Thanks to Robert Bell of the Intelligent Community Forum for his generous praise of the leaders within our demonstration communities. At a meeting last week in Mora with community leaders just embarking on a broadband initiative, I was just reinforcing the need for local champions who are not only willing to stand up and promote the importance of broadband and technology-based economic development, but are then willing to take the next step and start working on it.

Our demonstration communities have funded a tremendous number and fascinating mix of projects with a wide number of public and private sector partners. Our project coordinators and their steering teams are champions – doing the hard work of rating projects, encouraging collaboration and asking partners to do more in exchange for the funding. It is great to see the national recognition for our project!