Here’s another speaker Bio for the Broadband conference comming up next month. You may also recognize Bill as an occassional blog contributor.

Bill Coleman

Short Bio
I help communities make the link between telecommunications and economic development through my company, Community Technology Advisors. I work with the Blandin staff to implement the community oriented activities of the Blandin Broadband Initiative, including the 27 communities that participated in the Get Broadband program and the four current LightSpeed grantees. I am currently partnering with Mike O’Connor to facilitate the work of the Eden Prairie Technology Task Force. Right now, my economic development work is for Dakota Future, a countywide economic development organization serving Dakota County, MN.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

It would be great to identify ways to truly partner with incumbent telecommunications providers. Right now, when communities believe the networks and services provided to their communities are deficient, there seem to be few incremental paths for leveraging improvements. The pre-conference Sesquicentennial event is designed to stimulate some shared understanding and creative thinking to the current deadlocked positions of communities and providers.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

I would like to learn more about the cable industry’s DOCSIS 3.0 operating system that can deliver over 100 Mb per second and when, realistically, we might see that deployed. I would also like to learn more about how open access networks stimulate entrepreneurial application development more effectively than services delivered over a closed network.