Community Broadband: Making the Right Choices

Over 140 attendees from eight states and across Minnesota participated in Blandin Foundation's 4th annual broadband conference, Community Broadband: Making the Right Choices.

 

Built around three themed learning tracks, the conference was designed to help participants:

 

• Learn about the latest in broadband technology and applications
• Share best practices about what's new and what's next in community broadband, and
• Take advantage of the tools, skills, resources and networks needed to set and achieve community technology goals.

 

Conference highlights

 

Broadband visionary and nationally acclaimed public servant Graham Richard, Mayor of Ft. Wayne Indiana, delivered an inspirational keynote address illustrating the power of broadband-based services to transform economies and improve quality of life.

 

Open Access Networks were the topic of discussion during a panel session featuringTim Nulty, formerly of Burlington Telcom - who described his success in building the country's most advanced telecommunications network without spending "one nickel of taxpayers' money," and Tobey Johnson of the Stockholm-based PacketFront, a world leader in developing, designing, and operating open access fiber networks with a customer base that includes the largest and most successful municipal and utility fiber networks in the world.

 

Pre-conference activities

 

Webinars: Leading up to the conference, we hosted three webinars on today’s “must know” topics including Global Trends in Broadband; The Economic Impacts of Broadband and Technology; and Web 2.0 Applications.

 

During a pre-conference Oil Lamps to Lasers scenario-building session, co-sponsored with the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission, providers, consumers, and policymakers were invited to roll up their sleeves and think practically about what it will take for Minnesota to plan and prepare for a technologically demanding future.

 

Three Learning Tracks matched community needs - See full agenda for more information and presenation materials delivered during the Learning Tracks

 

1. Introduction to Community Technology Initiatives.
2. The Infrastructure, The Applications
3. Considering the Business

 

 

Key learnings

 

Bernadine Joselyn's post-conference reflections on key learnings and outcomes, as summarized on the Blandin on Broadband blog include:

 

• Keep on message about how critical broadband infrastructure is to community economic vitality and quality of life. The more we focus our educational efforts on helping people use broadband applications and connectivity to solve a problem they have, do something they want to do, or make their lives better in some concrete way, the easier it will be for them to appreciate the importance of broadband for now and the future.




• Broadband is no longer just a "nice to have" for rural communities. What we heard from educators, health care providers and government officials in particular, is that broadband has become essential infrastructure for them to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.




• Through citizen media, community portals, issue forums, and other efforts to build and manage locally-developed content, broadband can be an important tool for not only connecting rural places to the world, but for building community in community.




• There are lots of paths for "getting broadband" and raising the sophistication of broadband use. Our collective challenge is moving knowledge into practice and sharing what best practices we have.


• There are lots of ways to talk about the benefits of a broadband-enabled society. Broadband can be "framed" as a new alternative energy (think of the savings from e-commuting), as a national security solution, and as a resource to address public health threats (like pandemic flu). It's a way to improve life long learning opportunities and help retain (and attract) youth and the "creative class" to rural places.