New Challengers - 1996

The Summer

By 1996, Plugged In had gained an immense reputation nation wide for providing high-end multi-disciplinary experiences for children and teens. That Spring, we were flooded with requests from students across the country (and Europe) to intern with the organization. We were very excited about the possibility of having extra staff (for free) and be able to expand our services. We were looking for a couple of individuals with technical skills and experience working with children and teens. It turned out we hired eight.

In the Summer of '95, we had worked with four East Palo Alto youth participating in the Youth Employment Program. The experience was hard on the staff and great for the kids. In '96, we were committed to doing it again- but with a safeguard that we hoped would make it easier on our staff: we would recruit teens we already knew. We hired 18.

In the first few days of the Summer, concern grew about the ability of the interns and YEP to adjust to the cultural differences they were experiencing- we had not planned diversity workshops. By the second week, noise and space complaints grew. It was clear that we would need additional space outside the main building to house the 25+ new "staff" we had brought on. We had leased the building next door at the beginning of the year (1921 University Ave.), but it was not set up for classes (we shared the front of the building with NFTE). We thought we could set up some computers, improvising a network and we would have a functional lab. In fact, we would train the kids to set up the equipment- it was a compelling idea.

How we Improvised a Mac Lab

We had a number of Macintosh SEs in storage which had been recently donated by a local company. Some of them didn't have hard drives and others had bad disk drives or almost no RAM. It would not be a simple matter to fast-track our students and have them learn to install, configure and troubleshoot hardware and software in one week (we needed the lab to teach the workshops and the workshops to put the lab together).

There were a couple of youth with advanced technical skills; together with our most technical intern, they inventoried all the equipment and listed what could be recycled. We knew it would be chaotic to have teams "assist" the three techies in their work as an workshop activity. From the outside, the workshops looked like hang out sessions punctuated here and there with technical explanations. Yet within a few of days , most of the teens had helped to put together the machines and some of them had become techie novices. This was not an ideal lab- but it was networked! (the kids learned to set up a Local Talk network).

By the end of the Summer, we had accomplished some amazing things. The YEP all learned a tremendous amount about computers. They produced an online comic, learned to teach and run the drop-in center and developed a great appreciation for the interns and each other. Many of the students are now part of Plugged In Enterprises, and have played a key role in expanding and improving the quality of our services. Our staff was exhausted.

Plugged In Enterprises

For the first three years, Plugged In's primary focus had been to deliver free educational and computer access services to the local community. We accomplished this through classes, workshops and drop-in opportunities for individuals of all ages. In the third year, we began to explore options that could add value to our presence in the community beyond that of an educational and information resource. We became very interested in testing out a role as a business incubator and provider of for-fee technology and information services.

In 1993, the Internet reached a significant point in its evolution (supporting a graphical interface) and within a couple of years, there was tremendous enthusiasm and demand for web pages from businesses and individuals. Almost at the same time, it became clear to us that some of our students had developed sufficient skills to produce this commercially viable product. We knew that employment opportunities for our students were scarce and that it would be difficult for them to find jobs were they could use their skills. That Spring, we responded by starting Plugged In Enterprises (PIE): a small, teen run information business that made web pages for paying clients.

In the beginning, PIE was made up of a handful of teens (the youngest one being 12) and a supervisor to help them design a business plan and teach them the basics of marketing and customer service. The teens were given a telephone/office area at Plugged In, some business cards and a good number of leads (Wired magazine had donated a full two-page spread to Plugged In and we included an ad for the business). Within a few weeks, PIE had more clients than it could absorb and the kids found themselves under a lot of stress meeting the demands of their paying clients. The first year was very challenging for the teens and the program staff. We didn't have sufficient resources to stabilize the office (the business was only open 12 hrs. a week). It would take another year and a couple of "big investors" to really develop the idea. In 1996, PIE would be re-launched. This time, it would be a large scale business incubation initiative with tremendous resources to back it up. It would also become a focus point for growing the organization.