Monthly Archives: November 2010

Bandwidth frustration on the Iron Range

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Aaron Brown, a great observer on the Iron Range is usually pretty upbeat. I also find his observations to be astute and always promoting innovation – so I got a little down when I read his post today (I have been to mountaintweet). The good news is that Mount Everest is getting 3G coverage. The bad news is that the Iron Range has never seemed farther away. As Aaron puts it…

Meantime, efforts to expand high speed internet access on the Iron Range more closely resemble all those guys who froze on the side of Mt. Everest years ago and who remain there today, too heavy to bring back down the mountain and too frozen to decay. All the local candidates who highlighted high speed internet in their campaigns lost last Tuesday.

The comments on his post don’t offer much hope. Bill Coleman comments…

I would not expect to see many broadband improvements come to the Iron Range anytime soon either, especially to the unserved portions. Cable companies are unlikely to expand their footprint. To make things worse in a relative sense, the bigger telephone companies are likely to spend money on infrastructure in Cook and Lake Counties and the Ely area of St. Louis County, the areas that received stimulus dollars for public broadband, in an effort to protect their market share. Those areas will have two providers; the other areas will have none.

It’s bleak. My hope is that the ubiquitous goals set out in the Minnesota Broadband bill (20Mbps down/10Mbps up) will help level the playing field – but those are just goals, not plans. (And changes in the last election might have an impact on the priority placed on those goals.) The power for change rests with the local community. Aaron’s voice is powerful but he needs local support to raise awareness and develop a strategy or they risk becoming a dead zone while their neighbors thrive.

Leech Lake Looks at MIRC Broadband Adoption report

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The Bemidji Pioneer took a deeper look at Blandin’s How Rural Minnesota Communities Access and Use Broadband: Minnesota Rural Intelligent Communities Baseline Report. I love when folks do that – open source information by taking a larger report and pulling out the info that’s most pertinent for them.

Here’s what they found…

The MIRC report finds that of the 11 communities surveyed, 71 percent of Leech Lake residents own a computer, placing it just below the rural statewide average of 74 percent. Cook County has the highest computer ownership of the 11 MIRC communities at 83 percent, while Worthington has the lowest. Leech Lake also reports an Internet connectivity rate in the survey of 63 percent, in contrast to the rural statewide average of 70 percent.

Results further suggest that Leech Lake has somewhat lower adoption rates of broadband and higher dial-up reliance than other areas of rural Minnesota. Compared to the 64 percent state average, Leech Lake has a broadband adoption of 54 percent, with a dial-up adoption of nine percent compared to the state average of six percent. Cook County reflects the lowest broadband adoption at 50 percent, and of the 11 MIRC communities surveyed, Worthington has the lowest dial-up adoption at two percent.

The MIRC report indicates that Minnesota rural dial-up users who have not switched to a broadband connection is at 61 percent, citing the expense of broadband as the primary reason why. Slightly more than 20 percent reported that broadband was not available where they lived, while 15 percent reported that they did not connect to the Internet often enough to justify the cost.

They also noted that computer ownershp was found to be a great determiner of broadband adoption and so the last line of the article makes an astutute observation.

Accordingly, the increase in use of home computers will be a key factor in advancing broadband strategies; according to study authors, one of the MIRC partners, PCs for People, is specifically targeting lower-income residents to provide them with a refurbished computer and sufficient training to adopt broadband.

Update on UMN Broadband Access Program

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Insight News posted an update on the ARRA-funded Broadband Access Program run by the University of Minnesota. (As you may recall, they received about $3 million to address broadband adoption in the Twin Cities through improved computer centers and broadband training and internships.)

I always enjoy reading about the Minnesota-based ARRA-funded projects, but I especially enjoy reading about them in non-techie publications – because it helps highlight for me what the rest of the world thinks and cares about the projects. This article focused on the role of the Hmong American Partnership (HAP). It’s really a case of bringing broadband to where the people are.

HAP already provides a range of services, the quick paragraph below describes a few of the services:

Lee [Sheng Lee – Employment Services Manager in St Paul and Director of Economic Development & Housing at HAP in North Minneapolis], explaining the role of HAP’s Employment Services, said, “We help them with job searching and find job leads for our clients. We work to help participants keep their jobs once they become employed. We also work with people in the neighborhood looking for assistance. They receive training with updating resumes, or use computers to look for jobs online and submit applications. All the people we serve are low income. A lot of times their education levels are low, too. When you throw in people who speak another language, that doubles the amount of time it takes for us to work with one person.”

The Economic Development & Housing program provides three types of services; pre-purchase counseling, foreclosure counseling and rental counseling. Pre-purchase counseling is for first time homebuyers.

They also provide educational support – from afterschool programs to English language and civics education for all ages.

The article points out the role of broadband…

The Broadband Access Project is a significant addition to HAP’s programming. BAP allows HAP to work with all Eastside and North Minneapolis residents by offering open computer lab time and additional Internet based trainings.

Laptops, Internet and Tech Training to Underserved Youth in the Twin Cities

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Earlier today Bernadine wrote about the Foundation perspective on broadband – so I thought it was fun to hear about a local project is removing barriers in the Twin Cities. TECHdotMN is…

a passionate group of technology enthusiasts on a mission to serve Minnesota’s high tech ecosystem and the early stage ventures within it. Through a mix of unique audio/video features and written word, we create original Minnesota high tech news and curate relevant local news from outside sources.

Apparently they donate 51 percent of gross revenues to charity. Their latest project is called Teen Connect.

Through this pilot program, the [three] youth received modern hardware devices with unlimited 3G data plans courtesy of TECHdotMN and enrolled in a custom technology training program designed by PPL to help them make the most of their new tools.

You can hear about the newly tech-laden youth and their plans for their computers on the TECHdotMN site. I think it’s a great example of an each-one-reach one strategy of technology adoption. The best part of the plan is that it seems like something that would be pretty easy to replicate.

Foundations funding digital inclusion

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The Blandin Foundation got a nice nod yesterday from the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF). John Jung wrote about The Art of Giving in Intelligent Communities. He explains that while the ICF framework does not specify the a role for philanthropy that there is a danger that without addressing the potential for an increasing digital divide, it is difficult to create a digital inclusion policy or practice and that is a potential role for foundation support…

As broadband is deployed widely through a community, there may be serious risk that it will worsen the exclusion of people who may already be disenfranchised or marginalized on the periphery of our economy and society. We encourage Intelligent Communities to promote digital inclusion through effective public policies and seeking funding that will provide access to all members of their society to all forms of technology, high-speed broadband and training.

Blandin has been involved with broadband for several years, so as you can imagine I was interested in Mr. Jung’s observations. One of the core values at Blandin is to be inclusive and to that end we have really been trying to be even more purposeful as we reach out to potentially marginalized communities with our ARRA-funding Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (yes, there is a connection between our project and Mr. Jung’s organization). At our recent conference we heard from folks in the field about how to address the broadband gap. We learned that access means putting technology in the right hands (even if that means remembering ADA requirements to make our web sites accessible) and teaching the right people to use it – and not only teaching information consumer skills, but also helping folks to tell their stories online.

Last summer I wrote about an article that also struck a chord for me – because it too recognized the role of foundation support of broadband. In it Ford Foundation President Luis Ubinas wrote…

“The effort to ensure universal access to high-speed Internet among all citizens is a critical next step to ensuring that America realizes its great aspiration of equal opportunity for all.”

One of our goals is to ensure that broadband is a tool that removes barriers, especially in rural areas – a tool that supports equitable access to economic development, citizen participation and improved quality of life.

Blandin eNews November

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Here’s the news from our latest newsletter. It’s mostly a compilation of Minnesota-related stories from the blog in the last month – but sometimes it’s nice to have it compiled.

Three Reports from Blandin Foundation
In October, the Blandin Foundation released three reports on rural Minnesota:

  1. Rural Pulse http://www.ruralpulse.org is an environmental scan that compares where rural Minnesota is today with rural views ten years ago on the economy, standard of living and jobs.
  2. MIRC Communities Baseline Study http://tinyurl.com/3x57paj a survey of broadband adoption in rural Minnesota, highlighting the 11 demonstration communities participating in the Blandin’s ARRA-funded project.
  3. Digital Crossroads: A Community Guide to Broadband Policy http://tinyurl.com/3xkeef3 a comparison of Minnesota and federal broadband policy plans.

Blandin Broadband Conference Highlights
On October 13-14, about 130 attendees gathered for Broadband 2010: Cultivating a Culture of Use. Highlights include a peek at the future with Robert Stephens http://tinyurl.com/394gers, a look at how Intelligent communities get so smart http://tinyurl.com/366baq7, students shared their recipe for livable communities http://tinyurl.com/3abptym, a tech tour of Baxter http://tinyurl.com/358t77a and attendees shared their thoughts on Minnesota broadband recommendations http://tinyurl.com/366t96a and other broadband topics. http://tinyurl.com/37dzldq. Hear the final impressions from Bernadine Joselyn. http://tinyurl.com/35l258p

Minnesota Broadband Advisory Task Force Oct Meeting
The Governor-appointed Broadband Advisory Task Force met in October to solidify the outline for their report due in early 2011. The Task Force shared notes from members, which are akin a very early draft of their report. http://tinyurl.com/32h3vxd

Remote Diagnosis Tool for Minnesotans
Health Partners unveils a remote diagnosis service, called Virtuwell. It involves a series of questions that help assess your health; the responses can be sent to a healthcare professional to be diagnosed by an actual person. http://tinyurl.com/37mo66y

Local Broadband News in MN

Adrian
The Adrian e-pharmacy gets a nod from Colleen Landkamer, state director of USDA Rural Development in Minnesota. http://tinyurl.com/345t5cb

Dakota County
Dakota County makes the ICF Smart21 ranking. http://tinyurl.com/2fjjxkq

Duluth
Duluth continues to promote itself at a perfect match for Google’s Gig Network. http://tinyurl.com/292entm

Grand Marais, Lac qui Parle, Deer River
All three communities were featured in a video created by the Blandin Foundation for the Broadband US TV program: Spurring Adoption and Use of Broadband with Jim Baller. http://tinyurl.com/27jvng3

Lake County
Lake County is running into issues concerning plans for closed meetings for their ARRA-funded fiber network project. http://tinyurl.com/24audfr

Northwest Minnesota
Impact 20/20 formed a task force to examine the state of broadband in the region and establish goals and strategies to address the challenges in developing widespread broadband access in area. http://tinyurl.com/37zw5v5

(Many stories are gathered from local online newspaper. Unfortunately each newspaper has a different policy in regards to archive news and therefore we cannot guarantee access to all articles cited.)

Coleman’s Corner

The ARRA-funded Blandin Project – Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities – has been going well. The MIRC Demonstration Communities are in full swing with their project development efforts. RFPs were posted earlier this fall and now the local MIRC steering committees are busy reviewing and scoring the applications. The communities are finding out that simply scoring the applications and awarding the top projects is not yielding all of the possible benefits that could be derived from all of the project ideas emerging from community organizations. In response, they are taking scalpels to budgets so that more projects can be funded and encouraging similar projects to find ways to collaborate.
Collaboration has also been encouraged internally – especially during the recent Blandin Broadband Conference. MIRC Demo Communities and RDCs (Regional Development Commissions) were invited to a special pre-conference day of collaboration training. Notes on the training are available online http://tinyurl.com/27qv9ag – but one takeaway I found valuable was the characteristics of collaboration identified by our partners:

Collaboration Means:
~ Equal partners.
~ Shared resources.
~ Shared risks and rewards.
~ Partners working together to create something new.
~ Self-motivated partners – not forced.
~ Putting aside individual differences for the greater good.

Keep these characteristics in mind as you bring possible collaborators together in your own community broadband efforts.

Dakota County makes ICF Smart 21

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I have been working with Dakota Future to develop a strategic link between business, education and government in Dakota County. In the last couple of years, we have been focusing on the broadband economic development framework created by the Intelligent Community Forum – and we happy to report that our efforts have been rewarded for our efforts.

Dakota County has been named a 2011 Smart 21 Global Intelligent Community by the Intelligent Community Forum. This marks the second consecutive year that Dakota County has received this honor. Two years ago, Dakota Future adopted the Intelligent Community framework and set a goal to be recognized as a Top Seven Intelligent Community.

Intelligent Communities develop broadband availability and use; create, attract and support knowledge workers; address digital inclusion; spur innovation in business and government; and effectively market the community to attract talent and investment.

Over the past year, Dakota Future has coordinated Intelligent Community efforts that engaged more than 75 leaders from business, education and government. Dakota Future and other stakeholders are working to achieve the goals set by these leadership groups in each of the five intelligent community pillars. Results include the installation of wireless Internet in Dakota CDA housing, a business innovation and branding study conducted by the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, and inter-community discussions aimed at streamlining telecommunications infrastructure permitting processes.

Sharon LaComb, vice-president of Dakota County Technical College and a Dakota Future board member, promoted the use of the work groups to achieve results. “To compete in this world economy takes long term vision and continued efforts. We need to continue to be smart and work hard to attract and maintain our Dakota County quality of life.”

Dakota County is in contention to be named a Top Seven Intelligent Community and Intelligent Community of the Year. Over the next 60 days, Dakota Future will coordinate efforts to submit a compelling final application for this global competition. Stockholm Sweden and Suwon South Korea are the 2009 and 2010 Intelligent Communities of the Year, respectively.

“To attract investment and talent from outside Minnesota, people need to know that Dakota County exists,” said LaDonna Boyd of Dakota Electric Association. “This puts us on the world map with other innovative communities. This honor documents that we have what it takes to be a high technology locations for small and large companies.”