Help available to get the Get Broadband Program

If you are thinking that Get Broadband would help your community, but are unsure about where to begin in generating the leadership support do we have a deal for you. Take advantage of our free pre-application workshops to help get people's attention. Your colleagues will hear about the importance of broadband in the new knowledge economy and how broadband can benefit your community. We';ll also help your community get started on applying to participate in the Get Broadband Program. Read more

Who will own Minnesota's information highways?

That's the question put forth in a newly released white paper by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. They argue that a community owned information highway generates important public benefits. Read more

Speaking of city owned information highways...

The City of Seattle has created a telecommunication vision, "How the City of Seattle Can Promote Development of and Advance Communications Network."; Read more

Marshalltown, Iowa gets free WI-FI hotzone

Marshalltown, Iowa has developed a free wireless hotzone in their historic downtown region. The primary purpose of the network is public access (for businesses and visitors), but public safety personnel are also starting to use the network. Read more

WildBlue goes live

WildBlue, the new satellite broadband service sponsored in part by the National Rural Telecommunication Cooperative, has its first customer. This service, while not considered a premium broadband service, is the first technology that can reach anywhere in North America, as long as a local utility cooperative is available to provide the local retail and support service. Read more

The combined baseline data from the broadband utilization survey conducted in the Get Broadband communities reveals percentages below the state average. Read more...

Ely - Residents of Ely can Get Broadband every night of the week. Read more

Bird Island - Video conferences to bring families together with loved-ones serving in Iraq. Read more

Sleepy Eye - Broadband education and technical assistance to the community and businesses tops Sleepy Eye's project list. Read more

International Falls - Senior citizen workshop series dubbed a huge success. Read more

Thief River Falls - Workshops, interns and incentives - the Thief River Falls Steering Committee is on task. Read more..

Cohasset - Bargefest connects festival goers with the Get Broadband steering committee and local ISPs. Read more

Windom - The Windom Surfers Club is off to a great start. Read more

Grand Rapids - Google U to be featured at Technology Fair. Read more

Podcasts, Wikis, RSS and Blogs with Garrick Van Buren - Tuesday, July 12 - 5-6:30, St. Paul - Principal Behavior Strategist at Working Pathways Inc, a social software consulting and customer research firm will be talking about pocasts, wikis, and blogs. There is no cost. To learn more contact atreacy@treacyinfo.com

Minnesota Rural Summit - July 28-29 - Collegeville - The Great Reconnect - Bridging Rural & Urban Resources for Community & Economic Success. This is conference will showcase efforts that link community and economic resources between rural and urban Minnesota for the greater good of all. Read more

Click here to access Get Broadband resource page with materials provided to support community efforts.

I hope you found our June 29 video conference as interesting as I did! I am not going to try to summarize the presentations but you will find the PowerPoint presentations below. I will provide a few thoughts about what I heard from the speakers and our communities.

Education

Minnesota seems to have incredible resources devoted to online learning, education and careers. Lifelong learning is truly supported, no matter where you live and what your current education status; there are programs and tools that you can utilize to improve your employability or quality of life. Many of these tools are free.

The challenge is to spread awareness about these programs and support efforts at self-improvement. One outstanding asset of these programs seems to be the commitment of the people who have created and now support them. We should be able to come up with some strategic partnerships to increase the use of these programs in our rural communities. Some ideas:

• Create a consortium of rural schools that are creating online k12 content and providing education services to students throughout Minnesota through a Northstar-type approach.
• School computer labs open and full of non-traditional students taking classes that are directly tied to improving the local economy, including entrepreneurship, business, employment and leadership skills, agricultural practices and other local specialties.
• Add in some community foundation support and business partnership dollars and the opportunities are open to all.
  
  Download Mindquest Academy
  
  Download Minnesota Online
  
  Download Northern Star Online

Telehealth

The pilot projects of the University of Minnesota offer a glimpse of the possibilities that telehealth offers. Getting specialized health care in your local clinic, benefiting from a "virtual visit" in your home on a -30 below day - these are things that definitely improve quality of life and improve the competitiveness of your community as a place to live and work. Enabling a public health nurse to visit six, rather than three or four clients per day makes local government more affordable.

Once again, the question is how to move forward on these types of projects. They involve private providers, insurance companies, public health agencies and others. Community leadership will definitely be required.

Download Telehealth

Marketing

As we heard from all of the communities, marketing of events is a real challenge. We segment our audiences as seniors, business, youth and other groups. When we talk marketing, we are usually thinking about our citizen community. When committees work and plan for activities, there is real joy when people attend and enjoy the program. When attendance is below expectations, it is a real blow. It becomes that much harder to get volunteers for the next event.

I believe that we also need to expand our marketing efforts to another community segment - to our community leadership. When we see exciting educational and health care technology and think about its use in our community, we need to be able to pass both this information and our enthusiasm on to key community leaders. These efforts need to be directed to both the administrators and the boards of directors of these community assets.

As we move towards our next video convening (September 21) and to the statewide Blandin Broadband (November 16-17) event, I encourage you to ask critical community leaders to put these events on their calendars and to commit to attending. Make appointments with your school superintendents, hospital administrators and board members and let them know that your local task force considers the adoption of advanced technology to be a critical community issue and that you will be there to support their technology initiatives.

For our efforts to be truly successful, Get Broadband task forces must market both up to the community leadership and to the general community. It is my priority to provide the Get Broadband communities with some advice and tools for making your marketing efforts successful.

Question of the month...

What are three quick ideas for getting your community's youth involved in your local efforts? Please send your ideas to broadband@blandinfoundation.org and we'll share your suggestions in the next edition of e-news.

"Hot Websites" is a monthly article provided to you to submit to your local newspaper for publication by as part of your committee's effort to raise public awareness of the benefits broadband-based technologies have to offer to families, business and communities.

GovOffice - Looking for a way to upgrade your Community's website? GovOffice provides a great free tool to develop and maintain your own community website and automate many government functions. It was developed in part by the League of Minnesota Cities.

It is on the Government CD in your Get Broadband Toolkit or click here to view it online.