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From Conversation to Collaboration

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This morning, I realized that I've made the last phone call to invite city officials and senior staff to a regional wireless roundtable breakfast next week in Austin. Sponsored by Cisco and coordinated by MicroCast and MuniWireless, these regional breakfasts (also in Chicago and Atlanta) are meant to act as a catalyst and call to action for regional government leaders. It's time to have a conversation about metropolitan broadband. I targeted nearly 100 individuals and have almost 40 registrants, so I'll take that as a victory, so far.

How many of your new ventures have been sparked by a conversation? Interesting and new opportunities all begin when you meet somebody or something new, which sets off a chain of events inside your head and you start putting 2+2 together and you have a vision of some number greater than 4 - this is the act of creativity, the potential of progress. Something inside your mind becomes that spark that initiates you to take the first step - this is motivation. Maybe you find that missing puzzle piece that allows you to connect the dots and suddenly, you see the big picture, you see a new path through the forest. It's as if a guide taps you on the shoulder and points you in a new direction. Are you an open or closed individual?

Or, alternately, it doesn't start from within, but instead you are acted upon by some outside force, when you get that phone call or email from someone who poses a crazy idea - a what if. Or in my case, you have several people telling you similar things and you perceive a new opportunity just based on synchronicity. It's been a heck of a week for me in that way. That can be the catalyst that leads to new action. Either way, it takes an open mind and open ears to listen, ponder, and say," well, yeah, OK, I'll give it a shot." I've been the one making the phone calls this past month, and some officials have listened, and others have not. I'm hopeful that nearly half were motivated enough to register for this breakfast conversation.

In a sense, the purpose of this website is to be a voice that will spark conversations in your own groups and neighborhoods and cities about different ways of doing the same things, about new approaches to old problems, and new solutions to problems that we weren't even aware of, because we were so focused on our old problems. This is what I call progress. Using new communications technologies that will take cities in new directions, that's the proposition on the table on this website.

So in these phone calls to get people to register, I've been having conversations with friends, but mostly with strangers, over the proposition that we owe it to ourselves in this region to have a BIG CONVERSATION about what we are doing to work together in our region to bring in a new era based on ubiquitous broadband infrastructure. Will we be a region that acts with intention to put ourselves at the front of the line in the new century, or will we keep struggling with our problems of the last century, with our heads down, too busy to look up and gaze at the future for a single morning in February 2006? My sense is that most I talked to are of the open inquiring kind. Some simply have schedule conflicts that they can't avoid.

It's been as if I've been asking for a date, nearly every day for the past 40 days, as I make phone calls and encourage strangers and friends to come to a breakfast that will give us all an oportunity to learn more about something new, and to compare notes on what it means, and perhaps, if it makes sense, work together.

It makes me wonder, this morning as I pause to reflect, "Why is collaboration such a threat to some, so boring to others?" To me, working together makes the most sense in the world because these days, there is always too much on my plate for me to do on my own. It's the only way I get anywhere these days, working with others.

Next Thursday morning, we'll see how well the message took. Hopefully, we'll have a room full of civic leaders who are eager to have a conversation that will by the end of two short hours, point us all in the direction of collaboration. Working together a region can solve so many more problems than they can working separately.

And to have the chance to work on creating a regional communications infrastructure that will enable an unending and unlimited number of regional conversations, that will spark untold numbers of new ideas, that will lead to more collaborations of neighbors to solve new and old problems and create a better life for our children - now isn't that an exciting goal to get you up in the morning for a free breakfast? Stay tuned.

Posted on February 10, 2006 at 08:10 AM

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