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Photograph by George Sakkestad

Sunnyvale Middle School student Niel Joseph, right, learns about creating multimedia projects while attending a class at the nonprofit Digital Clubhouse.

Group 'webucates' storytellers

Nonprofit brings people face-to-face with high-tech

By Steve Enders

Once upon a time, the only way stories were shared was by passing them down verbally from elders to youngsters.

More recently, though, communications have been increasingly dominated by all aspects of media through movies, television and radio. How ironic would it be, then, if modern technology could bring back old ways of communicating?

One local nonprofit organization, the Digital Clubhouse Network, is doing it by re-teaching the art of storytelling.

The Clubhouse is supported by many of Silicon Valley's top high-tech manufacturers and by private donations. It is dedicated to breaking down age, race and physical barriers, as well as the barriers that have been created by the use of impersonal communication devices such as the Internet.

In a weekend, anyone can walk into the Clubhouse and be transformed into a multimedia producer and storyteller using photo-manipulation software and multimedia design tools.

Although the Clubhouse is creating glitzy high-tech presentations, participants are doing it together--not separated by phone lines, modems or satellite dishes.

The Clubhouse was created by Warren Hegg, and the only price people have to pay to use the facilities is a commitment to helping other classes learn the same skills, which leads to more interpersonal relations. However, as with most nonprofits, donations are always accepted.

Hegg said that many people who need access to this technology don't have it because 70 percent of the population doesn't even have computers.

"America Online's biggest customer base is people using those chat lines," Hegg said. "And [the customers'] biggest complaint is that they wish they could meet these people they're talking to."

The Clubhouse is about bringing people together to interact personally. People of different races, generations and abilities are all getting into the act of telling stories of lost loves, friendships and families.

More than 4,000 people have come participated in the program so far. Hegg wanted to open the doors to even more people, and now the Clubhouse is about to do just that in a high-profile location in the Sunnyvale Town Center Mall.

One new program called the "Vision of the Valley Project" is bringing together a varied group of 12- to 18-year-olds who will describe, using multimedia, their views on the present and future states of Silicon Valley.

One of about 40 kids in the program, Kennedy High School student Veena Vanchinathan said that being a part of the project allows all kinds of people to come together with their concerns.

"It lets us see what's important--transportation, the economy, diversity," she said.

Hegg's goal is to accelerate digital literacy in a diverse society. And not just so people can become "webucated," as he calls it, but so they can get competitive jobs, create multimedia geneaology projects for family members and tell life stories on a CD-ROM and over the Internet.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 10, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.