What's in a Name? A Lot, if it Signifies an Attitude and an Approach

MetroNetIQ is using just such a shift in focus to give a new perspective to metropolitan broadband projects. There are trade-offs that come with this shift, but they are worth it. The project will take longer and will have more up-front expenses. But it is likely to turn out better in the end and pay long-term dividends. As we begin to understand better the nature of deploying a citywide common broadband infrastructure, it makes sense to incorporate lessons learned from earlier projects and challenge the assumptions that developed in the early years. Let me detail briefly some of the benefits that flow from this paradigm shift.

First, a community that works well together can accomplish anything. When a community is united behind a common goal and a compelling vision, it leaves behind the rancor and disagreement that can become a habit and paralyze a less unified city. There will still be rumblings and eruptions of discord from the disaffected minority, and the road may be bumpy, but such disturbances will pale in comparison to the unified voice of the majority, no longer silent.

When a community starts listening to each other, acknowledging the views and opinions of all groups and focusing on the future and its children, dreaming of a possible new future in the 21st Century, a spirit of hope begins to define its vision, and good will creeps back in - it starts to feel like a community again instead of a city, and there is a signficant difference in that name change.

Second, beginning with an orientation to consensus and a deliberate sense of purpose innoculates the project and its leaders from a potential political hijacking down the road by an opportunist when the project hits a snag, as they all will at some point. Politics can turn these projects into inspiring political visions or damaging political fights. When a broad majority of the community understands and supports the project, it becomes bullet proof to negativity. The political aspect of these projects should not be minimized; going in with one's eyes wide open with a strategy for addressing potential problems is a sign of good leadership.

Finally, these projects often end up in different places than they intended, as they take the community into new and positive directions. They start off with a vision and a set of objectives and goals, like all good projects, but they inevitably morph as new discoveries are made and advances in technology open up new possibilities. By starting off with an inclusive attitude and an open mind, inviting in all stakeholders to participate in what is in essence a grand experiment in leveraging technology for a better society, project leaders acknowledge what we have learned in the past three years: one rarely ends up where one was pointed when one began one's project. The reason is not poor project management, it is the very plastic nature of this broadband infrastructure that allows it to be turned to so many ends by so many people.

Last night at the Men's Group monthly dinner at my church, we had a lively discussion about the past and how these metropolitan broadband projects compare to the advent of electricity in the early part of the 20th Century. The older men reflected on their early childhoods in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. They could recall visiting their grandparents in the summer, and the excitement that filled the air when the small town out in the country watched as high-voltage wires were mounted on towers and they approached the town. There was a buzz in the air that these elderly gentlemen remembered - not from the electricity on the lines, but from the prospect of leaving behind the back-breaking work of hauling water from the well, and the tedious task of cleaning kerosene lanterns and trimming wicks, mundane tasks that often fell to the children. Finally getting the benefits of modern life that city dwellers had grown accustomed to years before, these townspeople understood that electricity was their future.

With metropolitan broadband coming to our mid-sized cities, the impact may well be less dramatic in this more modern age. But our children today are likely to look back and remember how bringing a citywide broadband network to town had a more far-reaching impact than the leaders of the time could have begun to imagine without the benefit of hindsight. Metropolitan broadband is rapidly becoming the essential utility of the 21st Century, not unlike the way that electricity ultimately became the essential utilitiy of the 20th Century.

Energy and Information are the two fundamental qualities of life, so the infrastructure that brings them into a community should not be underestimated or delayed. Imagining this change as a shared responsibility of all community stakeholders, not just the city's IT Department, is a first step in making this vision a reality.

This name change implies a different, more expansive vision, where the metropolitan broadband project becomes a community-wide project, not a limited IT project for better city government. While efficient city government is a laudable goal, keeping the project bottled up in city government limits its potential and raises unnecessary risks. Better to move slower, give up some control, but in so doing, share the project's glory and spread the project's risk with the community at large.