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)

Let's Get This Party Started! It's Time to Begin Regional Collaboration

To My Readers,

I just told a fellow consultant in an email this morning:

it's rare that business comes to find me, I usually have to go out and get it! It's time to get going!

So here's my opening message to you, my readers, in my first blog, on my new website.

I'm a metropolitan broadband consultant, I know what I'm doing, and I'm action-oriented. I'm ready to go make things happen. I've laid out my perspectives and views on this site, and I believe that this is the right way to go. I'm available today (although my calendar is getting busier by the day, I'll find the time to help cities get going.) Contact me and let's make plans to get going in your region.

Here's the gist of my email to my friend. I like this analogy of you all reading over my shoulder.

"This week, I've been focused on finishing the website, I landed one significant contract, and I'll get two more contracts today for networks in Austin and Round Rock, just to our north. It's been an exciting week. I could launch the website today, for sure by Monday. That will be a reference point that you can refer your people to.

I've been thinking a lot about regional collaboration and how to capture the market interest in Metropolitan Broadband. Let's get busy and do some work together. Let's go help put Texas on the map. No need to sit around and wait to hear back from city officials as they exchange phone messages - yechhh. Let's find those who are ready to go. Why don't you jump on this and set up some meetings?

Message points for regional leaders

1. Metropolitan broadband is available now, there are many options, and they're increasingly affordable. It's not as risky as it looks at first glance.
2. Metropolitan broadband is on city leaders' minds, but there are a lot of questions to answer, and it's a long learning curve.
3. Education is the first step, and given the long learning curve, it's better to start now than to wait. This is not new anymore, so there is no good reason to wait other than procrastination, fear, and ignorance. Education addresses the ignorance, which in turn reduces the fear, which attacks the procrastination and gets things going. While action is not for everyone, education will help cities to decide whether the time is right for them.
4. Regional collaboration makes the whole process less risky, quicker, and more affordable. It's the most sensible approach to enter into this new area. Here's the 1-2-3 approach for interested regional leaders.
5. Step One for your friends is to visit www.metronetiq.com and get their feet wet with the Orientation section (left side) and the old blogs in the archive from last year.
6. Step Two is for them to talk to their neighbors and find out what's going on in their region.
7. Step Three is for them to help to organize a regional breakfast where we can make a joint presentation and initiate a regional discussion on broadband infrastructure.
8. The goal for your regional leader friends is to bring their colleagues in cities in their region up to speed, create a common level of awareness, and stimulate discussion, which leads to action and the benefits of moving forward.
9. The action can range from any number of options, following the shared discussion. Any or all of these can be outcomes of an initial regional discusion.
a. more group study and discussion, with regular meetings scheduled to keep each other informed.
b. formation of a committee of delegates to focus on this issue and develop a greater understanding.
c. regional planning, with more formal mechanisms for working together.
d. coordinated pilot projects: cities each agree to study one aspect or one particular technology
e. cities share lessons learned from the pilots with their regional colleagues.
f. alignment with industry representatives, from equipment vendors to WiSPs to financial allies
g. facilitated implementations where some cities are ready to go now
h. case studies of implementations that are shared with other cities, to speed up the learning process

With this set of regional collaboration options, MetroNetIQ Consulting proposes to engage with regions to become their trusted advisors, and more immediately, to identify from the larger regions those few towns that are ready to move on this now and to help them through consulting engagements.

With sufficient interest, I see two ways to proceed immediately.

I. Individual city consulting. MetroNetIQ will meet with local city officials and assess their situation and offer an opinion on how to proceed. This is a quick hit approach to save those who are ready to go now the time of weeks/months spent wading through the learning process. Price ranges from $5,000 to $9,995 for an intense two-day session - under the $10,000 threshold of most cities' procurement guidelines. For those cities that really want to do this, and are ready to get started, this will be money well spent.

II. Regional collaboration consulting - vendor independent. Regional meetings, starting with an initial breakfast collaboration meeting - interested participants can pool their money to pay for an initial event, at app. $10,000/session plus travel, based on individual scoping. With 10 regional city participants, that would be $1,000/ea plus 1/10 of travel, and we would come to them - convenient. Follwing initial orientation and facilitated discussion, we would chart a course of action, answer questions, and preferably, identify and launch a series of pilot projects that would let neighboring cities come to see first hand what the technology does and how it works. In other words, this is a way to begin to get active, to move quickly but prudently out of the studying mode and into the doing mode.

While I'll be busy here in Austin with my new contracts, with my website, and with my efforts to promote Metropolitan Broadband globally, getting out into commnities is my bread and butter. That's what energizes me. I would love to advise you, support you, and when you have it lined up, travel out into the field to deliver this consulting. By working together, we can help each other - no more talk, let's get busy!

As always, let me know how it goes, and what you think.

Best Regards,

John Cooper
512-771-0507
john.cooper@metronetiq.com"

Well, cities, the ball is in your court. What I said to my friend applies to you as well. I urge you to be deliberate, but not to a fault. Often, the real learning only begins when you take action. Sometimes you just have to go out and get it, because if you wait, it won't come to you quickly, if ever. There's safety in numbers. The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. The hardest thing about exercising is lacing up your shoes and getting out there. OK, I'll stop.

Posted on February 04, 2006 at 06:46 AM | Comments (0)