Knights of the Virtual Roundtable

They are fighting for equality, education and egalitarianism, using technology as their sword. At the age of 71, retired college professor Bill Hammerman serves as their latter-day King Arthur, and his knights are a great deal more varied as to age, gender and occupation than the originals. And these knights don't even have a real round table.

The CyberCity Roundtable came about after Hammerman started a website for the city of Petaluma, California called PetalumaNet. This site was intended as a virtual village, uniting government, education and non-profit organizations into a whole where people of the community could contact them and read about them. The roundtable itself was created as a think tank with the help of Don Green, retired techno wizard (known in Northern California as the Godfather of the telecommunications business).

The roundtable now contains 50 knights. The goal of the group is to help projects and entities by either cash subsidies or assistance of some other kind. Ron Morgan, the Human Resource Manager of telecom giant Alcatel, believes the roundtable serves the purpose of directing the altruistic interests of the members. One member will propose a project, and the rest will decide how best to address the needs of the community.

The roundtable isn't a community organization in the sense that the meetings aren't public, like those of the City Council. Originally Hammerman planned on only twelve members, but there were so many people interested that he altered the general plan. He wanted to include people from every sector of the population, those who could do the most for the community.

Chet Stephens, V.P. of Administrative Services at Nokia, feels the roundtable has put him in touch with people he might never have met or worked with, in other circumstances. "It has enabled people from various sectors of the community to interact. It's networking. You can talk honestly and intelligently about your sector and seek advice and help from other sectors."

The two immediate areas where the roundtable is affecting the city are in education and city management. City Manager Fred Stouder is working to develop a Geographic Information system and getting help from the roundtable members in setting up the informational databases needed. Once the GIS system is in place, it will identify problems with the city water and sewer systems and road maintenance, save thousands of man-hours, and even pinpoint trouble spots before disasters like broken mains can occur.

In the educational sector, the roundtable has already made inroads. When Hammerman and Bradley met in 1997, Hammerman explained his idea to provide his idea to provide educational opportunities to high school students in the area of high-tech business. He wanted to start a 'tech group' through the city high school system. Bradley jumped in and offered his company as the pilot project.

"We started having high school juniors and seniors in math and science come to the site to work and see what kind of jobs are here. We were talking about connecting people in education and technology business."

Following the original after-school program for high school students, the roundtable has moved on to college. The Petaluma campus of Santa Rosa Junior College is setting up a Tech Academy which will be located in Redwood Business Park. The opening was in the Autumn of 2000. Start-up money of $800,000 was donated by the telecom companies of the roundtable.

The Tech Academy will develop and implement training programs for the junior college students. The programs will also be available to the employees of the participating companies and high school students, (who will receive college credit for work accomplished through the Academy). In order to further prepare students for future participation, the roundtable has provided computers to schools, the Petaluma Boys and Girls Club, the Redwood Health Library and the Petaluma Public Library.

Bill Hammerman has been invited to be part of a panel at the World Future Society's annual conference, being held this summer in Texas. He will be speaking about community networking, PetalumaNet, and the roundtable. He is also currently exploring the possibility of Petaluma becoming a sister city to cites in Finland (where the Nokia headquarters is located) and France (where Alcatel is headquartered).