Welcome and Purpose Mitchell Beer, President of InfoLink Consultants Inc., welcomed partici- pants to the conference. He said the overall goal of the conference was to support and enable a community-based response to issues around the information highway. "A key objective of this conference is to define access issues that are important to community-based groups with little or no FreeNet or Internet experience," said Beer. "The underlying assumption is that each of our organ- izations will be profoundly affected by the growth of electronic networks, but that this outcome can be extremely positive if community views are reflected in the structure of the information highway." The conference provides a forum for voluntary and industry groups to meet and strategize about ways to make the Internet more accessible to commun- ity groups, said Beer. Hands-on training will provide many participants with their first experience of logging-on to the Internet. Beer pointed out that the federal government was not forthcoming with financial support for the conference. "In our view, this total absence of institutional support underscores the challenge ahead," he stated. "If the community sector is going to make itself heard on information highway access issues, it will be by the sector's own insistence and perseverance and not, for the most part, by invitation." Beer closed his opening comments by thanking the sponsors and Steering Committee for the event, and the two indi- viduals who conceptualized the conference and made it happen - John Thurston, Manager of Emerging Technologies at InfoLink, and Oksana Shewchenko, InfoLink's Creative Director.