Each month GLAAD/LA sponsors a forum for the exchange of information and ideas that is open to the general public. The topic for April 1994 was a panel discussing the use of various new technologies to further our particular activist goals. Our most formidable enemy, the radical right, has a huge lead in the use of satellite transmission to promote their bigoted agendas. Just last month the family channel, founded and controlled by Pat Robertson, aired an hour long program that expanded on last year's video "The Gay Agenda". Which I am sure that you all know is the film that they distributed to capitol hill and the pentagon which played a role in the "Don't ask, Don't tell" fiasco. While there are Gay people currently working on the formation of a queer channel to counter Pat's 700 club. there are other innovative avenues that our panel members discussed that don't involve television directly. The Creating Change Conference last year was instrumental in showing other Gay & Lesbian groups nation wide the benefits of communicating virtually instantaneously over numerous electronic networks that are already in place and very inexpensive to use. One such highway is called the Internet. Created about 20 years ago by the department of defense as a way to communicate during times of nuclear attack. The internet's key strength is that major sections of the hardware infrastructure can literally be blown away without causing the network to fail. This is because the network is distributed over many thousands of smaller machines that share the responsibilities of distributing messages. Access to internet is made even more convenient today because many privately owned service companies are in place and can act as your on ramp to internet highway. Companies like Compuserve and America on Line, for a few dollars a month not only provide users with their own products and services but also allow communication between themselves and others on internet. One such example is the Gay & Lesbian information forum on America On Line. Just a few clicks of the mouse brings you directly into the forum which contains chat rooms, libraries of Queer activist documents, direct access to the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, even folios of photos other activists and the men and women that they admire. Computers are not limited to communications via modems however. The Radio Shack PC sitting in your den can open whole news worlds of knowledge distributed on diskette by mail or purchased by you in the form of CD-ROM at your local Wherehouse record store. They can talk and sing, they can graph and display, they can even provide you with a window into which you can see events as they happened. It is clear that we can not go back into the closets of bigotry and cruelty that we came out of. Our best defense against the tyranny from people like Phyllis Shlaffley, Lou Sheldon, Jessie Helms, Pat Robertson and hundreds of others is education and communication. When people know us for who we are they can't help but like us, We are fabulous after all. Our first speaker was Mike Tidmus. Mike found out that he had AIDS in 1986. The following year he published "AIDS Stack", a Hypercard program for the Macintosh computer that organized all of the currently known information about the disease. Mike distributed his software for free on bulletin boards and Internet, he sent copies to anyone who called to asked for it. Since Hypercard technology was new Apple didn't have much quality software that they could use to show off the potential power of the medium. They heard about Mikes work and basically used his program to demo their system. Because of Mikes attention to detail and since no one else had bothered to compile this data so succinctly before his software quickly became one of the most widely distributed Mac databases around. Since then he has authored other ground breaking programs that deals with intolerance of gays and AIDS issues which have become national models used in many school districts. The next speaker was Mikki Halpin an award winning producer of CD-ROM presentations. Her first published piece was heralded as "The best CD-ROM ever made" by MacUser magazine. She writes and speaks often on the subjects of technology, interactivity and multimedia. Educated at both Berkley and Cornell University she holds several degrees in art history. She shared with us her perspective on the impact that multimedia can have on social issues and the basics of CD-ROM publishing. The final speaker was Keith Stern. He is the author of "Queers in History", the computerized database of prominent Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals. Keith started out in the music business as a punk rock promoter in New York and worked seven years at Warner Bros. records. He is now President of CompuCare, providing computer services to the entertainment industry. As an activist, Keith can trace his roots back to Vietnam protests of the early seventies in Washington D.C. He has said that "Queers in History" is a result of the combination of computer technology and political activism, with a good measure of self promotion. He demonstrated his software that is a blend of good information and fun, since the deluxe edition contains a trivia game about gay people that can be played by four people simultaneously. Our moderator was Bob LaFont. Bob has been actively involved with GLAAD/LA since it's beginning. He has served on the board of directors twice in these last five years, established and maintains the local computer bulletin board system that GLAAD runs, advises members about the best usage of electronic media, hosts and founded a weekly cable television show about us, The Gay & Lesbian News Magazine, now over four years old and winner of five cable excellence awards and he is the proud recipient of GLAAD/LA's volunteer of the year award in 1993. After the main presentations were complete the audience was invited to ask questions. The dialog that insued was as interesting as the formal segment. We all learned allot from the exchange of information and ideas from everyone in the room. This forum demonstrated how stimulating and educating this type of dialog can be. You can contact the presenters via the information super highway at these internet addresses. Mike Tidmus Mikki Halpin Bob LaFont