It was great to see Dave Peters’ article on the Blandin Foundation’s MIRC project (Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities). I’m going to cheat and pull out the main parts – and suggest that you check out the article yourself. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve read lots of articles on MIRC through the last couple of years, but it’s nice to get a perspective with a little distance.
But a lot of people have access to broadband yet don’t use it. So about $5 million also went to the Blandin Foundation in Grand Rapids to encourage residents and businesses to get on board the 21st Century’s transformational means of communication. That money has now been spent and the project known as Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities has wrapped up. What did it buy?
Blandin picked 11 places to focus its efforts and enlisted the help of non-profits, regional development commissions, University of Minnesota Extension, state agencies, the Intelligent Community Forum and others. As a result, in those communities schools got better computer equipment, local governments enhanced services available online, hundreds of business operators received training in how to put their stores and services on the digital map.
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A big question, though, is whether the money moved the needle on adoption. An analysis of the project by the Economic Development Administration Center at the University of Minnesota Crookston says it did, at least to some extent.
The number of broadband subscriptions in all of rural Minnesota rose by a little more than 10 percent during the time the project was in effect. In almost all of the 11 communities Blandin focused on, the increase was greater — almost 16 percent in Cook County and almost 13 percent in Thief River Falls, for example. Leech Lake band adoption grew more slowly than rural Minnesota overall, by less than 10 percent.
Nice to see the project getting some good recognition. Another great benefit to the state that often isn’t mentioned is the e-commerce training that the U of M Extension developed and delivered to Horizons and other (non-MIRC) Minnesota communities. In my experience it was instrumental in giving us a little wake-up call about the importance of getting on the virtual map, and best practices for doing it. As a result many more local businesses now have a web presence, we’ve created a community web portal and are starting to incorporate more video into it, and our area’s websites are getting more hits. Big thanks to Ryan, Adeel, and the rest of the team for their great work!