Last week a handful of Minnesota Broadband Coalition members met in St Paul. The meeting was informal and kind of spontaneous and mostly we talked about the stimulus funding and the Minnesota Broadband Task Force. (You can access the complete notes on the MBC site.)
The meeting went well. Amalia Deloney had just returned from DC so she knew what the feeling out there was/is. Mike Wassenaar talked about his Community Technology Empowerment Project, which has been successful in the Twin Cities in helping bridge the digital divide. A few of us had been to lots of the Task Force meetings – so we knew they were looking for content from folks with good ideas. It was a good lesson on how we’re smarter together.
It sounds hokey but it was like making stone soup – except the soup started with billions of dollars of stimulus funding. I think now is a good time to start thinking about and talking to the folks you could partner with to get funding.
Here’s some fun news from the notes from the MN Broadband Coalition notes… Connected Nation contacted me about the comments on their mapping. They said they would be willing to provide maps that features single mode of broadband (so just a map of fiber access, or DSL or cable, or other) if the Task Force could get the providers to agree to it.
I don’t know how easy or tough that would be – but it’s something to work towards.