Published in Blandin Foundation’s eNews…

Last week I attended the Intelligent Community Conference in New York. I wanted to share a few of the highlights that caught my attention, especially in terms of what is happening with the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) initiative http://tinyurl.com/2c6mhh4:

• Eindhoven was named Intelligent Community of the Year and deservedly so. Data driven, persistent with a strong sense of community. Plus very cool sense of design applied to everything.
• Eindhoven is very much into innovation and a concept that is called “open innovation.” They encourage people to share information so that the benefits can be shared. I was happy to think that our internal MIRC Ning and the Blandin Broadband Online Toolkits http://tinyurl.com/3mwyf4y are examples of open innovation.
• Leadership is so critically important. Our MIRC project coordinators are hard workers; some may even be leaders. The hard work of staff is multiplied when elected and appointed officials advocate for and promote innovation and collaboration. Spending time cultivating the engagement of your local leaders for broadband-based economic development thinking may produce some great benefits.
• People from around the world, especially Canada, are very interested in the type of work that we are doing here in Minnesota with the MIRC project.