Chicago Digital Access Alliance Marketing and Outreach
Organization:
Neighborhood Technology Resource Center VISTA Name:
Laura Mieczkowski
Program Start:
9/2006
Program End:
9/2007
Project Description:
For the past year Chicago has been focused on questions of wireless connectivity, community benefits and digital excellence. Laura worked in the Chicago Digital Access Alliance community education campaign for her Vista term.
Project Outcome:
Laura assisted with preparations for two significant events: the Community Media Summit and the Community Wireless Summit. Both events brought out grassroots community activists and leaders in the field. Public discourse on digital divide issues moved significantly nationwide towards a language of “digital inclusion”. The terminology of digital inclusion is advanced in a top-down and paternalistic manner. The grassroots and more explicitly open discourse on digital excellence has allowed the public to set the bar higher and to explore solutions to local problems that do not presuppose a technology or a topology, and which do not impose a top-down solution. The Chicago grassroots statement on Digital Excellence has been picked up by the City elite in a major public document, in large measure a result of our public education campaign that was facilitated by Laura.