On May 4th, 1999, ACT's Daniel E. Atkins and Vlad Wielbut visited the All Saints Neighborhood Center in Detroit and met with the Center's Executive Director, Mr. Dennis Nordmoe,  the Executive Director of the Michigan Neighborhood Partnership, Ms. Charlene T.  Johnson, and the Director of Community Health and Development at the Neighborhood Service Organization, Mr. George Miller.
Mr. Nordmoe led a tour of the Center, describing its mission, the community it serves, current resources, and plans and aspirations for the near future. The Center, housed in an old church building in a working class neighborhood affected by systemic poverty, below average school  performance, outflow of blue-collar jobs, high rates of crime, etc., is focused on helping its immediate community by serving primarily as a training and skill-acquisition site. Its humble beginnings, when the very survival of the Center was by no means assured, are quickly becoming a thing of the past, and the project has started to attract more people and resources.
The meeting that followed began with the remaining participants introducing themselves and the organizations their represented:

• Alliance for Community Technology (ACT)
• Michigan Neighborhood Partnership (MNP): a membership-based organization of permanent (core) members and temporary (project-driven) affiliates. Currently, ca. 200 churches belong to MNP.
• Neighborhood Service Organization (NSO): a large, client-focused, diverse service organization with ca. 400 employees providing technical and other assistance for neighborhood development

and continued as an informal brainstorming session focused on finding common grounds and opportunities for collaboration. One of the ideas brought up and discussed at the meeting was connecting community and church leaders with technology experts to try and formulate a plan of action for community technology centers with the following four foci in mind:

1. Ongoing capacity building rather than unsustainable, short term solutions
2. Linking the knowledge resources of various organizations
3. Maintaining and upgrading the technology
4. Homes and families are where changes ultimately take root - reaching them ought to be a part of the vision