Minutes: The One With 20+ Years of the Internet (01/23/2013)

Invocation: Liz W.
Pledge: Burt C.
Raffle: E. Russell S. brought snacks and two bottles of wine.

Visiting Rotarians: Walt Stephens, Bob Katsev

Guests: Levi Palencia, Alma Orozco, Dave Clark, Chris Rose

Announcements:

• Joe Weiland requested that club members complete the survey about the Fiddlers’ Festival this week if they did not last week.
• Pay and tell with Sgt at Arms Bob McPhillips.
• Jill Ireland summitted Mt. Kilimanjaro.
• Julie Joy Stilwell volunteered to coordinate rendezvous locations for February through June.
• Steve Kally announced the golf tournament will be May 20.
• On behalf of the RC of SB Sunrise Foundation, Janet Napier announced that we collected $1,000 for Hurricane Sandy Relief, which will be matched by the club foundation. She also passed out donation receipts for 2012. Reminder: The bills we pay for dues and breakfast are not tax deductible as a donation, but they may be deductible as a business expense. Consult your tax adviser.
• The Symposium to End Poverty Sustainably is at UC Santa Barbara on Saturday, January 26, starting at 9 AM. Park in lot 22. Register in advance at www.rotarystepsonpoverty.org, and attend for free.
• The Rotary Foundation Gala is Friday night. Amy Clemens is still collecting silent auction items. Please bring them to her by tomorrow afternoon.
• The RI Convention is June 23-25 in Lisbon, Portugal. The club watched a video about Lisbon.
• There will be a 2-minute board meeting following the meeting.
• Last week’s rendezvous was fun, and the next rendezvous is January 24 at 5:30 PM at Shoreline Cafe.
• It’s National Pie Day.
• David Vo played a song for guess the theme. The song was from The Sopranos, and the band is Alabama 3 from England. The band is now known as A3 to avoid conflict with country band Alabama.
• Maurice Moreno won the raffle.

Program: Dave Clark of Impulse Advanced Communications presents “The History of the Internet in Santa Barbara.”

• The Internet started in the early ’70s as ARPAnet. UC Santa Barbara was one of the four original nodes on the ARPAnet.
• In our homes, we found information in encyclopedias or at the library. Remember that?
• Until the mid-’90s, the interface was still lines of type on screen. It was only for computer-savvy people.
• Dave got a Psych degree at UCSB and started working in small electronics at Circuit City. Computing was just getting going.
• 1995 was the big transition with the creation of the World Wide Web and a graphical user interface. Remember AOL, Prodigy, Netscape 1.0, Compuserve? Smaller companies sprouted in our community to provide local numbers and service, like west.net, Silicon Beach, RAIN and Impulse.
• In 1997-1998, consolidation began. AvTel acquired a couple of the local providers. Nationally, ISPs went from 6,000 to 500.
• In 1998, we went from dial up to ADSL. The dot.com boom was on. AvTel stock went from $2 to $31 in one day!
• In 1999, Cox, netlojix (formerly AvTel) and @home came onto the scene as cable Internet providers.
• Businesses began adopting the Internet in earnest 1999-2003. Reliability became more important. It was time to build data centers locally.
• In 2003, Voice over IP came into play.
• 2006, Impulse Communications formed from a merger of Impulse and Netlojix.
• And now, the cloud! We’re putting our stuff into data centers instead of on our local devices. So we all need more bandwidth!
• Google is exploring fiber optic lines into homes. It’s very costly.
• 15 third graders will get dictionaries in honor of our speaker.