Daily Archives: September 16, 2008

Why Broadband Matters – a Full Senate Committee Meeting

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Today’s one of those, working-on-3-computers-at-once days. I was uploading video to YouTube for a resort, watching the webcast of the Senate meeting and doing regular work on the other. The YouTube video timed out, the webcast was shaky but the email went well. So one thing I learned today without even paying attention is that DSL is not enough.

Here are the other things I picked up from the Full Senate Meeting: Why Broadband Matters. My notes are pretty “high level”, which is really just another way of saying I gave it about 80 percent of my attention and focused in on parts that interested me (libraries and Minnesota). Continue reading →

Connected Community: Blandin Conference and Broadband Award

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We have two fun announcements from the Blandin Foundation.

First, registration is now open for Blandin’s December Broadband conference, Connected Communities: Making the Net Work for Minnesota held on December 3-4, 2008 in Eden Prairie, MN. ( I blogged about it earlier – the lineup is great.)

Second, we’re trying something new with the MN Community Broadband Awards. I’m very excited about it and if you live in or know about a community that you think might be a contender – please send them our way. Here are the details:

What are the awards?
Awards recognizing communities, companies and community institutions that are successfully implementing strategies that improve deployment and use of broadband.
Who is eligible to apply?
Any unit of government, non-profit or for-profit business, or community organization.

What are the award categories?

  • Broadband infrastructure and services; recognizing the provision of high-speed broadband capacity and services to a community, area or region
  • Broadband market and application development; recognizing efforts to stimulate community demand for broadband services and/or to deploy advanced broadband applications in business, education, government and health care.

The above awards will be made in the following population categories:

  • Communities under 2,500
  • Communities between 2,500 and 10,000
  • Communities above 10,000

What is the application deadline?
November 1, 2008

What is the application process?
You can either download the application form, complete it and return the form via email to broadband@blandinfoundation.org or you can complete the application right online. Email any supporting information to broadband@blandinfoundation.org.

Awards
Winning governments and 501(c)(3) organizations will be eligible for awards of up to $2,000, based on submitting an acceptable proposal for a technology project. Winning organizations that are not units of governments or 501(c)(3) will need to nominate a unit of government or 501(c)(3) to receive the award.