Another speaker bio for the Broadband conference:

David Russel

Short Bio
I work for Calix, where I am responsible for marketing Fiber-to-the-Home systems to non-traditional service providers. We call these service providers Innovators and they include Municipalities, Greenfield Developers, CLECs and increasingly, cable operators. For those of you not familiar with us, Calix is one of the largest broadband access companies serving North America and the largest Fiber-to-the-Home vendor outside of the Verizon deployments. Calix acquired Optical Solutions last year and since then has been growing the development team in our Plymouth, Minnesota location. All of the Fiber-to-the-Home development is done here in Minnesota. Before joining Optical Solutions in 2003, I worked for ADC Telecommunications for 19 years.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

Calix has deployed Fiber-to-the-Home systems in over 450 communities in the United States. Only about 10 of these have been done by Municipalities. There is a wealth of experience and information available to Municipalities on what has worked and what has not worked. My goal is to connect Municipalities with people and resources who have been there and done it, including the consultant community. It seems like to date Muncipalities are relying on a small circle of information sources that have little proven expertise in deploying Fiber-to-the-Home systems in rural communities in North America.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

Ironically, most of my time the past few years has been spent helping people deploy FTTH systems outside of Minnesota. I am looking forward to meeting people and becoming more of a community member in Minnesota FTTH world.

Another speaker bio for the Broadband conference…

Sheila Howk, currently the New Ulm Retail Economic Development Coordinator.

Short Bio:
I have a degree in Elementary Education and was the director of a charter school for seven years. In my current job I assist retailers and recruit additional retail to the community. I will be pursuing one facet of this going forward, working for a loyalty card for the retail community. I am married and have two children ages nine and six. We as a family enjoy camping, biking, and movies.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

Broadband is such an important part of our livelihood and a depiction of our success. I have realized over the last two years that retail is ever-changing and to succeed in today’s market, broadband is an essential cornerstone. New Ulm brought broadband awareness to the retail community as a sustainable tool. Broadband, website development, and that whole realm, does not have to an extreme expensive venture – but can be. I would share what we have learned this last year some of the do’s and don’ts of the broadband world.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

Continuation, I feel New Ulm has just undertaken a corner of what is out there for broadband assistance and opportunity. The struggle we would have is the personnel. Most retailers are already tapped for time and resources. A collaborative effort to employ someone to take care of the web presence would be the next phase. Learning on how to achieve this would be great.

Here’s another speaker Bio for the Broadband conference comming up next month. You may also recognize Bill as an occassional blog contributor.

Bill Coleman

Short Bio
I help communities make the link between telecommunications and economic development through my company, Community Technology Advisors. I work with the Blandin staff to implement the community oriented activities of the Blandin Broadband Initiative, including the 27 communities that participated in the Get Broadband program and the four current LightSpeed grantees. I am currently partnering with Mike O’Connor to facilitate the work of the Eden Prairie Technology Task Force. Right now, my economic development work is for Dakota Future, a countywide economic development organization serving Dakota County, MN.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

It would be great to identify ways to truly partner with incumbent telecommunications providers. Right now, when communities believe the networks and services provided to their communities are deficient, there seem to be few incremental paths for leveraging improvements. The pre-conference Sesquicentennial event is designed to stimulate some shared understanding and creative thinking to the current deadlocked positions of communities and providers.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

I would like to learn more about the cable industry’s DOCSIS 3.0 operating system that can deliver over 100 Mb per second and when, realistically, we might see that deployed. I would also like to learn more about how open access networks stimulate entrepreneurial application development more effectively than services delivered over a closed network.

I have mentioned the upcoming Blandin Broadband Conference in earlier posts. It is one month away. I’m getting excited for it because I’m actually coming home for it!

To help everyone else get excited I have asked the speakers from the conference to send me a quick bio and to answer a few questions. That way we’d all get a chance to meet them a little bit online before we meet them at the conference.

My friend Mike O’Connor was the first to respond. (Thanks Mike!) I’ll post his intro below and I’ll post the others as I get them.

Mike O’Connor

Short Bio
I’m a community organizer, entrepreneur and tech-geek turned business-leader type person. I became moderately famous here in Minnesota as one of the people who popularized the Internet back in the mid-90’s. These days I divide my pretty-retired time between being a “domainer” (I’ve still got a gaggle of great domains to figure out) and serving on the ICANN Business Constituency.

I’ve done a fair amount of civic committee type stuff. A few of the recent things include; the St Paul Mayor’s Y2k Taskforce (chair), St Paul Mayor’s Education Taskforce (chair), Minnesota Legislative Coordinating Commission Working Group on Taxation of Telecommunications (member), St Paul Mayor’s High Tech Council (founding member), State of Minnesota Information Policy Council (member, Steering Committee), and the Lowertown Cyber Village Association (founding member). (Read more about Mike O’Connor)

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

i’m obsessing about the need for better, and more consistent, methodologies for the studies that determine what municipalities do with broadband. having participated in several such studies, sometimes as a consultant and sometimes as a task-force member, i’m dismayed by how uneven the quality of the work is. my sense is that many municipalities are making pretty important decisions in a pretty haphazard way.

so i’m going to be lobbying for a better understanding of the phases of the planning projects, along with a shared definition of the tasks, deliverables and scale of each phase of the process. i think Blandin could help a lot by advancing this structure, and pointing municipalities at consultants that have a strong delivery track record.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

whether PacketFront has indeed hypnotized every broadband policy wonk in the state.