Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Greenways can make money for a community
Greenways, bikeways, and rails to trails projects can be a money maker for a community or region when combined with a long range plan to build open service provider broadband roadways throughout a community. Greenways and trails not only provide recreational opportunities for existing residents, but they also help attract younger people to a community. By combining recreation with economic development, these greenways can be a net generator of revenue for a town or region. Design Nine can put together a team of broadband architects and transportation/land use planners to energize and connect your community. Call us if you would like more information.
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Getting ready to grow
With traffic choking the major metropolitan areas of the country, I think that some smaller cities like Roanoke, Virginia and Scranton, Pennsylvania are poised for growth, if they can adequately address a range of quality of life issues. These smaller cities may have a rush hour, but it usually measured in minutes, not hours, and because they are located outside major urban corridors, it is possible to have a nice house in the woods a few miles from town and still drive to work in fifteen or twenty minutes.
But no one is going to move to those places only because of a shorter commute. There has to be enough activity to attract both entrepreneurs and young people. Entrepreneurs want to talk to savvy and well-informed economic developers, they want inexpensive, downtown office space for their start ups, they want good places to eat, and they want great coffee shops. Young twenty-something workers want good shopping, lots of social activities, and some night life.
Northeastern Pennsylvania, home to Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and dozens of smaller communities, is poised for growth. The Wall Street West initiative will bring massive bandwidth into the region to attract larger financial firms, and Scranton's investments in sports arenas and recreational activities (how about skiing ten minutes from downtown?) will help attract and retain workers.
Roanoke, Virginia, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, has convenient access to some of the best hiking, biking, and whitewater sports on the east coast, with a dizzying array of recreational options. The City's leadership has embarked on a wide variety of initiatives to attract younger workers, including a newly revamped Web site. This week, the City is also announcing a new initiative called MyRetailRoanoke.com, which is designed to help retailers easily learn about the Roanoke area market.
Lively and attractive small cities are also important to nearby rural towns. Not everyone wants to live "in town," and a vibrant small city an hour or two from a rural community enhances the value of that small town as well. Regional collaboration on marketing, recreational activities, and economic development can pay big benefits.
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Forida votes for paper
The state of Florida is ready to toss electronic voting machines in the trash and go back to paper. The state plans to use paper ballots, where the voter makes a mark in an oval next to the candidate's name. The ballot is then scanned optically, just like the aptitude tests that have used this system for decades. The paper/optical scanning approach provides an audit trail that can be read manually if necessary but also provides for rapid vote counting by automated equipment.
The tragedy, of course, is that taxpayers get to foot the bill for this travesty--$30 million to purchase the new gear, and probably much more than that for the stuff destined for the landfill. And this was not even an honest mistake. Legislators had plenty of warning that the touch voting equipment was going to cause problems, and they went ahead and bought it anyway.
The core problem? Legislators believed the promises of equipment vendors, rather than getting advice from experts who would not benefit financially from the sale of such equipment. The same problem exists generally whenever you are buying any kind of network or computer gear: vendors, even the best ones, will sell you what they have, and that may not always match what you need. Make sure you understand your needs first, before talking to vendors about "solutions."
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Knowledge Democracy:
More things you did not know you needed
The back page of the Money section of USA Today (link not on the Web as I write this) has two articles on new gadgets and software. Polaroid, which invented instant printing, has developed inkless color printing that uses special water resistant paper. If it is cheaper than buying inkjet cartridges and has good quality, these little printers designed just for photographs could catch on.
A company called Vringo has announced it is going to sell "video ringtones" so you can "better express who you are." Uh huh. We already know who some people are when their phones play loud and annoying custom ringtones. It is hard to see the value of this, other than as a short-lived novelty gimmick. After the third or fourth time of getting a call from a friend who is using a video ringtone of them dancing to "Monster Mash," you will know all you need to know about them (and they may not be a friend anymore).
Social software continues to drive the so-called Web 2.0 market, with more ways to waste your time seeing what other people wasting time are not doing. One application allows you to network with fellow "international" movie lovers, and you can add comments in sync to clips from a movie. Oh boy. Can't wait for that one.
Another product works on cellphones and provides a real time map of where your friends are and what they are looking at on their phone. Can you feel the excitement? Neither can I.
Where all these companies get their money and why they get money is a mystery to me. Here in Virginia, venture capital is extremely scarce, but apparently, in some other part of the country, investors will apparently dump money on almost any idea, no matter how dumb it is.
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Verizon passed on the iPhone
Word has leaked out that Verizon passed on an opportunity to be the exclusive provider of cellular service for the iPhone. Apple's choice of Cingular puzzled some because Cingular is not known for great customer service (note that "customer service" in the cellphone industry is a relative term, but generally Verizon has a better reputation than Cingular). If the story is true, it suggests that Verizon execs are still trying to make their old Manufacturing Economy business model work--that is, trying to remain a monopoly provider end to end. These days, that is a dead end. The future is in networks that support multiple service providers offering a rich variety of services, some of them narrowly targeted to niche markets. And there is plenty of money for everyone in the supply chain if it is done right.
Verizon apparently passed on Apple's offer because Apple wanted to provide customer service and support. For any network business, customer support is a very big expense. So Verizon had an offer to tap an entirely new customer base of people that would be committed over a period of years to a single cellular provider (subscriber churn is a huge problem in the cellular industry); not only that, Verizon's partner, Apple, was willing to handle customer service. Sounds like a good deal to me. But Verizon passed, because like their landline business, they are still focused on the past, rather than the future. Good for Cingular, and not so good for Verizon. And provides some useful information about Verizon's long term viability as a business.
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Where will the electricity come from?
This very long article on energy delves into a lot of detail, and among the information provided is yet another analysis that indicates the conversion of corn into ethanol uses almost as much energy as it produces. There is a lot of debate about this issue, and I am not an expert, but I suspect that anything that reduces our dependence on foreign sources of crude oil is probably a good thing. Many ethanol conversion processes are either looking at or already using alternative energy sources for the heat required for the conversion process, and burning biomass (plentiful in rural areas) is one of them. When studying these debates about the efficiency of ethanol conversion, it is important to remember that while it may be true that it takes almost a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol, most ethanol producers know that is not an efficient or effective way to fuel the conversion process.
But the most interesting bit of information is farther down the page, in a sub-section titled "How does this relate to oil again?" Here the author notes that if we all drove cars that could be recharged from the electric grid, and if those cars had a minimum range of 60 miles before needing to turn on the conventional engine to recharge the batteries, we could reduce our demand for liquid vehicle fuels by 80%. I do not know if this is correct, but it sounds about right, since most of us drive less than forty miles a day in our cars.
The implications of this are enormous. It means the the "energy crisis" could be met head on and very quickly just by switching to electric cars. Along with the reduction in liquid fuel use, it also means much less air pollution. But that scenario also leads to other questions. Is our current national electric grid up to the task of charging all those electric cars? And who will recycle all those batteries when they wear out? It also means most gas stations would go out of business.
There are a lot of business opportunities buried in the last paragraph. And communities that look ahead and prepare to adapt to an Energy Economy driven by electric vehicles could enjoy above average growth.
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Local franchise fee fight brewing
The Roanoke Times has a front page article on a possible challenge to a recent FCC ruling that federalizes cable franchise fees. I could not find a link to it online, but it is an AP report, so it should start showing up in the search engines later today. I have been warning that local government rights were under attack for almost two years. The FCC wants to take away the ability of local government to manage right of way. Unfortunately, some communities have made the problem more difficult by using franchise fees for community perks rather than tying them directly to the cost of right of way access. Had they done the latter, it would be much more difficult for the FCC to change the rules.
The article today alleges that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin provided misleading information to FCC commissioners, and some communities appear ready to challenge the decision on those grounds. Whatever the outcome, I still believe the current approach to franchising, whether at the local or the Federal level, is old-fashioned. If communities want to manage telecom and spur economic development, there are better ways to do it than trying to tax some companies but not others. And for advocates of public access television, which is often supported by franchise fees, there are better ways to do that as well, that could greatly expand the reach and scope of local community media. But like the monkey with its fist stuck in the coconut, you have to be willing to let go of Manfacturing Economy economic models first.
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New media is beating old media
It has taken about five years, but the New Media revolution, which I think started in 2002 with the availability of easy to use blogging software, has started to put real pressure on Old Media. This article talks about huge job cuts among the Old Media newspaper and TV giants. It is not so much that Old Media is irrelevant--it is more about the fact that Old Media has stubbornly refused to rethink what it does and how it does it. The stubbornness has led to loss of revenue and job cuts.
The same is true of communities and economic development strategies. What may have worked very well twenty or thirty years ago may or may not be relevant today, and communities that stubbornly believe doing the same thing over and over again with poorer and poorer results put the community and their local businesses at risk.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Food: Fuel for the Knowledge Economy
Broadband is not the only fuel of the Knowledge Economy. Rural leaders often discount the importance of having good places to eat in smaller towns. Microbusinesses and entrepreneurial start ups do a lot of business over breakfast and lunch, and one of the key quality of life factors that drive relocation decisions for enterpreneurs is the right kinds of restaurants--along with good coffee. Small town restaurants don't have to be fancy, but they have to be clean and comfortable, with excellent food and great service. Those are easily achievable goals, but small town restaurant owners may need coaching to bring their food, service, and decor up to the standards needed to attract Knowledge Economy business people. One small town that has the right kind of place is Quechee, Vermont, which has The Farmer's Diner. The Farmer's Diner has great food in a friendly, casual atmosphere, but the establishment also serves up locally grown food whenever possible--leveraging the interest in fresh and organic food, while providing a local sales opportunity for nearby farmers-a nice synergy.
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American cities not very intelligent
For the second year in a row, no American city made the list of the world's "Intelligent Cities," which is compiled by the Intelligent Community Forum. This highlights the longstanding regulatory and leadership problems we have in the U.S. when it comes to telecom. Some state and Federal regulators and legislators still think re-monopolizing the telecom industry (well under way with the re-forming of AT&T) is the answer to the country's long term economic development challenges. Other elected officials just keep hoping that the problem will go away, even though each passing year makes the businesses in their regions less and less competitive globally.
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