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!