Milwaukee Omnifest - The Ending

The Ending

Community computing enthusiasts hoped to demonstrate that a volunteer based service could be utilized to help those in lower income groups who were interested in being part of an on-line community.

As Internet access in general and other free access Internet methods became available (such as local library services), the need for Omnifest slowly decreased. From a high of 7,000 members, by 1998 only about 900 remained. Omnifest is considered a successful example of a model transitional on-line communications service that helped to usher in the advent of low cost publicly available Internet access.

The document http://www4.uwm.edu/omnifest/neighborhood.html There Goes the Neighborhood, Neil Trilling's essay on changes in the Internet disappeared on June 15, 2007, as a result of the end of school year maintenance but has since been restored.