Pawlenty Announces Task Force Members
On June 30, Governor Pawlenty announced the 20 members of the new statewide broadband task force. (http://tinyurl.com/6dgt2x)

Blandin Wants Your Stories
The Blandin Foundation is finalizing the development of an exciting new Broadband Toolkit. It will be a website that features more than 100 applications across categories such as Healthcare, Education, Government, Business, and Consumer. If you have a story or application to share, please send an email to broadband@blandinfoundation.org. (http://tinyurl.com/3wjjyz)

Speed Matters Wants Your Bandwidth and Location
Speed Matters is asking Internet users to visit the Speed Matters web site to test bandwidth speeds and provide location information. Data collected will be used for a follow up to their state-by-state report on connection speed published last year. (http://tinyurl.com/4v6g3w)

Recent Blandin Foundation Awards
The Blandin Foundation has awarded funds to three projects this summer that are focused on using broadband or the Internet to improve connectivity. MinnPost received a three-year grant of $225,000 to promote rural voices online. (http://tinyurl.com/48jozj) VITAL received a $525,000, three-year grant for e-learning. (http://tinyurl.com/5pm7y6) Cook County received funds to perform a broadband feasibility study. (http://tinyurl.com/4tj8u2)

Also, putting best practices into use, Blandin Foundation CEO Jim Hoolihan was recently interviewed online about the organization’s move towards using more Web 2.0 tools.
(http://tinyurl.com/3o3q4x)

Municipal Networks
Geoff Daily and Christopher Mitchell talk about the benefits and challenges of municipal fiber networks. (http://tinyurl.com/533q2l) The FTTH Council releases a report saying that encouraging municipal networks is important from the national, as well as local, perspective. (http://tinyurl.com/46kexg)

Placeblogging
Placeblogging refers to bloggers who write about their location, as defined by the authors. (http://tinyurl.com/4d5nfx) As funding for traditional media seems to decrease, these local, new media voices gain more importance. A recent conference on New Reporters focused on the role of placebloggers in the community. (http://tinyurl.com/3pcckk)

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Cook County
With funding from the Blandin Foundation, Cook County plans to look into what it would take to invest in broadband infrastructure in their area.
(http://tinyurl.com/4tj8u2)

Eagan
Eagan-based CaringBridge, the third largest nonprofit web site in the world, has expanded service to not only provide people who are ill with a free web site but now also connects families and friends to reputable healthcare information through a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control. (http://tinyurl.com/4ltm4c)

Fergus Falls
A Japanese researcher visited 5 communities in Minnesota, including Fergus Falls, to look at how rural communities benefit from broadband.
(http://tinyurl.com/4u77wc)

Hutchinson
Creatively using broadband in the schools, Little Crow Telemedia Network brought a local chaplain serving in Iraq into the school for Veterans Day. They also provided students with the opportunity to watch and interact with a surgical team as they performed a knee replacement. (http://tinyurl.com/4vloft)

Minneapolis
Minneapolis is ironing out some kinks in their wireless network. Built primarily in the winter, there are small issues with balancing foliage and wireless coverage. (http://tinyurl.com/3h3gky)

Monticello
The Monticello Fiber Network moves ahead with fiber deployment despite a lawsuit filed by incumbent provider TDS. (http://tinyurl.com/49w8ta)

New Ulm
Stained Glass and More, an online retailer experiences great increase in online sales after attending a Get Broadband sponsored training session on e-commerce and online marketing. (http://tinyurl.com/4v9qg6)

St Cloud
The St Cloud Times now offers live streaming video, starting with their Granite Days weekend coverage. (http://tinyurl.com/3gjapj)  

Swift County
Swift County, the latest community to take advantage of Community Broadband Resources available through the Blandin Foundation, invited Bill Coleman to present on “Leveraging Broadband for Community and Economic Development”. They plan to follow up with e-commerce training for the local business community. (http://tinyurl.com/4tjj8d)

Twin Cities
The University of Minnesota recently released research that indicates that Midwest teens that use social networking sites are learning skills required for 21st century jobs. Benefits are seen across socioeconomic demographics. (http://tinyurl.com/3v2bol)

KFAI aired a show on broadband that included comments, questions and answers from three local broadband experts, Christopher Mitchell, Eric Lampland and Peter Fleck. (http://tinyurl.com/3epfx3)

Waseca
The Waseca School Board recently approved a donation from the Waseca Federal Correctional Institution for 73 computers, two 17-inch monitors and a scanner, valued conservatively at $22,000. (http://tinyurl.com/5474au)

Windom
Equipment and software has been purchased for Windom’s “Video Production and Community Server” project. This summer the Mass Media teacher will be learning more about the system with an eye towards using it this fall. (http://tinyurl.com/3zu7gz)

Winona
Home and Community Options (a Blandin Light Speed funded project) has had great success implementing eFile, a system that is being installed and enthusiastically adapted across the organization this year. (http://tinyurl.com/4z9q4v)

(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.)

July 11 - Open Source Content Management Systems (St Paul, MN) - Define and explore the concept and viability of using open source CMS solutions.( http://tinyurl.com/4hho8m)

July 29-31, 2008 - MCCA Annual Meeting (Brainerd, MN) – Annual for the Minnesota Cable Communications Association. (http://tinyurl.com/5oetlv)

August 12 – Minnesota Digital Government Summit (Minneapolis, MN) – a common platform for discussions on how to harness technology to meet the governing challenges in Minnesota and to transform government services to the citizens of our state. (http://tinyurl.com/53p4cb)

September 21-25 - Linking Communities at the Speed of Light (Nashville, TN) - the place to learn about the operations, financing, marketing and technology of fiber to the home services that are transforming communities around the world. (http://tinyurl.com/6dkvd5) 

September 26-27 MTEA Fall Conference – Tech Ed - Back to the Future XXX (St Cloud, MN) (http://tinyurl.com/5xzqya)

I have been very busy in Southwest Minnesota over the past weeks, publicizing funds available for community broadband feasibility studies and broadband dependent applications.  (http://tinyurl.com/5hwyol) I am sorry to say that these funds are limited to 28 counties in the southwest quadrant of the state. You can learn more about these funds on the Blandin web site.  There is great interest in the funds, especially among community leaders, educators and the health care community.

Through the Blandin Community Broadband Resources program, I have also been working with two counties on emerging broadband initiatives – Swift and Lac qui Parle.  These neighboring counties have each had community meetings where I presented background information on community broadband issues and where we discussed the issues facing residents, businesses, education, health care and government in the area. 

We held a follow-up meeting in Lac qui Parle County where we had an excellent discussion that continued long after the meeting adjourned.  Three local providers were active participants in the meeting and agreed to continue participating.  We learned about Frontier Communications’ new technology that will enable them to extend DSL services over bonded copper pairs to very rural areas long distances from the central office at relatively low capital costs.  Community and business education, improved and linked area web sites, countywide broadband coverage and improved “big” broadband to key users are the priority objectives for the group.  I look forward to working further on this project with Pam Lehman, Lac qui Parle economic developer.

Anyone who has seen me give community broadband presentations, knows that I believe that communities need to focus not just on the network, but also the available services, the subscription rates and the sophistication levels of users to fully move your community forward in this economy.  In Lac qui Parle County, they are doing just that and I think that it will pay immediate dividends.