The Blandin Foundation seems to be hot on the presses lately – in a good way. Here are the two stories I’ve seen this week.

Bill Coleman was kind enough to send me a link to the recent Baller Herbst report, Capturing the Promise of broadband for North Carolina and America.

The report takes a look at the following questions:

1. What is broadband?
2. What are the benefits of broadband? – I like the focus on economic development. Right now I think the economic development and the environmental impacts are the biggest sellers. That’s not to say that I think they are the greatest benefits – just the ones that most people need most right now.
3. How do the US and leading Asian and European nations compare in broadband development and adoption? – The news isn’t good.
4. Where is broadband deployment heading the in the foreseeable future in Asia, Europe, and the US? – Again, the news isn’t good. Not surprisingly, they focus the pitfalls presented by incumbents in the US. I say not surprisingly because many of the incumbents seem to be doing everything they can not to offer broadband at speeds that would help us compete internationally. Policy in the US is very market driven; that doesn’t seem to be the case in areas with ultra high speed connectivity.
5. Where does North Carolina stand in broadband deployment and global competiveness?

So that’s the report. It’s a good one. Here’s the mention of Blandin on page 27:

Despite these improvements, disabled individuals are about half as likely to use the Internet as the general public, especially in rural areas.106 While organizations such as the Blandin Foundation have stepped forward with small grants to support development of additional broadband applications,107much more needs to be done.

Here’s the footnote:
Geoff Daily, “Blandin Foundation Grant Empowers Development of Broadband Application for the Disabled,” App-Rising (September 5, 2007), http://tinyurl.com/2y6uqe.

The second mention

I happened to get an email newsletter from Marc Osten of Summit Collaboration with a video of Jim Hoolihan (Blandin CEO) talking about how Blandin has been deployment technology tools to work more effectively.

Jim talks about how the hardest part of a technology change is culture.

It’s funny that seems like one of the hardest things with deploying communitywide broadband too. People need to change how they do things – and often that change has a quick and easy return on investment – but it still requires a change.