Media.Knet.Ca

Les Meekis, KO's Community Manager with the Smart Communities project, is coordinating the introduction and delivery of video production workshops in each of the five KO First Nations. He is working with George Ferreira, a professional film-maker and a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph who providing the training and many of the resources as well as the members of the local Smart team in each of the KO First Nations.

The series of workshops began in North Spirit Lake on August 19 with the team flying over Keewaywin on August 26. Check out the stories and photos on the community portals at http://nsl.firstnation.ca and http://keewaywin.firstnation.ca. Each session is 7 days in length with the local participants receiving instructions and practical production applications in filming, lighting, audio and editing. Interviews and different community shots are gathered throughout the week resulting in a short video being produced and shown to the community.

The local Smart teams will be equipped to continue producing additional video material which will then be archived and made available on-line for everyone to use. The stories gathered will become part of the multi-media reports and productions that will be used to produce additional training and development tools and resources.

As people become comfortable in the use of these tools, the Native language content will be transcribed and archived for use in the schools and for language development and protection.

The August 21 issue of Wawatay News contains two more news stories about the work being completed within the Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations demonstration project.

This week's issue of the Kuh-ke-nah page in Wawatay News include the following articles:

• Bringing new courses and past history on-line - Keewaytinook Okimakanak received funding from FedNor to construct an on-line training and skill development environment for First Nations across the region. Working in partnership with Wawatay, the Sunset Women's Aboriginal Circle and Oshki-Pimache-O-Win several new on-line resources are being produced to support learners and community members to access training and historical reference material.
• Building economic initiatives and promoting tourism on-line - George Kakekaspan describes how Fort Severn First Nation is using their broadband infrastructure to create new socio-economic opportunities in his community.
• K-Net Showcase - contains photos and URL addresses of pictures of the lands and resources of the traditional territory of Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

Rick Garrick is researching additional stories for future articles. If you have a story that you want to share about this project and the work that is happening in your community to get connected, please send us an e-mail.

Various newspaper articles are being scanned and stored for reference purposes in this photo gallery.

Eric Tsang and Jim Hamilton from the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa travelled to Sioux Lookout on Monday, August 11 to meet with K-Net staff about the Kuh-ke-nah satellite network. Carl Seibel from FedNor in Thunder Bay joined the meetings on Tuesday, August 12.

The August 7 issue of Wawatay News contains two more news stories about the work being completed within the Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations demonstration project.

This week's issue of the Kuh-ke-nah page in Wawatay News include the following articles:

• Filmmaker, videographer visits KO communities - The last two weeks of July saw two different groups with video cameras touring the communities of Poplar Hill, North Spirit Lake and Keewaywin. Visits included stops in the KO offices in Sioux Lookout and Balmertown and on the way to Keewaywin, the crew stopped off in Slate Falls First Nations.
• Guestbooks offer interesting comments, potential economic opportunities - The on-line guestbooks that appear on different First Nation web sites offer an insight into some possible ways to attract the development of new initiatives across the region.
• K-Net Showcase - contains photos and URL addresses for different First Nation artists who are posting their art work on-line on their own personal web sites at http://myknet.org and at http://artists.knet.ca.

Rick Garrick is researching additional stories for future articles. If you have a story that you want to share about this project and the work that is happening in your community to get connected, please send us an e-mail.

Various newspaper articles are being scanned and stored for reference purposes in this photo gallery.

As the Board of Directors of Keewaytinook Okimakanak, the Chiefs of the KO First Nations meet regularly to review and approve the work being completed by their organization. Recent elections in some of the KO First Nations have resulted in new community leaders in Deer Lake, Fort Severn and North Spirit Lake. Deer Lake Chief Evelyn Meekis, Keewaywin Chief John McKay, McDowell Lake Chief Eli James, North Spirit Lake Councillor David Campbell and Poplar Hill Councillor Danny Owen attended the one day meeting in Balmertown.

On Wednesday, August 6, the Chiefs reviewed this past year's audit with Kevin Houghton, KO's Finance Officer. They met with KO's new economic development officer and reviewed recent developments under the Smart Communities Demonstration project. The next full board meeting is planned for early September.

Click here to view the pictures from this meeting.

On Wednesday, August 6, Peter Campbell, Keewaytinook Okimakanak Public Works Manager presented Peter Barber with a gift recognizing the many years of service and support that Peter provided to the KO First Nations. Peter worked as the Project Officer with the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines overseeing numerous infrastructure projects in all the KO First Nations. The development of housing, water and sewer, roads, hydro, telecommunications and many other projects were successfully completed with Peter's support and encouragement. His work over the years has contributed to the development of the First Nation communities across the region.

We are fortunate that Peter recently accepted a position where he will be able to continue to work with the First Nations across the north as a special projects officer developing economic initiatives with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. We look forward to more opportunities to develop new economic projects  working in partnership with Peter Barber.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada Minister Robert Nault was in Balmertown this morning to announce funding of the All Weather Road Initiative north of Red Lake. The event was streamed on the Internet live and there is now an archive that you can view at  http://streaming.knet.ca/allweatherroad.wmv . Representatives from several of the Keewaytinook Okimakanak First Nations participated in this event via video conference.

Click here to check out the pictures of this event.

Wayne Collins, Technical Director at the Education Network of Ontario sent the past three days reviewing the Kuh-ke-nah Network's infrastructure design, the existing hardware and software configuration and discussing present and future network needs, plans and directions. Wayne worked with Dan Pellerin and other K-Net team members to identify strengths and gaps in the network and to determine potential development streams for network growth.

The Education Network of Ontario (ENO) is one of Keewaytinook Okimakanak's important partners in both the development and operation of the existing Kuh-ke-nah Network (K-Net). As a Gold Circle Partner, ENO continues to provide essential connectivity services and advise to the ongoing operational and development of the network from their offices in Toronto.

Wayne is producing a report of his findings and recommendations which the K-Net Smart team will use to assist in determining our strategic investments as the Smart Communities project completes its third successful year of operations.

 Lance Redbourne, Tech Director with NNEC stopped by and met Wayne and Dan.

 Wayne also had a chance to work with John on the set up of the IP Telephony Call Manager system.

More and more people are getting on-line and using the on-line K-Net services.

Over 14 MILLION hits occurred on the K-Net servers during the month of July. Specifically, on the seven servers with traffic graphs, there were a total of 14,822,360 hits and 328,887 visits made to these on-line services provided by Keewaytinook Okimakanak.

Several of the K-Net servers that are being monitored for hits, visits and usage statistics using the webalizer program again showed an increase in June. In particular, the http://myknet.org server rose again to over 7.2 million hits during this month.

Please note:

• one reason for the 2 million hit increase from the previous month is the Hosting server statistics are now being included in the monthly K-Net statistics;
• other on-line K-Net services, such as K-Net chat and the video streamer are not included in these numbers;
• server traffic monitoring information is located at http://tech.knet.ca/~tech/monitoring.