Location

Certainly, the location of the JVNC building was not conducive to a successful intellectual enterprise. Today, with most computer accesses occurring over communications links, it is difficult to promote an intellectually vibrant community at the hardware site. If the hardware is close by, on the same campus or in the same building where many of the user

participants reside, there is a much better chance of generating the collegial spirit and intellectual atmosphere for the center and its support personnel. The JVNC, in a commercial industrial park sufficiently far from even its closest university customers, found itself essentially in isolation.

Furthermore, because of the meager funding that allowed no in-house research-oriented staff, an almost totally vacuous intellectual atmosphere existed, with the exception of visitors from the user community and the occasional invited speaker. For those centers on campuses or for those centers able to generate some internal research, the intellectual atmosphere was certainly much healthier and more supportive than that at the JVNC.