Central Sierra Connect

I took a knitting class for absolute beginners today in downtown Sonora at By Hand Yarn ; while I was there the teachers "live blogged" about the class. At that point I had not mentioned what I do for a living and was thrilled that they were using this as a tool to talk about what they do and to share the experience further.

Their blog is here:

http://byhandyarn.wordpress.com/

I survived learning to knit and may be come addicted to it ;)

I also went by another shop, Bearly Quilting in the Junction this morning to see about classes for my daughter on quilting; the staff was out of paper schedules and promptly pointed me to their website for the class schedule along with their newsletter, calendar and online store.

I love the internet ;)

Our contract with the California Emerging Technology Fund has been signed and the project is now in progress.  Kristin and I sent out our first email newsletter today and we are pretty excited!

Shelly Hance and I worked with Sunne and Gladys at CETF to finalize the work plan, based on the work completed at the first Advisory Council meeting as well as feedback from CETF and Redwood Coast Connect. The work plan delineates strategies, goals, actions, timetable, dedicated personnel and other resources, and desired specific outcomes in order to eventually produce a report that will be used to facilitate negotiation with broadband providers to attract deployment into the region.

We have a lot of ground to cover in the first quarter of the project, with two major areas of focus in the immediate short term.

• The infrastructure mapping: A-TCAA has hired a data and a GIS contractor to identify, characterize and map to the extent possible the existing broadband infrastructure. We will be scheduling a meeting this week to take place in the next 30 days to go over the data repository and mapping plan with the Infrastructure group. Please check in at the Google Group to follow what's happening on that front.
• The demand survey: the Demand and Outreach groups will be working online in the next two weeks to finalize the survey instrument and the process/timeline for the actual survey launch. I hope to get the survey launched from various platforms (online, in person, community forums, media outlets) on approximately September 8. Kristin will be contacting both committees via the Google Groups to get the demand survey rolling.

After these two areas are up and running, our Outreach group will be looking at Social Networking and broadband outreach with special emphasis for low income, disabled, youth and senior populations. We have a lot to share with the region regarding social networking and are looking forward to this area.

 Reminder:

Source:

More evidence that the outreach portion of this grant will prove the most important.

Excerpt:

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new study suggests that attitude rather than availability may be the key reason why more Americans don't have high-speed Internet access.

The findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project challenge the argument that broadband providers need to more aggressively roll out supply to meet demand.

Only 14 percent of dial-up users say they're stuck with the older, slower connection technology because they can't get broadband in their neighborhoods, Pew reported Wednesday.

Thirty-five percent say they're still on dial-up because broadband prices are too high, while another 19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade. The remainder have other reasons or do not know.

"That suggests that solving the supply problem where there are availability gaps is only going to go so far," said John Horrigan, the study's author. "It's going to have to be a process of getting people more engaged with information technology and demonstrating to people it's worth it for them to make the investment of time and money."