Urban Broadband Users in Minnesota

Vint is one of my personal heros and has been involved with the Internet right from the beginning as he was part of the group of people who, under Robert Kahn, developed the underlying protocols of the Internet.  He's also a really articulate guy who, with minimal prompting from me, spent an hour laying out a pretty coherent overview of the issues we face on the task force. I'll be playing these videos at today's task force meeting.

Many of you have seen Vint before, but this is pretty unusual in that this is unedited (except for cutting it into YouTube sized chunks).  I'm pretty perky about how this came out.  The teaser?  Somewhere in these videos, Vint answers the question "is the Internet a great big truck, or a series of tubes?"

Part 1 -- Click HERE

Part 2 -- Click HERE

Part 3 -- Click HERE

Part 4 -- Click HERE

Part 5 -- Click HERE

Part 6 -- Click HERE

Part 7 -- Click HERE

Here are links to the four chunks of my half-hour interview with Robert Stephens (founder and Chief Inspector of the Geek Squad). This is unedited video except for breaking it into YouTube-sized chunks.

This is one really smart, forward-thinking funny guy who has a lot to say to us task-force members about broadband policy.  I think this is a rare treat and hope you feel the same.

Part 1 -- Click HERE

Part 2 -- Click HERE

Part 3 -- Click HERE

Part 4 -- Click HERE

We're getting email!  Yippee!

Here's the first batch of your comments -- many of them triggered by Steve Borsch's piece that got picked up by MinnPost.

Click HERE to read the comments (I've removed contact info to protect folks from spammers and cranks).

Many thanks to Shirley Walz of Thomson/Reuters.  She's smashed all of our paragraphs together into one document.  Rick King distributed the document just seconds after I pushed out that meeting-announcement post or I would have attached it.

Click HERE to read what we will begin discussing tomorrow afternoon (the morning will be mostly taken up with the videos).  Use THIS PAGE on the task force site to decode who is who and thus where they're coming from.

Hi all,

Here's the standard monthly reminder that the task force is meeting tomorrow.  We're back at Thomson/Reuters HQ in Eagan for the next two meetings -- where we're going to dig in and do some heavy lifting on the report.  I've seen a few "paragraphs" documents from others on the task force and there are a lot of really good thoughtful paragraphs out there.  So it should be fun!

Before we dig into the report-writing, we'll be watching the two videos I shot of Robert Stephens and Vint Cerf.  This is the replacement for a "big business and high tech" panel that we were putting together.  The task force agreed last time that we are itching to get into the report-writing, but also agreed that we'd like to hear from these two pioneers.  I've posted the video to Youtube and I'll pop the links up here tomorrow morning so you can watch too, if you're so inclined.

Click HERE for the official scoop (location, agenda, and like that).

Well, tomorrow's the deadline so I am feeling pretty perky that this document is done a whole day in advance.  MANY thanks to all who contributed, helped, edited, prodded, etc.  You know who you are.

The stuff in bold type is the report outline that we've worked out, the non-bolded stuff is mine/ours.

I know -- the assignment was for 5 paragraphs and I came in just a touch over 50.  But I represent about 10 times as many people as anybody else on the task force, so I figure I get a little license. 

Click HERE to download the Word version.

Click HERE for the PDF.

This is a big-deal initiative -- I wish this report was done before we had to write our report, but there you go.  This is important stuff peepul.  Please take a look, or at least read some of the documents.

Click HERE to watch the video of the kickoff meeting yesterday.  Go in about 6 minutes to get to the meaty comments from the commissioners.  They are launching with a call to action and you are well advised to watch them.

Here are links you can follow to read the key documents and statements from the Commissioners;
News Release: Word | Acrobat
Notice of Inquiry: Word | Acrobat
Copps Statement: Word | Acrobat
Adelstein Statement: Word | Acrobat
McDowell Statement: Word | Acrobat