Last night the Blandin Foundation spoke to the TISP Forum about their application for ARRA broadband stimulus funding. The presentation covered both the process of applying for funds and information on Blandin’s project.

In a nutshell, Blandin has applied for $4.8 million for broadband adoption funding. They partnered with a number of organizations and will work both on specific statewide projects and 10 demonstration communities where they will be encouraging broadband adoption, support and promotion in line with what the Intelligent Community Forum defines as smart community facets.

I took video of much of the presentation and have the PPT; so I’ll post those below with some notes.

Here is Bernadine Joselyn talked about Blandin and their broadband initiative:

Bernadine talks about the Intelligent Community Forum structure and collaboration

Bill Coleman talks more specifically about the community-based projects and broadband applications and region. Blandin has focused on SW Minnesota because some of the funding stems from money received indirectly from an AllTel settlement

Questions

Jane Leonard talks about how supportive some of the management of federal funds can be, based on her experience with earlier TOPS projects.

A woman who applied for grant funding for National 911 improvements. They would like to be able to get more data (of video) when someone makes an emergency call either provided by the person (for example a cell phone video) or based on location.

John Goodman talks about his project in Winona to specific work with elderly and populations with disabilities to improve their broadband adoption.

John’s talk dipped back into a conversation that I don’t have on video on how the application reviews have been going. The Reader’s Digest version – they aren’t going as planned…

NTIA was unprepared for the volume of applications they received. So their best option was to punt to the states to get the process going. Minnesota has gathered a group to look at the Minnesota proposals. That group is rumored to include: someone from DEED, Diane Wels, Rick King, and someone from OET. They have until October 14 to send in their reviews.

It’s standard practice not to share criteria for a RFP until a proposal has been chosen so they are using that practice here. So, the State has review criteria that they will not make available until after their decisions have been made public.

The applicants were supposed to know something by early November, but that doesn’t seem likely.

Finally Representative Masin offered a couple of options in the Legislature where interested parties could promote broadband.