As a teacher learning adults EDB in the evening on public schools in the early 90.th, I was often asked to arrange meetings where people could bring their own computers and get my help to make them work properly. I knew from my own experience, that this kind of EDB-problem-solving-meetings could not be exspected to have solved all the problems people would bring, by ordinary closing time for evening scools, - so at first I could not imagine where to arrange such meetings. But then a friend who needed help found a place where people could come for free, and yet stay as long as necessary. So the 17.th of june 1993 I posted an invitation for a public and free Computer-Boevl-night once a month to all those who had asked me for such a EDB-problem-solving-meeting. In this way the first Computer-Boevl-night held on Thursday the 24.th of june 1993, became the birth of The Computer-problem-solving-network of Noerre Djurs as you are going to hear about. 14 people with their own computers met at that first meeting and we tinkered with the gear all night, and a lot of problems were solved, so Freday morning - in the end of this first meeting - we very satisfied agreed to meet again at the same place on the last Thursday next month. At the meeting in the next month a few more people met with their gear, and we could see that we needed more room, and as it also this time became morning before we stopped, we agreed that the last Friday evening in every month would be better, as most people don’t have to go to work at Saturday.

As a EDB-teacher I was responsible for the EDB-room at one of the schools, and I needed to go there on odd times to repair the gear, so I asked the school-leader and the school-director of this community to get a key for this. I got a key and some (reasonable) time after, I asked him and the school-leader to let me arrange the monthly Computer-Boevl-nights in the EDB-room, and they let it have a try. We moved the arrangement and month after month still more people with computer-boevl heard about it and came along with their gear, and before long we had to use the whole school, and we had to start every arrangement with an organizing plenary meeting, to get an overview of who needed help with their gear, and who at the meeting were able to help them, so that all the problems could be taken care of after the plenum and solved simultaneously. You see, Cola has become the strongest drink at Boevl-nights, and yet - due to the release of frustration the problem-solving gives - the atmossfere is simply like party-time.

Time went by and and the Computer-Boevl-nights generated a network between the computer-users of this area. By sommer 1995 we knew in this network that the Internet had come to stay, so in the autum I arranged a course where about 25 people studied the Internet. It was prolonged two times and lasted untill summer 1996. We found that as much as the Internet was interesting it also was scaring, that it might take even more of peoples leisure time than the national TV-stations already did. TV already ment a threat to the necessary involvment in organizing our own local life. A media more where people each on their own would use their spare time to look to the other side of the world, instead of making solutions here and now in their own lifes together, is really scaring. We saw it also as a problem that - as we figured it - in the end, our local community would have to buy some bigtown-centered Internet-designers to make a presentation of our area. Not having their feet in the shoes of the people of this area, we felt that they never could know where the shoes had to be changed – in other words they would only be able to come up with an unuseful "plastic"-presentation of life in our area. This was much of the reason why we by summer 1996 started to organize to get a user-controlled Internet-server for the Noerre Djurs-area. Our goal was to counter-act the mentioned threats by making a democratic user controlled electronic community centre for our own area on the Internet, and to convince the local people who gets access to the Internet to contribute to its relevance, and to make it their personal and common entrance to the Internet – from where of course they can go on to everywhere on the global Internet. In this way we are building a local electronic network on the unavoidable Internet, to make it a tools of building our own local society in the real world. We use another thorn to remove the one that else make us limp. Everyone must get homepage and e-mail account for free.

Based on the generated goodwill over time we started to obtain finansiel support from the local community in the summer of 1996 and from the government in the beginning of 1998, and today the Computer-Boevl-network of Noerre Djurs runs Noerre Djurs Web on our own Internet-server the way we wanted to, and one of the young people has become a paid webmaster. Based on solely volunteers we also run The Boevl-telephone hotline where everybody can call and get help with IT-problems, and also The Boevl-workshop in Noerre Djurs Hallen with Internet-access from 12 PC’s. Besides the montly Boevl-night we here have a lot of activities every Tuesday. At 9.00 to 12.00 all elderly people are welcome to IT-workshop, at 16.00 to 19.00 everybody are welcome to Game- and Internet-Café and at 19.00 to 22.00 everybody can attend a Mini-Boevl-night. And every Thursday at 19.00 to 22.00 everybody can participate in making material for the website. And the first Friday and the second last Friday of each month people can attend a night-long Game- and Internet-Café. In the evening on the third last Friday each month, we have an all-co-ordinating meeting where every citizen on a democratic basis can influence all the activities. The newest step is that the local daily news on the website now is produced by a staff which can be reached at the workshop monday to friday from 9.00 to 16.00.