Our telefriends near the northern boundary of the North Bay get high praise and recognition as the Digital Village Foundation bestows this year's "Antie" awards to Petaluma's Bill Hammerman and to his city's brand new Tech Academy.

The start of the NBMA's November 16 general meeting will serve as the forum for presenting the statuettes given annually to "those entities or individuals in the North Bay region who have made outstanding contributions in helping foster cooperation among the educational, business and public communities in the development and use of new media and information technology."

Hammerman certainly fills that bill. The DVF Board cites him as a "pioneer and evangelist in the North Bay (first in Petaluma, now in Sonoma County) in leading the CyberCity Roundtable."

Petaluma is lucky to have him. Forty years an educator (32 years as Professor of Education at San Francisco State University), Hammerman nowadays describes himself as a community volunteer.

When official retirement came in 1992, he hit the ground running. It's been pro bono ever since -- naturally, along the lines of educating, whether as a walking tour guide for Historic Downtown Petaluma or teaching senior citizens basic computer classes -- but mostly and more specifically towards building community, as his Web site states, "through greater use of telecommunications and computer technology."

You'd think that the capital city of Telecom Valley would be wired. Well, it is these days, because of the work of people like Hammerman. In 1995 he established PetalumaNet. The idea behind it was to bring together key segments of the community (government, business, education, non-profits / social services) to help in creating an "electronic village."

The focus for the first year was to promote better uses of computers in schools. From there, the base of involvement became broader, as did the range of projects tackled.

In 1998, CyberCity Roundtable sprang from PetalumaNet. The name, conveying a purpose more distinguishable than that of its ISP-sounding parent, was initially meant to be a small core group of about a dozen industry leaders and educators. It was not open to the public. Just movers and shakers. But demand to join was so overwhelming that it expanded to around 50. Still just movers and shakers.

Why such great demand for entry? What happens at these gatherings? The meetings, according to the description on the Roundtable's Web page, serve "as a technology clearinghouse for community ideas and the creation of additional partnership projects that will help achieve the goal of creating a smart community through telecommunications."

Hammerman himself calls it a "think tank." Ideas are proposed. He also calls it an "action group." It is a stripped-down, built-for-speed organization, bent on implementation. None of the encumbrances of a more structured organization. No non-profit paperwork. The Petaluma Education Foundation provides the non-profit umbrella. Meetings are informal. A group of equals. "By design, we did not create a top-down organization." No by-laws. No minutes.

Hammerman also describes it as more of an "R&D" group. "Most of our time is used in creating partnership projects. We try to create pilot projects or demonstrations and then have others institutionalize and sustain them."

The list of firsts includes: Computer Tech Fair for Teachers; Community Computer & Internet Fair; Community Web Site - PEN = Petaluma Electronic Network; Free ISPs for local schools; Web site for the City of Petaluma; After School Technology Academy visit to a Telecom Valley company; Computer Literacy Workshop for Senior Citizens; Public Access Computer Center; High school student internship project with Nokia; NetDay school wiring project; Free HTML Workshop for Teens; National GIS Day celebration; International Delegation Visit to PetalumaNet; NeighborhoodNet conference group established; Community CyberCities Symposium.

There will be a First Annual Regional CyberCities Symposium to be held in Sonoma on November 15. Hammerman says, "We are so bold as to say First Annual in the expectation that others will follow." It will be a starter course for other communities to establish their own cooperative roundtables.

And, of course, there's the crown jewel of the Roundtable's achievements, the Tech Academy. In honoring this extension of Santa Rosa Junior College with an Antie, the DVF states that it is "applauding the public / private partnership of business, government and educational groups in jointly working to create the Tech Academy."

Doug Garrison, Dean of Santa Rosa Junior College's Petaluma campus, will be accepting the award on behalf of all those involved. As a member of the Roundtable, he was among those generating the idea three years ago for this new type of school.

The extent of "public / private partnership, under the nurturing aegis of PetalumaNet and the CyberCity Roundtable, is impressive.

The idea was embraced by SRJC. It was embraced by Nokia (formerly Diamond Lane Communications), Alcatel, other telecoms and a range of high tech firms. One million dollars was put together, the starting costs for the first year of the program, scheduled to begin January 2001.

SRJC has budgeted $350,000. The rest, $650,000, is the result of direct and in-kind donations from G&W Management (leasing the space at half the market value), Calix Networks, Advanced Fibre Communications, Alcatel, Nokia, Pacific Bell, SBC Datacomm and Cisco. Another $400,000 is being raised to keep the technology up-to-date over the next three years.

The school will serve the educational needs of four targeted groups: high school students, who will spend part of their day at the academy; SRJC computer science students; individual workers who want to upgrade their skills for career advancement; and groups of employees that companies will send over for advanced training. Responsiveness and flexibility will be key concepts in meeting the needs of both industry and student.

The Tech Academy is housed in a converted cheesecake factory at the corner of North McDowell Boulevard and Redwood Way, strategically placed right in the middle of Telecom Valley.

Petaluma, once renowned as the Chicken Capital of the World, has new reason to cluck with pride. These are the salad days. Not just because of the new school and the telecommunications industry which has brought economic boom, but because of the cooperation between industry, government, education and the community which has made so much possible so soon.

(The Anties were originally given at the DVF-sponsored Electronic Picnic held annually in the mid-90's on the College of Marin's Indian Valley Campus. Thus, the derivation of the award name.)