The Intelligent Community Forum is a think tank that studies the economic and social development of the 21st Century community. They have a contest each year and name their top “Intelligent Communities.” Here’s their definition of Intelligent Communities:

Intelligent Communities are those which have – whether through crisis or foresight – come to understand the enormous challenges of the Broadband Economy, and have taken conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it.

Folks who attended the Blandin Broadband Conference last fall learned more about the Intelligent Community Forum from Robert Bell. There was at least one community that paid attention to that session; Dakota County was just named one of the Smart21 Communities, which is quite an honor. Dakota Future took the lead on the effort – starting with Bill Coleman, who many will also know from his work with the Blanidn Foundation.

Dakota Future is a countywide economic development organization in Dakota County MN. Bill serves as contract executive director. Earlier this year, Dakota Future set a goal to be named as a Top Seven Intelligent Community in the annual global competition sponsored by the Intelligent Community Forum. To begin the process, Dakota Future completed a benchmarking exercise that would enable comparison with the top seven finalists of the past four years. By completing the benchmarking, Dakota Future also entered the competition for the 2010 Intelligent Community.

Here are some remarks from Bill:

We received the benchmarking results a week ago and were encouraged that our goal would be in reach if we put our mind to it. We established teams to work on each of the five intelligent community elements and set a work schedule to get our house in order in time for a September 2010 application deadline for the 2011 competition.

We are excited to have achieved Top 21 recognition. The Top Seven will be announced in January; the Intelligent Community of the Year will be announced in May. The Top 21 designation is quite a pleasant surprise to our team and will serve as motivation to our newly formed initiative.