Category Archives: Tech News

Blandin-led MIRC Partnership wins Tekne Award

Billed as the “Academy Awards for high tech,” rural Minnesota communities and partners received a Tekne Award in Minneapolis on Nov. 1 from the Minnesota High Tech Association for their work on broadband access and adoption.  Representatives of the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) initiative collected the “Innovative Collaboration Award” in front of a crowd of nearly 1,000 at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

CTAC founder Bill Coleman has been working with the Blandin Foundation on the program since its inception. He was instrumental in the planning and have been working with communities involved with the collaboration for several years.

Selection of Tekne finalists and winners was made by an independent panel of judges.  In choosing MIRC, an initiative convened by Blandin Foundation and involving 30 partners, judges noted that, “MIRC has benefited from a legacy of collaboration. MIRC partners are numerous and the impact the collaboration has had on broadband adoption is significant. In fact, the [broadband] adoption rate is 29.8 percent faster in MIRC partner communities when compared to the rest of rural Minnesota.”

All rural regions of Minnesota have engaged in broadband projects as part of the MIRC Initiative.  Individual communities initiated more than 70 locally designed and led demonstration projects, such as Lac Qui Parle County’s “Commuter Computer” (mobile learning lab) or Winona’s “Project FINE” (language-specific computer literacy training in Hmong and Spanish).

Statewide MIRC partners provided training to more than 8,000 individuals, computers to more than 1,600 households and has resulted in more than 40,000 households in rural Minnesota subscribing to high-speed Internet.  The two-year initiative was funded through a $4.3 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant administered by Blandin Foundation and will be completed at the close of 2012.

“Resilient, vibrant communities are connected communities,” said Dr. Kathy Annette, Blandin Foundation CEO.  “And the quality and diversity of those connections is a hallmark of a community’s leadership and sustainability.  Through MIRC, engaged local leaders and statewide partners worked together to bring the promises of broadband to many of Minnesota’s rural communities, including all residents in their progress.  Blandin Foundation is thrilled that coalition’s ambitious and innovative work has been honored through the Tekne Award.”

Presented by the MHTA, the Tekne Awards honor those who play a significant role in discovering new technologies that educate, improve lifestyles, and impact the lives and futures of people living in Minnesota and all over the world. The program reinforces Minnesota’s place as one of the most competitive and technologically advanced regions in the world. A full list of winners and finalists is available online at http://www.tekneawards.org/finalists

“The Tekne Awards recognize those whose leadership and dedication to technological innovation helps demonstrate Minnesota as a global player in technology-based markets,” said Margaret Anderson Kelliher, President & CEO of MHTA. “This year’s finalists should be extremely proud of their role in helping Minnesota excel.”

MFE building fiber for Ramsey County

Minnesota Fiber Exchange (MFE) was featured in the Pioneer Press this weekend for their work with Ramsey County building two fiber optic networks throughout the county. One will be reserved exclusively for county traffic; the second will be owned by MFE, who plans to lease fiber to intermediaries who will provide broadband service to end customers.

It’s an innovative and practical approach to building fiber that support public and private growth, in part because it incorporates public and private partners in the planning, deployment and management of the network.

CTAC founder Bill Coleman is excited to be on the executive team at MFE. They have been working with Ramsey County to finalize the project and hope to begin construction in spring of 2013.

CTAC founder quoted in Twin Cities Business article on Broadband

Twin Cities Business recently ran an article on broadband access and adoption in Minnesota. The article recognized the important of broadband…

To thrive in the 21st century, Minnesota businesses, state agencies, schools, health care organizations, and private citizens need high-speed Internet access. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center showed that Internet technology is moving so rapidly that people and businesses that can find and digest information the fastest will have a distinct advantage over those that are not as good at retrieving and synthesizing the wealth of information literally at their fingertips.

It recognized effort required to reach Minnesota’s goal of ubiquitous broadband access…

According to data from the 2010 Census, only 57.4 percent of Minnesota households had access to broadband speeds of 10 Mbps download and 6 Mbps upload. And the second broadband task force, under Governor Tim Pawlenty, estimated that 6 percent of Minnesotans do not have broadband access available to them. While access has increased substantially since the last census, many communities still are without high-speed broadband.

It recognized the efforts and government and local business in investing in infrastructure, using a quote from Bill Coleman.

Funding for broadband infrastructure across Minnesota has been provided by both public and private investment, with the bulk of investment made by private enterprise. “The quality of broadband that you have depends on who your provider is,” says Bill Coleman, president of Community Technology Advisors, an organization in Mahtomedi that helps clients develop broadband infrastructure and adoption programs. “Communities served by small rural telephone companies probably are already 100 percent served [with high-speed broadband]. But if you are on the side of the [rural] road served by one of the large telephone providers, there’s a good chance you don’t have broadband at all, because they have not made the necessary infrastructure upgrades.”

The article also looks at adoption – highlighting some of the recent Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) projects, in which CTAC has been an active leader…

Broadband is an indispensable infrastructure for rural communities, says the Blandin Foundation’s Joselyn. The organization has been working with rural communities to both secure broadband access and to adopt the new digital technologies since 2003. Blandin and its partners secured an ARRA grant of nearly $4.9 million to promote Internet adoption in rural communities and added another $2.7 million of their own to the project.

One of the project’s target goals is to set up 11 demonstration communities using the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Community (MIRC) approach to determine priorities. For instance, Winona community leaders have determined that they need to increase Internet access in campgrounds and parks to compete for tourists, while other communities are focusing on goals such as e-health and distance-learning initiatives.

Dakota Future hosts Minnesota Broadband Task Force Monthly Meeting

Yesterday Bill Coleman led the hosting team at Dakota County, welcoming the Minnesota Broadband Task Force, who held their monthly meeting in Dakota County. It was an opportunity for CTAC client Dakota Future to showcase much of the work that Dakota County has done in terms of promoting and facilitating better broadband for better business.

Bill Coleman spoke about the Dakota Future Intelligent Community Initiative
[slideshare id=12592110&doc=dakotafuture-120418124742-phpapp02]

You can get the full notes from the session from the Blandin on Broadband blog.

Stirring the Pot: April 2012

As originally posted in Blandin Foundation’s Broadband eNews:

Stirring the Pot

Last week in his MPR Blog, Dave Peters took an interesting look at the ever-evolving fiber vs. wireless question. http://tinyurl.com/7x23wq4 It is a question that I get at every community broadband meeting that I facilitate.

On one hand, you have fiber. You know what you are getting with fiber – high capacity, extremely reliable, triple play services and more, and quite expensive to deploy in the rural countryside.

When people talk about wireless, confusion abounds. People use a combination of marketing and technical terms interchangeably. When bandwidth caps are discussed, people want to know “just how much is 2 Gb?” Wireless technologies may or may not be influenced by weather, trees and/or terrain. Frequencies may or may not be licensed. Accuracy of provider coverage maps is debated.

Peters’ blog also raised this important question – If an area is served first by a wireless broadband provider, will that kill the market for investment in upgraded FTTH or FTTN services? Will rural residents be generally satisfied enough with a lower capacity wireless service that there will not be the groundswell of support and commitment to motivate a significant investment in fiber, thereby causing an area to be underserved long into the future? I tend to think probably so.

Yet we would never argue the opposite case – that a new fiber network would dissuade investment in wireless technologies. Mobile connectivity is now an expectation and people have proven that they are willing to pay for it. The large wireless carriers have announced aggressive plans to extend 3G and 4G coverage areas to more rural areas.

I was quoted in the blog as stating that people need both wired and wireless services. I also think that the bar for fiber advocates continues to rise. More than ever, they need to demonstrate the value of large bandwidth applications, especially those that have been or could be deployed by local institutions like schools and health care providers.

More than ever, communities need to have a technology plan that ensures both fiber-based and wireless services coupled with an application deployment plan. Communities lacking any of the three – wired, wireless and applications – will struggle to compete for talented people and business investment.

Stirring the Pot: March 2012

As originally posted in Blandin Foundation’s Broadband eNews:

I am part of a team just starting work on a project in Southwest Alaska – with place names like Kodiak Island, Unalaska and Dillingham. This rural region wants to make best use of a new federal stimulus project that will increase broadband speeds significantly in some places but leave other places with dial-up and satellite. Parts of the region have fiber networks for the last mile but rely on satellite for middle mile.

I know how important community leadership is in a process like this, but the challenges of distance in this region are immense. In Minnesota, distances are relatively small in comparison – another town is 7 – 10 miles down the road. Regional centers are separated by 100 miles or fewer. In this region, it can be a 1,000 mile plane ride from one center to another. For us, the immediate challenge is how to meet and engage these regional leaders. Our goal for the longer term is to determine how technology can be used to better connect these regional partners. Beside distance, there are other differences between Minnesota and Alaska. In Minnesota, our road system compares to a mesh network. You can go almost in any direction and form partnerships with other nearby places. In Alaska, the network is a hub and spoke system with hubs in Anchorage for business and education and in Juneau for government.

One of the other things we know in community broadband planning is that the most effective technology leadership is not necessarily an elected or appointed government official. It could be the tech guy on Main Street, the school tech coordinator, a local business or someone working out of their house. Across this region, we will find some of each. We need to use technology to find and connect to these leaders and then to leave a system where they can continue to connect to each other.

Which brings me back to Minnesota, while our distance challenges are almost insignificant in comparison (and believe me, I know about distances here in Minnesota), our challenge of empowering community leadership around all problem solving opportunities is just as real. I receive lots of newsletters from various groups with some excellent top down communications. The big challenge is real multipoint communications, discussions and action planning over distance. Time is short, resources are thin, our leaders are overburdened. It seems that we can do a better job of using technology as a tool for leadership empowerment. I am very interested in your ideas or current practices of how your organization uses technology tools to empower communications between leaders. Let’s hear about them!

Stirring the Pot: February: Investment Incentives

As first published in Blandin Broadband eNews February 2012

It seems that the communities with little or no broadband are increasingly feeling the pain of this shortcoming. It is no longer theoretical that they will be left behind sometime in the future. Community leaders recognize that they have been left behind and that the tail lights of their well-connected community neighbors are disappearing into the future.

The definition of community is also expanding to include rural residents. Township and county officials are recognizing that operators of farms and home businesses, school children, doctors and older adults need and want broadband. Leaders of town-centered enterprises like banks, hospitals and schools recognize that their on-line presence is underutilized because 40-60 percent of their customers cannot access broadband.

These last-to-be-served areas are not the easiest places to provide robust broadband services. Low density population patterns and significant number of the people least likely to subscribe – older, lower income – are not enticing investment drivers. Yet they need to get connected.

Communities struggle to find solutions from the bottom up. We are seeing some incumbent providers sitting at the table to try and solve these puzzles. It would be helpful to learn from incumbent providers to what investment incentives will be necessary to make rural broadband investment possible. I encourage them to sharpen their pencils and to let us in on a formula that works for them and benefits rural communities.

Making a Community New Year’s Resolution

First published in January 2012 Blandin eNews

Does your  community make New Year’s resolutions?  January is a great opportunity to  bring  people together to talk about goals and improvement.  The Intelligent  Community framework (focusing on: broadband, knowledge workers, innovation,  digital inclusion and marketing/advocacy) provides guidance for organizing and  implementing action.  Through our MN Intelligent Rural Community (MIRC) projects http://tinyurl.com/2c6mhh4,I have observed that the most exciting projects are those that link across two  or more Intelligent Community elements.

For example, a  community may decide to improve public access to broadband and computers by  opening up school computer labs extended hours to all residents.  To  broaden the audience beyond those without computers or broadband Internet  access, the community could add a focus on math and science to create  knowledge workers by using community volunteers who use math and science – from  machinists to scientists – and by taking advantage of online resources â- from  Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ to MIT. http://ocw.mit.edu Potential positive  outcomes include more support for school technology investments, better linkage  between kids and local career opportunities, intergenerational learning and  linkages, better math and science test scores and a more Intelligent Community!   You could just as easily promote the arts through an approach like this.

A shared goal  across our demonstration communities is improved marketing – convincing both  residents and non-residents (prospective business owners and tourists) to stop,  stay and invest in the community.  The U of M Extension http://tinyurl.com/7ys3uul has done a  great job educating businesses how to promote themselves online.  In  today’s economy, everyone is essentially a small business – improving the  products through education, marketing themselves to gain income – through  employment on site or through telework, self-employment, or growing a business.   How can a community use online tools like eFolio Minnesota http://www.efoliominnesota.com/ combined  with local web sites to showcase and market local talent – from kids to stay at  home parents to retirees? The inventory of talent would be eye-opening for both  locals and visitors!

Let us know what  your community resolutions are and how you plan to achieve your goals for  improvement.

November: Stirring the Pot!

First published in Blandin Foundation’s eNews

As I prepared for our Broadband pre-conference webinar over the past week, I thought quite a bit about market development strategies – digital inclusion, increased user sophistication and advanced applications. The picture here portrays a different strategy!

Connected Nation data shows that affordability, ignorance of benefits and lack of access are the primary deterrents to adoption. The webinar, available for streaming online, provides some best practices for each of these barriers. I encourage you to find an hour to listen to the webinar and share the link with others in your community who might help spur adoption.

Blandin Foundation is accepting applications for the Digital Inclusion Community Partnership. This program supports equipping non-adopters with computers, training and connectivity. Put together a partnership of ISPs, schools, local sources of used computers and social service agencies to overcome affordability barriers. The application deadline is December 1, 2011.

Dakota County Smart21 with help from CTAC

Dakota Future is pleased to announce that For the third year in a row, Dakota County has been named a Smart21 Community by the Intelligent Community Forum. CTAC is led by CTAC founder Bill Coleman. Bill has been working with Dakota County businesses to promote and facilitate better broadband use and deployment to increase economic development and opportunity throughout the county.

The Intelligent Community Forum has set out a framework that encourages economic growth through technology. There are five cornerstones to the foundation:

  1. Broadband
  2. Knowledge Workers
  3. Digital Inclusion
  4. Marketing and Advocacy
  5. Innovation

Bill has been working in Dakota County to highlight existing programs that exemplify those facets and to bolster programs that are interested in strengthening their use of technology. We are excited to see that it is paying off.