECUNET LIBRARY" (1 note)
60: "ECUNET CHAT" (566 notes)
61: "ECUNET DIRECTORY" (2 notes)
62: "TIME STYLING" (120 notes)
63: "ECUNET NOTICES" (1 note)
64: "ECUNET HELP" (11 notes)
65: "IBYTE" (11 notes)
66: "PRAYER CHAPEL" (256 notes)
67: "KIDNET" (28 notes)
68: "REVIEWS" (3 notes)
69: "UTS COURSES" (35 notes)
70: "NEWSLETTER ARTICLES" (20 notes)

 and notes 181 to note 208 which are a variety of topics which are of interdenominational interest.

 Conferences 1 to 8 reflect something very important about the history of Ecunet.

 The name "Ecunet" means "ecumenical networking" and refers to a location where a number of Churches come together to share information and interaction. As we delved into the history of the name with our friends online we found that the first person to suggest it was Bob Cramer in his "RFC News Service" on April 12, 1982. We liked this name very much and felt immediately the need to protect it legally. We did this as soon as possible by incorporating a non-profit corporation called "Ecunet, Inc".

 Notice that conference Number 1 is called "UCHUG". The conferences of the United Church of Canada are prominent in this way to honour the history - we were the first to move to the "UNISON" system in May, 1985 with the intention of beginning ecumenical networking.

 We were joined there in September of 1985 by some of the people from the Presbyterian Church (USA) who call themselves "Presbynet". You will see that they are Ecunet conference Number 2.

The next 6 conference are different Churches from the United States:

 - Conference 3 is the United Church of Christ.

- Conference 4, the Disciples of Christ,

 - Conference 5 the United Methodist Church

 - Conference 6 the Mennonite Church

 - Conference 7 the American Baptist Church

 - Fishnet contains conferences which had previously been set up by Roman Catholic priests, and which have now been joined to Ecunet.

 There are other very interesting branches to Ecunet. For example, Conference 28, "FRANCISCANNET" is hosted by Brother Francis DeRuijte of Lennoxville, Quebec, who is a Franciscan priest.

 Conference 65, "IBYTE" originates from Anscomb House in Victoria, B. C. Here you will get a chance to talk to some of the young people who are confined with Muscular Dystrophy.

 Conference 66, "PRAYER CHAPEL" is exactly what it says, a Chapel where people can share concerns and prayer requests for one another.

 Conference 29, "CCUN" is the home of the discussions of the International Church Computer Users Network.

 In spite of the difficulties of transferring conferences to the new system, and the need to answer the queries of new members who were trying to get through the electronic maze to join in ecumenical discussions, we realized that the trouble had been worth it.