So this is Christmas, and What Have You Done?

So, do you take stock at the end of the year? I like to pause and reflect at this time of year, but I also find myself getting pensive on my own personal major anniversaries, my birthday, my wedding anniversary, my children's birthdays. But this particular season of year end and Christmas remembrances is just over-the-top sentimental, the classic time to look back and then, to look forward, as the old calendar comes down and a new one goes up.

So what have I done? Speaking for this industry, I'd have to say we've done quite a bit. More narrowly, speaking for my own company, I know MetroNetIQ certainly has. We've come a long way in 2006. This website was just launched a little over 10 months ago, for one thing, and I also launched WikiMetroNet. We evolved our identity and purpose to land firmly in the camp of filling an unmet need by acting as an early stage procurement consultant for cities - I wouldn't have guessed that destination back in January 2006. But I'll wait and make a more complete answer to this question the focus of another blog - my "end-of-year" pensive piece. I'd like to keep this blog focused on you.

So what have you done? What has your city done? Are you moving forward with new technologies, or are you treading water doing things "the way we have always done them?" Or are you avoiding making waves by not bringing up anything controversial? Have you moved beyond the "let's go to a conference" stage? Have you spread the discussion beyond the users (Police Chief, IT Director, etc) to involve the City Manager, the Mayor, and the Council? Have you engaged the non-governmental leaders and stakeholders in your community?

Until you can spread the discussion far and wide, until you have seriously contemplated your next steps, until you have "tried on" a metropolitan broadband network and looked at yourself in the dressing room mirror as a new kind of city - until you've done these things, can you seriously say that you're progressing? So, what have you done?

I hope that more and more cities will add these serious, concrete steps to their New Year's Resolutions list and get serious about taking control of their destinies. I hope that this time next year, you will all be able to hum this John Lennon tune and reflect back on 2007 as the year when your city started to get busy, started to take concrete steps to bring positive change and innovation in, started by using a metropolitan broadband network as a catalyst. That will be a fine recollection next year, if you can point to all that you did to move your city along and bring a network in.