ACEnet in Athens, Ohio, was one local organization with a history of innovative projects. Amy Borgstrom, formerly of ACEnet and now a resident of Hawaii, worked with Rural Action to hold a large meeting and introduce the MIRA concept to more than 100 people around the southeast part of the state. The groups came from various backgrounds but few had any experience coordinating a project like this. Borgstrom remarked, "I felt they needed group process training before project planning and technology training." The process of getting a van together for two towns to take their teams to a meeting in Battle Creek was a challenge. "There were literacy issues in even filling out forms to get an advance for meals during the trip. Kellogg had not realized the literacy would be an issue. The groups from Mississippi, Ohio, Texas, and Hawaii all had some literacy problems."

I had toured this part of Ohio in 1997 to visit technology centers in West Virginia, ACENet , the regional non-profit that had long been involved in Kellogg projects, as well as the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio, which has the largest population of plain folk in America. The Amish were said to have no use for technology. It turned out that was quite inaccurate; the Amish were very practical about the technology they did accept, and they had reasons for the technology they rejected. Some contractors were using cell phones and there were also some closet computer devotees among the Amish. In general, though, the church bishops rule on the acceptability of a new technology, and after the bans on electricity from the grid, the automobile, and the telephone in the early part of the 20th century, and later the television, the next thou-shalt-not was the personal computer in 1986. That said, some Amish were using tractors around the barn and horses in the field, telephones away from the house (and the women), and batteries to run some farm gear as well as Smith-Corona electric typewriters. Some Amish had moved into Jackson County, my first destination in Ohio. According to Eric Anderson, they hoped " to diversify the gene pool." There was a buggy sign warning drivers of the slow moving vehicles near the home where I stayed.