Urban Broadband Users in Minnesota

I'm celebrating my (roughly) 1-year anniversary on the Task Force by writing this post.  This is my typical pattern when I'm working on something like this -- I swim around in the stuff for a while and then try to boil it down to 1 page.  I learned this from a series of really good bosses, who all were quite appreciative when I could take a pretty big topic and summarize it for them.

This picture resulted from the great work of the sub-group that's taken to calling itself The Ubiquity Gang (although I also kinda like Team Ubiquity as a moniker).  I was inspired to draw this as we were working through our homework assignment for the meeting next week.

We were trying to figure out how to organize all our recommendations and this is what popped out as a way to describe ALL the things that need to be done.  We're thinking that a really important point that needs to be made is that our efforts aren't likely to be really successful unless we have an approach (and accountability) for each of these things.

Of course, this might be a little too abstract for ya.  So here's a version that's got more than 12 words on it (click on the image if it's too small to read).

The way to read this is from the center to the edge.  For example: "stimulate the building of infrastructure by assisting with rights of way" or "oversee activity by tracking connectivity with surveys and maps" or "lead broadband efforts by managing -- setting goals and establishing accountability."

There's a reason these have V1 in the title -- I'm sure we'll make these better before they're done.  But they help me get my arms around what we need to do, and how interconnected all these activities need to be.  A plan that only addresses one of these things feels like building a one-legged stool to me...

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