Community Internet Sites Weigh In on Debate

hearusnow.org: Connected With this website, Consumers Union provides a good resource for those who would seek to motivate a community effort to bring in broadband. I recommend you check this one out and bookmark it. Good tools and lots of good information.

Free Press : Community Internet provides a valuable tool in a map that shows all the different community network sites around the US, as well as a variety of other resources.

And ConnectMyCity.com provides numerous resources for those who would seek to do more than just read about the debate.

Surf these sites today and see how you can get involved, and let your voice be heard in your local community, in your state capital, and in Washington, DC. This is a democracy, you know!

Posted on October 06, 2005 at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

On Community and Communications - We Need Both, Now More Than Ever

I feel a little like a broken record, but it has been hard for me to maintain a sense of normalcy in this blog, as I witness events unfolding in New Orleans, Louisiana, and MIssissippi over the past week. I know I will get back to blogging on more "normal" issues - I have queued up an article on video streaming and another one on VOIP. But for now, New Orleans and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina keep pushing me back to this subject. The role of communications and community in our lives is being highlighted as never before, as we witness what is now being described as "the worst natural disaster in our nation's history."

Never before have we been eyewitnesses to the destruction of a major US city - for shock effect, you could count the outrageous NYC Twin Towers and Pentagon terrorist tragedy (9/11), the mind-numbing Shock and Awe bombing of Baghdad two years ago, or the terrible Tsunami, but this time it was somehow different, it was an entire US city populated with our relatives, friends, and fellow citizens, stretched out in agony, in front of our very eyes with first the awesome storm followed by the slow creep of an inevitable flooding of the bowl city of New Orleans, OUR community, with its French Quarter, its Mardi Gras, its Jazz Festival, its wonderful restaurants, and its marvelous diversity and multi-cultural traditions - we came together in this place, with a myriad of personal memories, mostly pleasant. Just two weeks ago, I wrote about how much we loved our cities, and included The Big Easy as one of those next in line to get a wireless network. These are our fellow Americans who are suffering (more than they should have to, which we will get to in a minute) and we all feel a horrible sense of loss and helplessness. As we work through this tragedy, as we are bound to do, that sense of loss will get refocused into outrage at what did not work as it was supposed, and where we feel we were let down as a nation - pick your public servant based on your perspective.

Nobody is alive today who was old enough to read about the destruction wrought by the great earthquake and fire in San Francisco one century ago, which has eery parallels in its destruction and death toll. But we saw this one coming in ways that we couldn't one hundred years ago. Since the video age began in the sixties, we have not seen the likes of this in the US. There is something personal at work here - and I believe that that visceral feeling is a reflection of community - which embodies our notions of empathy, togetheness, mutual responsibility, and caring. Feelings just run deeper when it is "your own" who are suffering. As we extend the notion of "our own" to strangers in a city far away, let us hope that we make that a permanent feeling, and nurture it to the point where we can extend that feeling beyond our nation's borders to tragedies abroad. But for now, let us simply hope that we will continue to act as a naitonal community, taking care of each other.

And what of the role of communications within our community?

While a hurricane may be an Act of God, communications and technolgy are seen as something we have some control over. We had warning aplenty with today's technologies. And if communications is vital for early warning, it is no surprise to observers that good communication is especially vital to recovery from a disaster like this. Modern communication tools like the Internet are being brought to bear on this tragedy, as covered in my last blog. The point is driven home in this article from Saturday The Desperate Cry Out for Loved Ones Still Lost - New York Times.

So desperate are people to communicate that when a T-Mobile office in Gulfport put out a sign that said "free calls," 1,500 people lined up over two days, the managers said. There was tearful call after tearful call, with one relieved mother even insisting that her daughter pass the phone to a T-Mobile employee so she could thank him. But by Friday, the office had run out of fuel for the generator that powered its signal tower.

So we witnessed the stages of communications in a disaster, something like this: evacuate, then get help to survivors, then call relatives, then look for relatives, then mobilize first responders for power recovery, then telecom recovery, then for rebuilding and allocating supplies,with the phases overlapping. And as normalcy returns in stages, the telecommunications tools employed can get more and more sophisticated.

Pre Disaster: Communicate with population to warn of the coming storm and issue evacuation recommendations and orders, use full array of modern communications to line up and pre-position resources
Disaster: TV crews show images of disaster up close and personal to those outside the area, first respoinders prepare using modern comunications infrastructure outside the disaster area
Post Disaster Day One: Those outside can see everything on extensive coverage on TV, but those inside are deaf, dumb, and blind. All the communications and power infrastructures are gone or disabled. Communications is largely in person at first.
Post Disaster Week One: Crews work to restore cell towers and power to the damaged area, and phones are provided for immediate communication with relatives. Computers and the Internet are brought in to refugee centers to help with the search for loved ones.
Post Disaster Month One: self-powered cell tower equipment is brought in to restore mobile phone service, and as power is restored, traditional tower and land line service is restored as well.

When Everything Falls Apart, Communication is the First Step on the Road Back

One observer at the Superdome said words to this effect: "Please don't send us National Guard troops with guns to restore order, send us a man with a bullhorn to tell us what is going on - that will help to calm people down." Information is ranked right up there with food and water. Communications are vital not only to help move evacuees out and restore calm, but also to coordinate the large rescue and recovery effort itself. Infrastructure, tools, and willingness to cooperate are vital to communication, which is one part technology and one part cooperative human behavior. Lack of either will stymie the best intentions for communication.

Mr. Chertoff said he recognized that the local government's capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood. "What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns," he said. But Mayor Nagin said the root of the breakdown was the failure of the federal government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly. "They kept promising and saying things would happen," he said. "I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises."

from After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game - New York Times

When the dust settles and everyone gets tired of pointing their fingers at everyone else, I believe that one of the major things that we will conclude went wrong this past week will be extremely poor communciation among responders, but more of the cooperative human behavior kind than the infrastructure kind. From what I can tell so far, it seems that the states and local governments expected FEMA to take charge as they have in the past, and FEMA was waiting on the states and local governments to tell them what to do, perhaps under new Homeland Security guidelines. Sheeesh, what a mess! Compounding such human shortcomings was a lack of infrastructure inside the disaster area and the horrible flooding. So while greater minds than my own tackle the thorny political issues and repercussions, I'd prefer to focus on the infrastructure.

This pulls me back to the potential of prepositioned wireless mesh equipment to provide immediate broadband communications infrastructure in the wake of a disaster, to foster better coordination of relief efforts. When mobile nodes are positioned on first responder and power utility vehicles, and are complemented with fixed mesh nodes and backhaul radios on self-powered trailers, as I wrote about last week, the Phase One infrastructure situation is entirely different than it is today one week after this disaster began to unfold. In the future, such a prepositioned network will enable first responders from the four corners of the world to come in and have a shared high-speed link that lets them communicate with each other and the outside world. The principal values of low cost, high bandwidth, and a universal language make Wi Fi networks potent new tools to empower those who would quickly save lives and restore public safety in the wake of a disaster. Look for Wi Fi networks to make a name for themselves in the coming weeks as the world is able to witness the utility they bring to disaster recovery.

As a national community, we must pull together to overcome this disaster and restore our local communities. We must take advantage of the best technology tools and communication options that are currently available, but we must also ensure that we are doing the best we can do to communicate with each other as human beings who are on the same team - Team USA. We should not lose sight of that fact as we work to mine lessons learned from this terrible tragedy. Otherwise, all the technology in the world will not save us from ourselves.

Posted on September 05, 2005 at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

How To Unwire, Part III

In my previous blog, I related my perspective on steps I can take to stimulate interest in bringing a wireless municipal network to Austin, my hometown. Austin is a perplexing situation, because we have abundant resources and all the raw material to be a leader in this space, but its as if all of our broadband accessibility and hot spots inhibit, rather than promote the formation of a wireless network. Time will tell.

But large cities are still the exception when it comes to municipal networks. The action is in the smaller towns, like Washington, PA, profiled in an earlier blog: Pennsylvania: Washington (PA, not DC) may get Wi Fi. Here is wireless consultant August Michel's first-hand account of his experience in Washington, PA.

How I Unwired My First City

First I started with who knows who and laid that groundwork in networking.

I spoke their language. I figured out what they wanted to hear and what they did not want to hear.

I was patient and persistent but not demanding.

I will never forget when one board member talked to me after a meeting and told me how much he appreciated the fact we did not demand a decision by 3pm or the deal would be off.

Here are some ideas and methods that helped me "UnwireMyCity:"

1. More patience - don't be afraid to ask for decisions and timeframes but be prepared for delays.
2. Be firm and honest - Tell them upfront, what you are thinking and what you expect from them.
3. Know the politics but do not get involved in them.
4. Gather as much information as possible.
5. Always listen more than you talk - my dad always said that God gave you two ears and one mouth, use them proportionately.
6. Find your allies and give them reasons to trust you - don't be afraid to show some vulnerability.
7. Never be afraid to pull out the NDA - this will let them know you are serious.
8. Sell the story not the product - sell the sizzle not the steak. Make them see the true scope of how the wireless internet can revolutionize their city, e.g. police cruisers, ambulances, fire trucks, wireless security cameras, WiFi meter readers, flood detection, etc.
9. Try to learn who really knows whom. Find out who has the real money and power.
10. Find out who is building where and when - there are projects and plans that are sometimes years in the making. You will be able to offer WiFi services even during the construction phases.
11. Learn to speak their language - what can you offer them, money talks but it is not always about money. Make sure you communicate your ideas clearly. If you are too vague they will miss the idea altogether, and if you are too detailed they will not understand what you are saying. Try to find the balance between too much information and too little information (K.I.S.S.).
12. Never be belittling or condescending - always emphasize that there are no stupid questions. There will always be people that will not understand the steak, but make sure they are "sold" on the sizzle.
13. Read How To Win Friends and Influence People - it is more important than reading WiFi for Dummies

Remember you do not have to be an expert at everything. You are a stronger and better leader when you can say with authority, "I don't know the answer to that question, however I will get it for you as soon as I can."

For more information or consulting services contact August Michel of Confidential Consulting @ 412.377.7245.

Posted on August 24, 2005 at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

Go Back to School to Tap the Latent Potential of Your City

Helping to find the solutions is a role uniquely suited to the university. It has the expertise, but perhaps more importantly is the most trusted agent of change within a community. The university interests are clearly learning and linkages, not power or financial gain. Equally important, the university operates on a principle of "shared governance." The idea of sharing power -- giving all the stakeholders a voice in the new smart community -- is long overdue. If there was ever a time for this concept to have community-wide applicability it is now.

from Defining San Diego's Future in a Flat World- Voice of San Diego, by John Egan

Leadership can be found in a variety of places, from on high, and from down in the ranks. In Kick the Internet into high speed | csmonitor.com, the argument is made that the FCC and Congress must provide the leadership to identify alternatives to the cable and telephone duopoly indicated by recent FCC and Supreme Court decisions. Citing the three branches of our federal government, clearly this view looks for leadership from the top - and while I believe that such leadership will come in time as it must for such an important topic, a more immediate source of leadership is showing up from our cities, who are not content to wait and are mobilizing today to meet their own broadband needs.

In The City : A Global History, profiled in the Books section on this site, Books and Whitepapers, Joel Kotkin demonstrates how cites have played an historic role in driving civilization forward, by concentrating vital skills and the craftsmen who innovate, so that they could make faster progress and pass knowledge down through generations. With the rise of nation-states in modern times, the role of cities faded a little, but we are now witnessing a resurgence of the city as the core of the Region. The Internet has collapsed borders, so that regions now compete against each other and it is the nation-states that seem to be fading into the woodwork, as Tom Friedman makes clear in The World is Flat (also in the Books section - if you haven't read this yet, check it out.). And the heart and soul of the region is the city.

But as everyone knows, cities large and small are often befuddled by long-term rifts and factions that seem to slow down progress at every turn. How does the modern city move forward to become competitive on the global stage, to position the best that its region has to offer? Arguably those cities that tap into their unique potential and find a way to harness their resources and work together will be the most successful, and in the networked knowledge economy of today, those cities that have flagship universities are positioned with research capabilities, cutting edge talent, and a youthful culture that can feed an innovative and risk-taking culture to set a region apart from others.

So, as the opening quotation states, San Diego is looking to its universities to provide the leadership its community needs to set itself apart as it plans for a broadband infrastructure, and other communities would be wise to follow suit.

In Austin, Texas, my hometown, the University of Texas is a world leading university, but it has a decidedly mixed success record at providing change leadership for its host community. Too often the "ivy-covered walls" (it's virtual ivy down here in Texas) have led university leaders to look inward, but things are changing for the better. I've written about the Science, Technology, and Society program and its Community Advisory Board on this site. I view the STS Board as a tool to help Austin focus on the potential of wireless for the community.

The challenge for me is to motivate Austin leaders, in the "most wired city in the US" to formulate and pursue a municipal wireless vision.

I said I would track my success at raising wireless as an issue on this site, so here's an update. One of the first steps in any planning effort is to understand where you are starting from. One needs to get a lay of the land, to survey the various interest groups and create a baseline that will help in creating the plan. What are the resources that you can bring to bear on your tasks? Start asking questions and see if you can find some allies to your cause.

The most recent activity for me in this regard was to help with a poll of area non-profits for STS. Not surprisingly, few of the respondents understood municipal wireless networks or were aware of the potential, and those that did said that bringing broadband to their constituencies (addressing the Digital Divide) would be the key benefit of such a network in Austin. I concluded that there's a need to raise awareness of the potential of municipal wireless in Austin among this group, who could prove to be allies for the cause of bridging the Digital Divide. But there are other resources to look to in this planning effort.

I've approached a few community groups so far, but have not had success to date in putting this item on their discussion agenda. But I've only just begun, persistence is key here as well. Next up to try to get the ball rolling in Austin will be to continue my work with the city's electric utility and potential third party providers, and also to approach city leaders to see about providing a catalyst. Austin will be host to the World Congress on IT in May 2006, which provides a convenient target to get a network in place, and they are interested in helping to promote a wireless network.

I've also talked to Mike Wolleben at www.Wimax.com about using some WiMAX equipment that is already mounted on a rooftop in Austin to do a demonstration project. The key at this point, I believe, is to raise awareness and pique the interest of the community, and I think that starts with a focused awareness campaign. With the upcoming Wireless Networking & Communications Group Symposium 2005 at UT Austin in October, I will have another opportunity to promote a local agenda with experts in our community.

So, stay tuned, and let me know how you approached your community to get the ball rolling. The first habit of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is to Take Initiative, so I'd like to know how you have had success in getting started at bringing a wireless network to your community. Please let me know and I'll share it with our readers.

Posted on August 24, 2005 at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

From Glob to Blob to Blog ... Everybody Run!

BBC NEWS | Technology | One blog created 'every second'

Indescribable... Indestructible! Nothing Can Stop It!

Indescribable... indestructible... insatiable

The indestructible creature! Bloated with the blood of its victims!

It crawls.... It creeps.... It eats you alive!

A mysterious creature from another planet, resembling a giant blob of jelly, lands on earth. The people of a nearby small town refuse to listen to some teenagers who have witnessed the blob's destructive power. In the meantime, the blob just keeps on getting bigger.

From The Blob (1958) on the Internet Movie Database

Blogs - great idea, funny name...While reading this article reporting on stats from blog-watching site Technorati, such as - the number of blogs doubles every 5 months - I couldn't help but think of the classic sci-fi thriller from 1958, one of Steve McQueen's first movies. I saw it on our family's black & white TV back in the 1960s and it always stuck with me as my first "scary" movie. Gives me chills to this day, but I'm sure its nothing like Silence of the Lambs scary.

The basic plot line is that two teenagers know about this blob from outerspace that keeps getting bigger, but nobody believes them, until it is as big as a house at the end. Man, it scared me back then!

Fast forward 40 years and I'll explain my analogy - I really think that blogs are a cultural phenomenon, but many people are still unaware of them. See my post The Wisdom of Crowds, the Safety of Numbers, urging those who would build a community network to get started on a community blog - its a great tool to gather momentum and track your progress in an open forum. Don't be one of the non-believers, start your blog before it's too late!

Oh, and by the way, the working title for this movie was The Glob, which is (almost) Blog spelled backwards .... OOOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!

PS - be sure to check out the Internet Movie Database when you get time - one of my favorite sites, with EVERYTHING there is to know about movies. Great to pull up if you have a question while watching a video.

Posted on August 02, 2005 at 05:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Practicing What I Preach

I've been preaching the message of advance community involvement to better understand the purpose of a community network project, before it is launched. That's easier said than done.

It's one thing to preach a general message and to spoon out advice, but quite another to roll up your sleeves and show how the objective can be reached. So, like Dr. Jekyll, I'm going to try out the potion on myself, and let you watch (let's hope that the analogy ends there, and we don't see Mr. Hyde come out anytime soon!). In this section, I will track my progress in working to mobilze Austin, Texas, to get a municipal wireless broadband network.

So stay tuned. Step One will be to participate in a survey of Central Texas non-profit organizations, to assess their technology issues. I referenced this study in my July 9 blog How Do You Mobilize a City to Do Wireless?. As usual, I'd appreciate your comments and suggestions along the way.

Posted on July 29, 2005 at 06:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How to Unwire, Part I

Dupont Circle Will Become a WiFi Hot Spot One way to unwire your city is to, well, in the words of a famous sports company, Just Do It. By starting with a public access project like the one described in this article, you gain much more attention and have a focal point to press the discussion about a full city buildout. Whether starting with a pilot in anticipation of a full city network, or starting with a stand-alone Hot Zone, the impact may be the same, to generate interest and demonstrate public support for this new municpal capability.

Posted on July 19, 2005 at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How do you Mobilize a City to Do Wireless?

I hope you're not disappointed if I don't tell you in this blog how to mobilize your city to do wireless. I don't have all the answers, but I'm getting closer. Instead, I'm really asking you that question and I hope you will help me to find the answer. In my last blog, I talked about the importance of Community Involvement and I'd like to drill down on that issue herein. Let me give you a little background.

Austin is a sizeable city, but still has a small town feel to it. The University of Texas is a world class institution, recently ranked No. 3 in the US and No. 15 in the world, if I remember correctly. UT plays a large role in our community, but it's a little like Vatican City in the middle of Rome. At times, it feels like UT is a city in itself, right in the middle of our city. This is an area of growth for our community, to get UT better integrated into Austin society.

So, I was excited last fall when I was asked to be part of a new community advisory committee: UT has a new program and academic discipline, dubbed Science, Technology, and Society, or STS. The STS Community Advisory Committee is made up of about 20 some odd community leaders who meet every three months with faculty and graduate students to advise them on curriculum and community interface issues.

For instance, we met this spring to have a Q&A on Nanotechnology and its implications for society. While a lot of the discussion went right by me, I understand that our input was helpful to UT in moving forward in a competition for grants in this important technology area.

It seems that a new thing in academia is something called a Societal Impact Statement, akin to the Environmental Impact Statement that we have become familiar with on construction projects. Grant-making institutions are starting to ask academics about the impact of a technological pursuit on society before granting funding for projects. It has become the role of groups like the STS Advisory Committee to provide such community perspective. Also, we can help UT to better integrate and relate with the local community, a long-held need in Austin.

For example, last month we were asked to help provide the PhD candidates in the STS program with a two-week applied aacademic study that they could work on, and then we would all sit for a presentation of results in early August.

I submitted a project that focused on how a community might raise community awareness on the potential of and means for a metropolitan wireless network in their own community. The scope of the project would be to develop a methodology for integrating community input into city leaders' planning for a metropolitan wireless network.

I will meet with a PhD candidate on Tuesday, July 26, to kick off this study and two weeks later, I'll see his or her presentation on how we might mobilize the Austin community to get a wireless network. It's a question dear to my heart, as I've sought to mobilize Austin for the past two years to create a city-wide network. Now, as we have recently been recognized as the No. 1 most-wired city, I see it as a special challenge for me to help Austin to become a model unwired city. I have a lot of irons in the fire in this regard, and I see this STS project as one more tool in my toolbox.

I would ask you informed readers and visitors to this website to advise me in the next nine days. What would you tell the PhD student, and how would you design a two-week study to mobilize a community? I'd appreciate your comments by emailing me at your convenience. Please let me know your thoughts on community mobilization, and what you would like to find out. I will share the results with you as they become available.

Posted on July 09, 2005 at 10:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

One Cleveland

OneCleveland This website is an example of a community effort to integrate its technologies and provide for a future connected city.

Posted on June 29, 2005 at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Minnesota: Go Moorhead Broadband

Go Moorhead is the brainchild of Moorhead Public Service, which services Moorhead, Minnesota, just across the river from Fargo, North Dakota. This small municipally-owned utility provides us all with an example of the possibilities when a community works together to meet its own needs.

Communications Director Jennifer Walz presented the details of their project at the American Public Power Association Annual Meeting in Anaheim last week (6/19-22). Jennifer, who also does improv comedy on the side, held the crowd's attention as she walked through the details of how affordable and manageable a community network can be.

Jennifer described a series of events that must be all too familiar to small communities around the US. Faced with the inability to get traditional providers to provide Moorhead with high speed internet access, the town leaders investigated installing a fiber system in Moorhead, but could not make the business case provide a reasonable rate of return, so they abandoned their plans.

But taking yet another look at the issue in the past year, they discovered that wireless broadband now provided the speed and coverage they needed at an affordable cost.

How did they make the business case work? On the revenue side, they worked with city government and the Univ of Minnesota at Moorhead, establishing two anchor tenants who would cover enough of their costs to make a solid business case to bring broadband access to their citizens.

On the expense side, they not only used affordable wireless technology by Tropos Networks, but also worked the project through their locally-owned electric utility, where they could take advantage of the utility's fiber optic ring that circles the city for connecting to the Internet (also known as backhaul), and its poles and street lights for mounting the network's wireless equipment.

Jennifer spent considerable time discussing the interaction with the community that they feel is essential to the long-term success of their project, because they need the community's citizens to embrace this new service and subscribe in order to meet their conservative financial projections. I wrote about this in the recent article about setting up a community blog.

If you need broadband for your town and already have your own municipal electric utility, you would be well advised to look further into this case study as an example of how to proceed. And, Jennifer will probably provide you with a few good laughs while you're at it!

Posted on June 25, 2005 at 04:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

California: Broadband Broadcasting, Podcasting in Newport, CA

I was fortunate to accompany a group on a boat tour of Newport Harbor last Tuesday night (6/21), as a guest of the folks at Laguna Broadcasting Network, a new kind of community network that is springing up around the US to take advantage of metropolitan mesh network infrastructure.

It was a delightful evening. The natural beauty of the sunset harbor cruise was accompanied by interesting demonstrations of Wi Fi Mesh technology by Tropos Networks, with a mesh node mounted to the mast of the yacht, enabling Voice over Wi Fi telephony and video transmission on large screens on the lower deck. We enjoyed unique video presentations by local artists: in cooperation with the local community college, LBN is producing orignal local content for broadcast to the local community.

Wireless computer networks that serve and support the particular needs and concerns of local citizens and businesses are popping up as a new kind of broadcasting, unlike what we grew up with watching TV in the 60s, or even cable in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Whereas ABC, CBS, and NBC worked with local affiliates to present a mix of content (national network, syndicated, and local news, weather, and sports), these new networks showcase local talent and events, and offer such interactive features as podcasting (content for download) and live coverage of events that would only interest the local community.

Subscriptions to LB Net go beyond the standard High Speed Internet Access (which they make available with prepaid cards at four cents/minute). Besides live webcasts of community events and scheduled programs of community interest, there are news headlines and reporting, on-demand audio and video archives, community personalities, political coverage, and local business advertising on an interactive downtown map.

In Laguna Beach, small is beautiful.

Posted on June 25, 2005 at 04:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Wisdom of Crowds, the Safety of Numbers

The more open you can make your planning process, the better. The more involvement you can get from your community, the more support your network will have. By being open and getting all segments of your local community involved from the get-go, you will find that the process goes smoother, any bumps in the road are overcome more easily, and when it comes around to signing up subscribers, you will have more support and a quicker road to solvency.

There are several means to generate community involvement, but one of the first I would recommend is to create a community blog (see the definition of blog I added to the Glossary). There are over 4 million of these websites out on the web, since the first was launched about five years ago. I added a book review to the Books section on Orientation - a recent book by Hugh Hewitt, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that's Changing Your World. I strongly recommend you buy and read this book - it's well written, full of useful information, and an enjoyable experience. I read it cover to cover on a three-hour plane ride.

Perhaps my experience with my two blogs - UnwireMyCity.com and MetroNetIQ.com - will offer you some encouragement. It's been about a nearly nine months since I began blogging, and I started from scratch. Follow these steps to get started.

Creating a Community Blog in Eight Easy Steps

1. Start with a URL. That's the web address, www.metronetiq.com for this website. I recommend GoDaddy.com, as having the best value for URL purchase. You can get a website URL for under $10. Something catchy helps in branding, but I don't think it's all that important - better to get started than to spend considerable time picking a URL.

2. Get some web logging software. I chose the most popular software for blogging, Movable Type by Six Apart. I paid $99 for a software license.

3. Make arrangements for website hosting. Websites are really just files on a web server, a specialized computer hooked up to the Internet. So you need to either have your own server, or pay some other company to do that for you. Typically, hosting companies charge a small fee and then move up the fees if there is considerable traffic on your site. I took the easy route and chose hosting by AQHost, one of the recommended hosting sites on the Six Apart website. I can no longer recommend AQHost, however, due to poor customer service. In launching MetroNetIQ.com, I switched to LivingDot, which will cost me about $150/year - including the cost for software - a small price to pay for a company that specializes in hosting Movable Type blog sites.

4. Start posting content. the rule for a successful blog is to write, write some, and then, write some more again. Like the shampoo bottle instructions, let's add a final step: Repeat. Short and punchy is best. As Hewitt stresses in his book, blog sites are about relevant content, an easy writing style, and current information. The key is to keep it simple to start, and get into the habit of posting regularly. It's OK to be candid, in fact, that's the expected tone in the blogosphere. It's important to be accurate, but even more important to be timely. Because the medium is so current, small errors and/or omissions can be corrected as soon as you catch them, but gross errors run the risk of being picked up and spread widely, so caution and prudence are in order. Good to follow the Dale Carnegie guidelines and stick to positive statements in your comments (say nice things about people, or remain mostly silent).

5. Learn to use the software. Early on, I went to the bookstore and bought a helpful book, Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition) to help me with the basics. I was able to get quite far in understanding the tools and functionality of the software with this aide. But, I wanted to go further, so I went to the next step ...

6. Hire a professional. I took an additional step and hired a web design expert to dress up the site and add more functionality. Steve Zilko at Zilko Web Solutions has been very helpful to me in adding functionality and giving the site a more professional look. I recommend you drop Steve a line, or hire somebody local, or work within your own staff to dress up the site and add further functionality.

7. Start interacting with your community. By using a blog to focus debate and update your community, you are helping to generate trust in advance of this next step, bringing broadband access to your town. The great thing about the blog and blog software is that you are able to reach your constiuents cheaply and effectively, gather input, and incorporate sound suggestions that will make your final project better reflect the wants and needs of the community.

8. Incorporate the blog into your new network website. By starting early on, you are also creating an archive that will reflect the steps you took to create your network, which will be helpful to you and to others whom you may want to coach after you have your network.

Posted on June 23, 2005 at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack