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Attending the meeting were people from diverse backgrounds. Mr. Maurice Gracias, an excellent sportsman from Kenya, now an entrepreneur and investment adviser residing in Oakland, California was invited to be our keynote speaker. He graciously consented. His acceptance letter is worth reading and is available at: https://goanvoice.ca/2005/issue18/Maurice Gracias letter.pdf. Mr. Gracias focused on doing business with India and the hurdles and obstacles that presented themselves to potential investors. Nevertheless, he saw potential in India as "one of the newest entrants in the reform process that is sweeping Asia’s economies, once intensely regulated for half a century or more."
The seminar consisted of a live demo when a connection (using dial-up, of course) was made to the internet. Even though the internet was as slow as molasses, everyone was enthralled as we "surfed" the net connecting to various Goa related web pages.
The principles on how the internet started was explained even though terms like "internet backbone" were lost on the audience.
E-Mail, a brand new concept to the audience was of special interest. It was now possible to an instant message electronic mail to the President of the United States. Wow! Or, maybe, just the president of a company you’d like as a client. The ease and immediacy of e-mail was explained and how they could get a e-mail account and send/receive e-mail like a seasoned user.
Goa-Net had recently been started by Herman Carneiro and was in its infancy. The audience was shown how they could register with this mailing list to send/receive posts from Goans around the world.
GOAWEB was a Goa focused website started by Marlon Menezes on the University of Illinois’ computer.
Web pages and having a presence on the internet was explained and demonstrated. Their businesses and professions could now be show-cased to the world. This concept seemed to mystify some in the audience. "Why would I want to showcase by business to the world?"
Following the meeting, a simple survey was taken of the audience to ascertain how many of them saw the internet as a potential boon to their enterprise and would be willing to try it out. There were no takers!
It was therefore decided by organizers of the seminar that they should set an example and start a formal Goan presence on the internet. This party consisted of three individuals:
Trevor D’Souza
John J. D’Souza
Tim C. de Mello
The obvious name for a domain that came to mind was Goa.com. Unfortunately that name had already been taken by the Guns of America organization. Since we wanted this venture to be commercial, we considered an acronym based on the words Goa and Commercial and settled on the name GOACOM. Thus was born www.goacom.com.
GOACOM was officially launched on November, 18, 1995, by the Deputy Chief Minister of Goa, Dr. Wilfred de Souza, during his visit to London (UK) at a meeting of Internet enthusiasts organized by Eddie Fernandes.
GOACOM was (and still is) a company formed to provide information, business opportunities and communication services to the world community. GOACOM was a natural addition to the then fledgling Goa Internet Community, joining the family of Goa-Net and GOAWEB. From the very outset GOACOM conducted its operations as a Not-For-Profit organization but based on a fee for service. All revenue was to be used to enhance its services to the Goan community. The long term aim of the organization was to have a fully fledged information services company, providing high-tech employment in Goa.
We look forward to another ten fruitful years of serving the community.
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