Dakota Future is a countywide economic development organization in Dakota County MN. Bill Coleman serves as contract executive director. Earlier this year, Dakota Future set a goal to be named as a Top Seven Intelligent Community in the annual global competition sponsored by the Intelligent Community Forum. To begin the process, Dakota Future completed a benchmarking exercise that would enable comparison with the top seven finalists of the past four years. By completing the benchmarking, Dakota Future also entered the competition for the 2010 Intelligent Community.

We received the benchmarking results a week ago and were encouraged that our goal would be in reach if we put our mind to it. We established teams to work on each of the five intelligent community elements and set a work schedule to get our house in order in time for a September 2010 application deadline for the 2011 competition.

We are excited to have achieved Top 21 recognition. The Top Seven will be announced in January; the Intelligent Community of the Year will be announced in May. The Top 21 designation is quite a pleasant surprise to our team and will serve as motivation to our newly formed initiative.