The last year has been a fairly eventful one for APANA Sydney. Membership growth has been steady, if slightly slower than previous years, and current membership now stands around the 380 mark.
The growth in membership allowed the region to gain a 64kbps ISDN link from connect.com in November 1995, which saw not only access responsiveness increase, but also the data allowance for members.
Recently, other events have seen APANA Sydney change its form for many members. Firstly, while plans for the relocation of the hub (which has been housed by Shane Alderton and Tim Noonan for almost/more than two years) were in progress, Paul Black, triode sysop and regional co-ordinator, decided to take triode off the APANA network.
Paul has been a stalwart of the Sydney region for the last couple of years, and the loss of triode and Paul's contributions to the network and the region will be missed. Sean McNamara was appointed as regional co-ordinator in Paul's place, and plans are afoot for the relocation of those triode-based members who wish to stay with APANA on other Sydney sites.
Plans for the hub relocation have gone ahead, and premises in the Sydney CBD have been rented and cabled for the phone lines. The ISDN link is also in place, and the relocation is expected to be completed in early September. This relocation has been largely organised by Matthew Geier, sleeper sysop and Ordinary Member of the SRC. Without Matthew's persistence and technical know-how the relocation would have been a lot more painful for the region.
With a centrally-located hub which isn't reliant on the availability of individual members, access to important servers such as news and www proxy will be able to be farmed out to even out the load. It is also expected that the provision of permanent links, and even ISDN links to the hub will be facilitated with the new setup.
The settling in of the new hub and the other changes listed above will see that the next year will not be a bed of roses for APANA Sydney. However, the region is healthy enough to see the year out in a better-than-ever position.