This is the time of year when many families send out a wrap-up of their year, so here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to with PBDD.

We released our third white paper, Computer Refurbishing Process, that presents an overview of the steps to refurbish computers based on the People’s Resource Center process. All of our white papers are now also available in HTML format, which means they should show up in a search of the website.

While we were in Canada in July, we almost met Steve Black from TechBoomers.com, but circumstances prevented that. So this is the first partner profile where we haven’t met the partner personally. When circumstances allow, we prefer a personal visit, but Steve’s story about helping his mother and other relatives and thinking that there should be a website for this information was so inspiring that I wrote a poem that is included in the TechBoomer partner profile.

Barry and I are taking a trip to Texas in February and plan to meet up with our partners in Houston. We plan on attending the NDIA‘s Net Inclusion Summit 2017 May 16-17, 2017 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Last year’s conference in Kansas City was extremely valuable. If any of our partners are attending, we’d love to meet up for coffee or a drink (on us!) so be sure to let us know. May is a wonderful time to visit the Twin Cities, by the way.

Plans for our next white paper are consolidating around the theme of fund-raising. We’ll be asking questions of our partners to help us document what works and what doesn’t in both special events, regular fund-raising and applying for grants. Any ideas on how to structure this white paper is most appreciated.

When we started PBDD, one of the things we liked was that it’s web-based, so we aren’t tied to one particular location. We thought we’d be the ones to move, but our fellow board member, Maryanna Milton, recently moved to Arizona. Now our board meetings are via teleconferences. No official notes about temperature differences are allowed in the board meeting notes. (At least not until summer.)

We hope that this year concludes a good one for you and for your organization, and we look forward to working with you in the coming year to improve digital inclusion in your community and in communities everywhere.

Katherine Lato, VP-Communications PBDD

p.s. For those in warmer areas, at least the cross-country skiing has been good in Illinois.