Keeping the Summit alive on the Net.

• Author: Malone, Michael
• Position: Summit of the Americas; Internet - Includes related article

From the first communication of a planned Summit of the Americas in Miami, enthusiasm and expectations reverberated throughout the hemisphere. When the historic meeting took place last December, under the ornate atrium of the Vizcaya Palace, thirty-four heads of state hammered out an unprecedented agenda for prosperity and change for the region. The twenty-three initiatives, grouped in four broad topical areas, proclaimed a promising future for the Americas.

But even before the cameras had been zipped back in their cases on December 11, 1994, doubt clouded the once-sunny Summit skies. Now what? How to move beyond an exchange of words to a Summit of action? Who would ensure the implementation of the impressive Plan of Action? What guarantees were there for accountability?

Much has been accomplished in the post-Summit period. And last August a new vehicle racing along the "information superhighway" offered a novel resource to advance the Summit, now popularly called the "Miami Process."

AmericasNet proposes to become the informational backbone of the hemispheric-wide integration process by offering anyone with the means, gumption, and verve to access the Internet, the chance to participate in an open dialogue on the Summit accords. "We're readily available to anyone with a computer and a modem and want to be accessible in terms of information," says Rene Ramos, systems coordinator for World Wide Web server AmericasNet. "There's certainly room for detailed analysis," he says, "but we want an educated layperson to be able to look at issues about the Summit and come away with some insight."

The project is a cooperative venture of the Latin American centers at Florida International University (FIU), the University of Miami, and the University of Florida. Headquartered at the Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC) at FIU, AmericasNet acts as the informational arm of the Summit of the Americas Center, which receives a $500,000 per year recurring grant from the state of Florida for a minimum of ten years, in expectation of the 2005 Hemisphere Free Trade target date. The garage and engine at LACC are modest: A single conference room with table and cushiony gray chairs houses the Silicon Graphics computer, nineteen-inch monitor with an installed camera "eye" for video conferences, and CD-Rom disk drive. A smaller, companion computer idles nearby.

Redesigned from SummitNet, which provided a data base, replete with historical background, reports...