What a Turnout, What a Start!

The Regional Wireless Roundtable breakfast event for Austin and Central Texas went off without a hitch this morning, marking what I hope will be the beginning of some ongoing regional collaboration on metropolitan broadband infrastructure in Central Texas. Clearly, things are starting to move here in Texas when it comes to metropolitan broadband. On Monday of this week, I wrote the attached letter on the status of community broadband in Texas, to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on behalf of the Community Broadband Coalition - click here to download the letter to get a snapshot of broadband in Texas. I told folks at the breakfast that I would post this, so here it is.

So, the big day arrived and I was intensely curious about turnout - what kind of showing would we have? Out of 39 registrants, how many would actually come? Well, we had 30 registrants show up, with one walk on. That's somewhere between 75% and 80%, by my math. I believe the number would have been somewhat higher if we had not had the event on the same day as the Austin City Council meeting, for instance. That was unfortunate timing, but it could not be helped.

I'm very pleased with the turnout, and the discussion. Hats off to Gary Bolles of MicroCast, moderator of the event; to Esme Vos, founder of MuniWireless, who shared some of her experiences with municpal rollouts around the world; to the Cisco team, who were available to answer questions before, during, and after the roundtable; and to the attendees themselves, who came and offered a good part of their morning for this discussion, as well as their thoughts and perspectives.

From Where Did They Come?

Cities and Counties: 15
City of Austin - five
City of Bee Cave - one
City of Buda - one
City of Georgetown - two
City of Pflugerville - one
City of Round Rock - one
City of San Marcos - one
Travis County - two
Williamson County - one

Associated Regional Groups - 5
County Information Resources Agency - one
Capital Area Council of Governments - one
Texas State Senate Candidate - one
Lower Colorado River Authority - one
Austin Technology Incubator - one

Consultants and Community Activists - 10

Who were they? (Public Sector Official Titles only)

CIO
Executive Assistant to Council Member
CIO
Program Manager
Assistant City Administrator
Mayor
Energy Services Manager
IT Director
Police Lieutenant/IT Director
ITC Manager
Finance Director
CIO
County Judge
IT Director
Director
Director/Regional Planning and IS
Policy Director
President
CIO

We shared our aspirations and thoughts on the benefits and challenges of metropolitan networks. We brainstormed on applications that networks can enable. Public Safety was a strong leading indicator here. We discussed the importance of analyzing the business drivers for a network and applications and of identifying a business model to follow. We talked about RFPs, and about politics (we spent more time than I personally would have liked in the discussion of political hypotheticals, but there was clearly interest there, and a suggestion that ignorance of political constraints inhibits local decision-making and long-term planning). Knowledge of the political landscape is important. Finally, we discussed regional collaboration and the opportunities around public-private partnerships. I will follow up with suggestions for more regional collaboration, and track that effort on this site.

One challenge raised was that cities have long budget planning cycle horizons, which makes it almost impossible to build in plans into the budget to do a network. I suggested that this is an opportunity for the public sector network champion to seek a private sector partner to do a local pilot network that will not only capture the imagination of the citizens, but also educate the decision makers on the City Council. Metropolitan Broadband is a show-and-tell technology that is not fully grasped until it is experienced.

As I said, I'll continue the process by inviting those who attended to a smaller, more regular series of Regional Collaboration meetings in a relaxed setting so that we can continue the dialogue and hopefully move on to some shared activities to promote more bandwidth in our region.

This meeting ratified the assumptions we've had about working together. It works, and the future is promising. Thanks again to all who made this happen. What a Start!

Posted on February 16, 2006 at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

From Conversation to Collaboration

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 | Comments (0)

First, You Have a Conversation With Your Neighbors

I've been working on a Regional Wireless Roundtable Breakfast Event for the past two months. It's been a journey of lessons learned, and as I told you that I would share with this blog, here goes. I'll try to break it into digestible bits.

Part One. Getting Started. Back in November, I got an email from Mike Perchowski at MicroCast, asking me if I would help him put together a hand-selected group of regional government officials to attend a breakfast in February, to talk about metropolitan broadband and the new wireless options now out there. I knew MicroCast by reputation as an events company, having watched them do good things working with Esme Vos at MuniWireless, helping her to put on conferences on municipal broadband. It seems that Cisco, the networking equipment giant that entered this metropolitan broadband market in late October, had done some work with MicroCast and contacted them and MuniWireless to help put on at least three regional breakfasts like this one in Austin (They're also doing events in Atlanta and Chicago).

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.

Posted on February 04, 2006 at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)