Please find hereunder an excellent contribution 
of Wilfrid Matanga to the future of AdmiNet.

> 
> Is Adminet Doomed to Fail?
> 
> 
> 
> The French “Internet-phobia” is well known. It stems
> from the fact that the French developed a teletel
> system, Minitel. Minitel has a highly sophisticated
> and fully digital Public Switched Telephone Network,
> an extensive packet switching network (Transpac) and
> has implemented Integrated Services Digital Network
> (Num).
> 
> 
> 
> Back in 1994, there was not a single official
> governmental Web site, and all documents needed by the
> average French citizen were unavailable except on
> paper or through Minitel (a pay service). The fact
> that documents released by their own government had to
> be bought by the people they were intended to serve
> puzzled Christian Scherer so much that he decided to
> create a Web site to provide the information free of
> charge. AdmiNet was born. What started as a simple
> task soon became a very complicated one, with the
> demands of Web programming, retrireview and archiving
> all the requisite information. To combat these
> problems, Scherer asked friends and acquaintances to
> contribute to this huge task. AdmiNet now has over 515
> members (source: http://adminet.com/team.html) and
> well over 2,000 people have already contributed. A
> great many talents worked to make AdmiNet the awesome
> organization it became.
> 
> 
> 
> That was then. Now AdmiNet is dying. A year and half
> ago, Nikolai Kostyukovich stated that AdmiNet was no
> longer fulfilling its goals. Unfortunately, discussion
> didn't go far, and the subject was dropped. It would
> have been interesting and very refreshing for AdmiNet
> to have discussed its objectives. Its initial mission
> statement, that 'AdmiNet aims to become a
> Cyber-Documentation Center delivering general
> information about governmental authorities and public
> services', has not changed over seven years. Is it
> still accurate? Has this goal been achieved? Are there
> other areas that should be tackled?
> 
> There was a time when the government wanted AdmiNet
> down. Because of the French regulation, all
> information in AdmiNet was to be regulated by the
> government. Those institutions were already in a
> position in which they were unable to publish it by
> themselves, but still they ordered Christian Scherer
> to delete all recorded information. Instead of
> shutting down the website, Christian Scherer, with
> the help of many of his friends moved the content to
> Germany ( http://www.jura.uni-sb.de/france/ ). That
> was a good move, and many people called out for this
> interdiction from the government to be banned. That
> was also a way for AdmiNet to make people aware of its
> aims. Now everything is back to normal, with many
> mirror sites in France, Germany, Canada, USA, China
> (check out http://admi.net).In adversity come victories and
> experience, but today what is the next obstacle
> AdmiNet have to overcome to improve itself?
> 
> 
> All things are born, grow and die. That's the way it
> works. At what point is AdmiNet going to expire?
> No-one knows, but Christian Scherer is today in the
> difficult position of managing, coaching, and
> introducing new technology to AdmiNet. One thing is
> certain: the organisation of AdmiNet is pretty
> confusing to the new comer. There is the AdmiNet
> mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adminet),
> and there is CawaJunior
> (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cawaJ). There is the
> private area (http://admi.net/private.html), and there
> is the virtual community
> (http://adminet.com/team.html). There is
> http://adminet.com, and there is http://adminet.fr .
> There is Christian Scherer and there is Stefan
> Jaffrin. Who does what and which is which? Don't ask!
> Take in account that Christian Scherer is the brain,
> and Stefan Jaffrin the VCEO. What about the other 513
> members? Don't ask!!
> 
> 
> 
> No one knows the structure of AdmiNet and where it is
> heading better than Christian Scherer. He is the
> driving force, and it is unclear what will happen if
> and when he leaves AdmiNet. E-mail web based services
> (http://mail.bigmailbox.com/users/adminetcom ,
> http://mail.yahoo.com) need huge numbers of members to
> sell ad banners. Adminet doesn't need these numbers,
> because it doesn't sell ad banners. Looking at the
> virtual community, with its automatic membership,
> makes it easy to forget that far less than 1% are
> regular contributors. This seems to be the conclusion
> that AdmiNet's management came to when they decided to
> create the private area under Isabelle Mure’s
> management. People choose to be part of a group
> (mailing list, club, association...) because they like
> its goals and want to feel that they belong. They
> share ideas, talk, laugh, cry, discuss and argue; but
> they interact. That's where the idea of Cawabouffe
> (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cawabouffe) is
> interesting. Members meet once a month at a different
> location every time. Unfortunately, it applies only to
> those leaving in Paris. No online AdmiNet meeting or
> event is planned to deal with overseas members.
> 
> 
> 
> Is Adminet doomed to fail?
> 
> Failure is seen by myself as AdmiNet not redefining its
> goals. The organisation is very good at what it does:
> collecting information. And it can keep on doing this
> for the next century. Nietzsche once said 'The future
> belongs to those with the longest memory.' What is the
> advantage of having the longest memory if you don't
> use what you know to create the future?
> 
> Wilfrid Matanga
> 
> ##This is a personal opinion.
> 
> 

> ------------------------------
> stefan jaffrin
> vceo Adminet
> http://www.jaffrin.net
> 
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