Fall Broadband Conference November 7-8
It’s not too late; you can still register to attend Blandin Foundation’s Fall Broadband Conference in St Cloud MN on November 7-8. The theme is Community Broadband: Making the Right Choices. (Learn more about the speakers.)

Blandin Foundation Webinars Archived Online
Leading up to the conference Blandin has hosted a series of webinars to help attendees get up to speed on Internet technologies and their impact on local economic development. The presentations from the webinars are available online.

Blandin Community Broadband Resource Program
Blandin Foundation will soon launch the Blandin Community Broadband Resource Program, a flexible assistance program to help communities overcome barriers to a shared broadband vision. Communities will be able to apply to receive technical assistance no matter where they are in the process of pursuing increased technological vitality. Please take a few moments to complete a short survey about the types of information and services that would be most valuable to you and your community team. Stay tuned for more information about this new program!

Minnesota House Telecommunications Hearing
On October 17, the Minnesota House Telecommunications Regulation and Infrastructure Division held a hearing in Eagan on broadband. The meeting was organized by the GIG group at the request of Rep. Sandy Masin. You can find notes and a link to the video archive on the Blandin on Broadband blog.

US House and Senate Committees Pass Broadband Bills
The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a bill that would require federal agencies to collect more data on broadband service in the US. The Senate Commerce Committee passed a bill that would ensure that states and public-private partnerships cannot be prevented from offering advanced telecommunications services in competition with private industry, with the caveat that if that the state regulates those competitors, it cannot favor its own service. (Read more)

New Years Resolutions
Last January we featured a number of Get Broadband members technology-related New Years Resolutions. We have followed up with the resolutions to see what folks have learned in the last year. See how they fared.  

Qwest Expands Fiber Network
Qwest recently announced a planned investment of $300 million on their fiber-to-the-node network. This has spurred speculation on Qwest’s interest n IPTV. (Read more in the Blandin on Broadband blog.)

Blandin on Broadband is your source for up-to-date news and information about Broadband use, policy and trends especially in Minnesota. Subscribe today!

New Ulm

New Ulm has been hearing great things from the attendees of the Local e-Learning classes held over the summer. Here is a short list of the web sites that were created or improved during the sessions:

Antiques Plus
New Ulm Eye clinic
Roth/Herzog
River Creek Nursery
Olde World Deli
Hermann Monument Society
Stained Glass and More
New Ulm Area Gymnastics Association

Renville County

Renville County and the BOLD Community Education hosted a successful eCommerce Class led by U of MN Instructor David Nelson. Held in Olivia, it was well attended and generated broadband networking among local businesses.

Renville is sponsoring Bilingual computer/Internet Classes at the Renville Public Library. Copies of this poster in English and Spanish will be handed out to bilingual families in Renville, Olivia, Danube and Sacred Heart and will be posted in the Renville and Sacred Heart thrift stores. RCW high school students will be given fliers to bring to home and post at local grocery stores and post offices. (Read more.)

Todd County

Todd County recently revised their Telecom inventory with help from Bill Coleman. Finalized this week, the report was made available at the Entrepreneur’s Conference in Staples on November 2.

November 7-8 – Blandin Broadband Summit (St Cloud, MN) – the theme is Community Broadband: Making the Right Choices.

November 14-15 – MTA Fall Conference and Communications Seminar (Alexandria, MN)

November 26-30 - IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (Washington DC)

January 22-24 – Digital City Expo (Phoenix, AZ) - an event that will give you the knowledge to make decisions about your city’s digital future.

February 21, 2008 – Megaconference Jr – an event for and by students of the world.

This fall has been painful for me and the rest of the Minnesota Viking and Gopher football fans. We have new coaches with new systems and approaches that I and the rest of the Monday morning quarterbacks have been quick to criticize.  Both of our teams have young, inexperienced quarterbacks who appear to be over their heads in their assignments.

What does this have to do with technology and broadband? Marc Osten, the presenter at our third webinar on October 31 on Web 2.0 applications, talked about some of the bumps in the road that users might experience. It seems that we need to be patient about the success of these tools, recognizing that we will need to grow our expertise and the expertise of our stakeholders, remembering to bring them along with us as we use new applications. 

At times, it will seem like things are getting worse rather than better. You need to gather feedback from your stakeholders and make changes in your use of the tools.  Do not be overly defensive to any negative feedback; this can be a tendency as we are sometimes are blinded by our commitment to a technology application strategy.

I hope that it turns out that our new coaches are geniuses and our quarterbacks are superstars. I will try to be patient and hope for the best. I hope that they listen to feedback and win some games.

Google Earth: http://earth.google.com/
Combining maps and satellite images for complex or pinpointed regional searches, Google Earth is the next best thing to visiting a new place. In the latest version of Google Earth you can even the sky, stars and planets.