Transmission Project - broadband

National Symposium on Community Scale Broadband Infrastructure

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:14:47 +0000

The Center for Social Inclusion (CSI) and the Center for Technology Innovation and Community Engagement (CTICE) invite you to participate in a National Symposium on Community Scale Broadband Infrastructure. We hope you’ll be able to join us for “Advancing Community Broadband: Transforming Community Economics through Broadband Technologies”, which will take place on Tuesday, December 7, 2010 in Washington, D.C. at Capitol Hill’s Longworth Building; room #1302. The meeting will take place from 12-4 p.m., and a light lunch will be served.

About the event:

Advancing Community Broadband: Transforming Community Economics Through Broadband

This symposium will convene of an interdisciplinary group of nationally recognized scholars, practitioners and policy advocates to discuss strategies for re-envisioning the frames driving our national policy discourses on broadband. Our aim is to create a more inclusive conversation that takes us beyond the focus on adoption and access to thinking more critically about the role that Internet Communications Technologies (ICTs) such as broadband must have in securing a more equitable and sustainable development across communities and regions. In particular our emphasis is on the role that community scale infrastructures can have in recentering often marginalized communities from being siloed as the last mile/last inch of infrastructure roll out. Our goal is to shift frame through connectivity strateties that can empower comunities to become sites of “first mile” build up through community scale models. Research has shown that community scale infrastructure is more cost effective to build out and lowers the cost of sustaining connectivity at the community level.

The symposium will be organized into two moderated panel discussions designed to 1.) establish the framing around community scale infrastructure and 2.) present innovative modes and ideas being put in practice by scholars and community practitioners at various scales across the country. The term, “Community Scale Broadband” implies two meanings that we will highlight throughout the symposium; 1.) models of broadband infrastructure deployment and internet service provision that are locally owned either by cooperative, municipality or small business owner; affordable and accountable to those who utilize it; and 2.) that communities be empowered to make creative choices on how broadband infrastructure deployment and service provision can best serve their social and economic development needs.

Symposium Agenda

Opening Luncheon Introduction - 1145am- 130pm
Maya Wiley - Center for Social Inclusion - Introduction
Speakers: Melissa Bradley - CEO Tides Foundation;

130 - 230pm Panel I – Framing the discussion on Community Scale Broadband

1. Bruce Lincoln – Center for Technology Innovation and Community Engagement, Columbia University
2. Jabari Simama - Dekalb County Community Development Group
3. Sascha Meinrath – New America Foundation Open Technology Initiative
4. Nolan Bowie – Harvard Kennedy School
5. Cecilia Garcia - Benton Foundation

230 - 330pm Panel II – Community Scale Broadband Models and Strategy

1. Craig Settles - Successful
2. Todd Wolfson – Media Mobilizing Project
3. Plinio Ayala – Per Schola
4. Jacquie Jones - National Black Programming Consortium
5. Joanne Hovis – NATOA Community Broadband Committee

330 - 400pm Closing

Broadband is an investment in people

Ben Sheldon — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:17:44 +0000

From the Broadband Commission for Digital Development’s report calling for leadership in developing broadband for all:

Investing in broadband is not necessarily an investment in infrastructure, but rather an investment in people. For broadband is really an investment in an interconnected world of ideas and knowledge that can be spread in seconds from one corner of the earth to another — the “meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas.” And investing in people and their ideas to solve their own problems contributes more to empowering those people and making progress in the global development agenda than virtually anything else policy-makers can do.

via Marnie Webb.

Blandin Broadband Conference

admin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:02:47 +0000

This year’s Blandin Broadband Conference spotlights communities across Minnesota that are Cultivating a Culture of Use through ARRA broadband funding. Their goal is ambitious - to create technologically and economically vital rural communities, competing and thriving in the broadband economy, with sustainable broadband adoption, job growth and wealth creation.

We will hear from experts, researchers, students and folks in the field who are creating programs to help boost broadband use in their communities. We will also have time and space for attendees to ask questions and tell their stories, and follow up on the work of the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Taskforce to answer the question, “Where are we now - one year later?”

Media, the Internet and Philanthropy

Ben Sheldon — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:40:33 +0000

The Transmission Project has always recognized the need for supporting public media and technology—and its necessity for community and economic development. Luis Ubiñas, President of the Ford Foundation, recently made a similarly passionate argument:

In years past, foundations have tended to view grant making focused on Internet policy as a “media” issue. The thinking was, “Let those grant makers already focused on media policy pursue that work, while others remain focused on their own important issues, from education and economic development to human rights and the arts.”

It’s clear that this binary thinking no longer fits with contemporary reality.

Today the Internet is fundamental to every issue we care about. Efficient and low-cost health care, for example, will soon depend on high-speed access to online medical and diagnostic tools. Some 77 percent of Fortune 500 companies accept job applications solely online, according to one study. And digital classrooms that use high-speed Internet are already connecting students with a vast new world of ideas and information…

The effort to ensure universal access to high-speed Internet among all citizens is a critical next step to ensuring that America realizes its great aspiration of equal opportunity for all…

A second major challenge is sometimes harder to see but is as significant. Even if all Americans gain access to the Internet, we need protections in place to ensure that the Internet itself remains neutral and open….

All of us committed to progress, social justice, and rigorous public debate have a stake in this effort, and foundations are uniquely suited to building discussions among business, government, and nonprofit organizations in a way that no other institutions can.

That is why the Ford Foundation is committing $50-million over the next five years to support efforts that ensure both that broadband access to the Internet becomes a reality for all citizens and that public-interest values in the online space itself are protected. We want this to be an open conversation.

Every person should have the opportunity to access high-speed Internet connections.

Everyone should have a choice of providers to drive competition and innovation.
Everyone should have the same legal rights and protections online as off-line.

We collaborate with citizens, companies, and government to build common-sense rules to prevent censorship and anticompetitive behavior that can stifle innovation.

There is a real debate to be had: How can government, business, and nonprofit organizations lead innovation? How can citizens enjoy the access they need on the Web? How can government craft workable, smart rules of the road for all? The debate needs many voices.

At Ford we have come to see that our commitment in this dialogue is critical to protecting all of the other work our foundation supports; indeed, it is central to supporting any work that relies on the freedom of people to come together and to communicate.

While we are fortunate to be joined by many other grant makers that are realizing the importance of broadband to the issues on which they work, many other donors must join the effort.

Hot on the heels of those prescient statements is a new report from Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media’s (GFEM): “Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy: Grantmaking for the 21st Century”. It similarly seeks to put information and media at the nexus of social change:

The importance of media and the crucial role played by philanthropy is laid out within these pages. Media, in all its incarnations, influences our decision-making processes, whether personal choices or professional ones, in policy-making, and at the local, national, and international levels. Regardless of how much or how little media one may personally consume, the world is saturated with and driven by media.

Philanthropy, with its mission to improve the human condition, has yet to meet the challenge of keeping pace with the growth and influence of media. We would like to change that. Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy continues a critical dialogue on how philanthropy can best harness its resources—dollars and leadership—to meet the needs of a media-saturated world, in an age of increasingly rapid innovation, where media and social uses of media can have revolutionary impact on individuals and, indeed, entire nations.

The report makes 10 great recommendations (and has the data to back them up), but I will highlight 2 of them here:

First, acknowledge the prevalence and impact of media. Foundations and government agencies of all sizes and in all fields will benefit from recognizing the growing importance of media, and screen-based media in particular, to the future of every field—education, health, the environment, and more.

…

Tenth and finally, funders should recognize that media reinforces their missions. If the public and government are going to understand and appreciate the work of philanthropy, they are going to be looking, or listening, or watching, or gaining and expressing these attitudes through media.

FutureEverything 2010 Conference

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:05:29 +0000

We are excited to introduce the FutureEverything conference programme for 2010, our best and most ambitious yet. We are delighted to present the world’s best speakers under our conference themes of ImagineEverything, Unlimited Connectivity, Open Data and The City Experiment.

The FutureEverything conference will take you on a journey through the most cutting-edge developments in a range of exciting fields. Join us to hear about why governments should open up the data that they hold, and what we can do with this information to change our lives. Listen to leading artists and scientists discuss what we can dream and do with unlimited bandwidth. Visionary speakers will illuminate the science of the web, the ways the networked city is being rewired, how poetry can be encoded into DNA, ways we can play the city like an instrument, and how relationships between generations are going to change over the next hundred years.

The date of the inaugural FutureEverything festival is 12-15 May 2010, obtain your festival passes now here: http://futureeverything.org/tickets

Does the FCC share our vision?

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:09:57 +0000

We’re thrilled the the FCC is unveiling the National Broadband Plan today. While reading through the executive summary, we were happy to discover similarities between the FCC’s proposed impact and our vision. The vision of the Transmission Project is a robust and diverse media ecology enabling a world built upon the full participation of society. From the FCC, under the heading of “Government performance and civic engagement” the plan includes recommendations to:

Increase civic engagement by making government more open and transparent, creating a robust public media ecosystem and modernizing the democratic process.

The FCC also shares our programs too: proposing a Digital Literacy Corps similar to our Digital Arts Service Corps. Needless to say, we’re excited!

(The visioning flipcharrts are from our archives.)

FCC & Knight Foundation Digital Inclusion Summit

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:12:47 +0000

FCC & Knight Foundation Host Digital Inclusion Summit at Newseum on March 9

Media Advisory: FCC & Knight Foundation Host Digital Inclusion Summit at Newseum on March 9

Summit Includes Overview of Working Recommendations
for Broadband Adoption in FCC’s National Broadband Plan

The Federal Communications Commission and the John S. and James. L. Knight Foundation are hosting a March 9 summit to highlight solutions to the challenge of providing broadband for everyone. Called America’s Digital Inclusion Summit: Working Together to Expand Opportunity Through Universal Access, the event will be held at the Newseum and feature a wide range of broadband leaders, including FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen, Lafayette, La. City-Parish President Joey Durel, FCC Commissioners Michael Copps, Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker, and members of Congress. The program will include a “voices of inclusion” segment providing an opportunity for people to share their stories about how broadband – or the lack of it – has affected their lives. The event is open to the press and public.

Nearly a third of American households lack broadband access at home, even when it is available in their community. The program will unveil some of the working recommendations in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan for increasing the nation’s rate of broadband adoption, a critical goal in an era when broadband is central to education, job search and training, economic development, and the information needs of communities. An Inclusion Showcase will demonstrate applications and programs that are already working to effectively bridge the digital divide and promote broadband adoption.

* WHAT: America’s Digital Inclusion Summit
* WHERE: The Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C. (map)
* VIDEOCAST: FCC Commission Room, 445 12th St. SW, Washington, D.C. (map)
* WEBCAST: www.fcc.gov/live
* WHEN: Tuesday, March 9, 9:00 am to 12:15 pm. Continental breakfast available at 8:30 a.m.
* PRE-REGISTRATION REQUIRED at www.digisummit.org

Broadband Adoption Accelerators

Ben Sheldon — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:01:13 +0000

I’ve been taking time to digest the The Broadband Coalition’s report on Expanding and Accelerating the Adoption & Use of Broadband Throughout the Economy. What I appreciate most about the report is the systemic approach it takes: leveraging existing community infrastructure, programs and organizations while expanding their capacity to include broadband adoption and use.

I think the approach and recommendations from this report could quite easily be adapted to other media access and literacy campaigns.

The report defines Broadband accelerators as programs that:

• Promote and assist affordable home computer and Internet access.
• Are embedded in established community social and institutional networks.
• Are “High-touch” – based on personal interactions and relationships.
• Provide continuing formal as well as peer support to the new adopter through several critical stages of the “adoption curve”: engage, train, equip and support.
• Integrate basic broadband adoption with other strongly motivating opportunities, e.g. employment, education, public safety, healthcare needs, civic and neighborhood improvement.

This approach can be well-informed by the Community Technology Centers movement: while many centers were founded on offering computer training, they evolved into service centers specializing in employment, education, etc. Broadband adoption, like computer literacy before it, is a means, not an end.

To resource these changes, the report makes some key policy recommendations at each level of government:

At a national level, foster evergreen funding sources to support community efforts needed to help nonsubscribers become confident and effective technology users.

Encourage states to adopt policies and strategies that facilitate and support the building of community-based broadband access and adoption programs.

Encourage local initiatives and local funding to support community-based broadband access and adoption programs.

DC Community Broadband Summit

Belinda Rawlins — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:28:39 +0000

Join area residents, businesses and thought leaders at the District’s first-ever Community Broadband Summit (DC-CBS)
-a public forum designed to address the city’s digital divide.

DC-CBS is a joint effort of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), DC Public Libraries (DCPL), the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), DC Public Schools (DCPS), and the Department of Employment Services (DOES), as well as Cricket Wireless and One Economy Corporation.

The goal is to bring together the ideas and resources of District residents and the business/non-profit community, to increase digital literacy. That means ensuring all residents have equal access to the Internet, as well as computer training and affordable hardware.

Broadband according to the FCC?

Ben Sheldon — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:46:29 +0000

When we attended the FCC’s workshop last week, one of the handouts was the FCC’s consumer publication Broadband Brochure. While informative, the publication does not break any new ground definitely: broadband is defined as “faster than dial-up service and it doesn’t tie up your telephone line like dial-up often does”; nor metaphorically:

To better understand the differences between dial-up and broadband, it might help to envision the Internet as a pipeline for information. If the pipeline is narrow, less information can fit. Bigger pipes allow for increased and more complex information to flow back and forth – bringing content and information to you at faster speeds. Dial-up uses narrow pipes. Broadband uses increasingly fatter pipes that allow much more complex information to flow at faster speeds, including complex graphics and videos.

The glossary of terms in the back is of equivalent depth:

bandwidth - The capacity of your broadband connection to send and receive the data. The higher the bandwidth, the faster the transmission of data. Bandwidth is measured in bits per second.

blog - An online, chronicle journal; short for “weblog.”

download - To transfer a file or files from one computer to another, for example, from a server to your desktop computer. Download is the opposite of upload.

e-mail - Messages sent via the Internet. E-mail can be everything from simple messages or can contain pictures, video - even voice.

encrypted - Encrypted data is data that has been converted so it cannot be easily understood by unauthorized people.

instant message (IM) - A way of communicating with another Internet user by way of simple text-based chat .

IP address - A numeric code number assigned to the computers in a network. A static IP address is permanent. A dynamic address always changes every time you connect to the Internet.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) - A company that provides its customers access to the Internet.

modem - The device that connects your PC to the Internet.

social networking - An online community of people who are socializing with each other via a particular website.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) - A technology that allows you to make and receive calls over the Internet.

webcam - A simple video camera that connects to your computer and enables you to send live and recorded video as well as still pictures via the Internet.

WiFi - Wireless broadband. Available in many public locations.

Overall the booklet touts the benefits of broadband, but near the end waffles a bit: the section entitled “How can I get it” includes both dial-up and broadband; the “it” apparently referring to the Internet in general. Fortunately they do mention libraries, public computing centers and “retailers”, too.

Not to pick on the FCC, but if these issues require broad and substantial dialogue (as we believe they do), then the dialogue should be framed with meaningful and informative descriptions.