First, You Have a Conversation With Your Neighbors

I was enthusiastic to work with this crew, because I had been leaning towards this regional approach, because this is a first-class bunch, and because I was excited to gather together a conversation in Austin, finally. At last, we would get the who's who from the region together for a conversation on broadband infrastructure - what would it be like? After all, if you want to get something started, kicking it off with a conversation is one of the best ways to surface issues, identify leaders, educate everyone at once, and generate interest in new ideas. What a great idea!

Well, that's the theory at least. We'll see how it works in practice, on February 16. But, based on all the conversations I've had over the past month, I'm enthusiastic. Getting this list together has been a bigger task than I anticipated. While I have a Rolidex that I'm proud of, and being from this area, I do know a lot of people in a lot of different fields. But knowing folks, and getting a specific group of them to come to a breakfast at 8:00 am on a Thursday morning for a discussion on wireless broadband (on the same day that the Austin City Council meets, as I was to learn) is a bigger task than you'd think, Bigger say, than hosting a wine tasting on a Friday night. I want to do that one next. But, I digress.

I started with a survey of the region and a list of cities. I then put together a spreadsheet of the folks I knew with some relationship to government or chambers of commerce in each city. Using that short list, I started making phone calls and developed my pitch. I then spread the net a little wider as I thought of other allies, moving beyond city officials, city adminstrators, and IT/telecom senior staff. I had lunch with our County Judge early on, and made a trip to the Council of Governments. COGs are a little known form of semi-government here in Texas, our Capital Area COG is comprised of ten counties, and they pool resources to make purchasing more efficient, and they study regional issues like emergency services, disaster planning, public safety, health care, and .... as it turns out, metropolitan broadband, although that has not been at the top of their list yet.

I also ended up in discussions with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), the regional electric utility headquartered in Austin; with the Department of Information Resources, part of state government here in Austin; with the County Information Resources Agency - are you starting to see a trend - good to be in the state capital! Well, as it turns out, there is a lot of interest in this subject. Soon the word got out and I received a call from local community activists, who have been promoting wireless for the last several years. And, some Cisco system integrators contacted me. With 12 days to go, we have around 35 RSVPs, and I expect at least 15 more - it would be nice to have 50-60, and end up with 40 or so at the breakfast - that's my goal. Much bigger than that and its hard to have a discussion in the two hours we have allotted.

Next, I'll tell you about recruitment. It's an art to pull something like this off, but its definitely a replicable process.