leadership

Content tagged with "leadership"

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NDIA Net Inclusion Webinar Series Begins April 7

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance's Net Inclusion conference this year is a webinar series, running eight consecutive weeks between April 7 and May 26. One-hour webinars at 1pm ET on Wednesday each week will feature a diverse cast of policy experts, advocates, city officials, and nonprofits to talk about what's going on at the local and state level. Register free here.

The first panel, titled "The Structural Racism Behind Digital Inequity," will feature Chrissie Powell (Executive Director, Byte Back Baltimore), James Walker, II (Founder/CEO, Informative Technologies Inc.), Quincy B. (Founder & Director, EraseTheRedline Inc.), and Rebecca Kauma (Economic and Digital Inclusion Program Manager, City of Long Beach). The panel will be moderated by Alisa Valentin (Special Advisor, Office of FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks). 

See the list of subsequent panels below:

  • April 14th: Digital Navigators: Models, Partners, Assessment, and Funding
  • April 21st: Coalitions and Digital Equity Planning
  • April 28th: Local Government and State Digital Inclusion Funding, Offices, Coordination, and Policy
  • May 5th: Weaving Digital Inclusion into Existing Community and Government Programs
  • May 12th: Partnering with Healthcare Organizations to Increase Digital Equity
  • May 19th: Filling the Gap – Building Subsidized & Affordable Broadband

During the final event on May 26th, the NDIA will announce the winners of this year's Digital Equity Benton Awards. Two awards will be handed out this year. The first is the Digital Equity Champion, which “will recognize an outstanding individual who has made a difference in the field of digital equity.” The Emerging Leader Award, on the other hand, will “acknowledge an up-and-coming digital inclusion practitioner.” 

Read more about the awards here.

Register free here.

Applications Being Accepted for Digital Inclusion Leadership Awards

It’s February, which means the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) is once again taking applications for the 2021 Charles Benton Digital Equity Champion Awards. The deadline is February 12th. 

From the announcement:

Named for Charles Benton, the founder of Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, NDIA created the awards to recognize leadership and dedication in advancing digital equity: from promoting the ideal of accessible and affordable communications technology for all Americans to crafting programs and policies that make it a reality.

Two awards will be handed out this year. The first is the Digital Equity Champion, which “will recognize an outstanding individual who has made a difference in the field of digital equity.” The Emerging Leader Award, on the other hand, will “acknowledge an up-and-coming digital inclusion practitioner.” 

Winners will be chosen based on their past work and commitment to advancing digital equity across the country. Nomination will be judged according to individuals’:

  • Sustained commitment to digital inclusion programs, practices, and/or policy work
  • Applied innovative approaches to addressing and solving problems
  • Extensive use of data and evaluation to shape digital inclusion programs and share best practices
  • Demonstrated leadership in his/her community, and/or
  • Collaboration that can be scaled and replicated

Winners will be announced at the upcoming Net Inclusion webinar series, which runs from April 7th to May 26th. You can register for the event here.

Past winners include Rebecca F. Kauma, Economic and Digital Inclusion Program Manager at The City of Long Beach, for her work on leading more equitable economic and digital inclusion outcomes for the city’s low-income neighborhoods and community of color, and Deb Socia, CEO of the Enterprise Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

How Electric Cooperatives in Mississippi Have Taken the Lead in Broadband Expansion — Community Broadband Bits Podcast Episode 423

This week on the podcast Christopher talks with Ron Barnes, President and CEO Biloxi-based Coast Electric Power, an electric cooperative in Mississippi area, and Jon Chambers, Partner at Conexon, a consulting agency working with rural electric cooperatives to bring fiber to communities around the country. 

In January of 2019 Mississippi state law changed to allow electric cooperatives to provide broadband services to their subscribers, and Ron talks about how Coast Electric, which serves around 80,0000 residents across three counties, began its planning phase shortly thereafter. He relates how the current public health crisis moved up Coast Electric’s timeline, why the cooperative has committed in its buildout to connect the least densely populated areas of its service footprint first, and the challenges and rewards that go along with bringing high-speed Internet to Mississippi’s coast. 

Jon Chambers joins them to highlight how remarkable it has been to see Mississippi’s electric cooperatives spring into action over the last 18 months and play a leading role, and why it’s important that, already, 15 out of 25 have begun to plan their broadband plans with the injection of CARES Act funding. Together, the group discusses what these changes mean for digital equity and inclusion in Mississippi, since the new law requires the cooperatives to build to all of their customers.

This show is 33 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Next Century Cities Looking for New Leader

We recently shared the news that dynamo Deb Socia was leaving her post as Executive Director of Next Century Cities (NCC) to pursue a new position as CEO and President of the Enterprise Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her departure leaves a gap that Next Century Cities and all its 200+ members now need to fill.

While taking up the mantle at NCC will be a heavy lift due to the high bar that Deb established, we’re all confident that the right person is out there. In order to reach that perfect candidate, we want to share the posting for the position of Executive Director and encourage interested people to apply.

Cover letters and resumes need to be submitted to Cat Blake by May 15, 2019 at cblake(at)nextcenturycities.org. If you have questions, you should contact Cat. We’re reposting the call for applications here to reach as many potential, but you can also see the original story at theNext Century Cities blog.

Position Summary


The Executive Director’s primary responsibility will be the development and strategic leadership of the Next-Century Cities project, with a key focus on building and coordinating the project’s 21st Century Leadership Forum of elected officials and other city leaders.

Essential Responsibilities and Tasks

  • 
Set and execute the overall strategy for the project

  • Recruit mayors and other elected officials to become members of Next Century Cities

  • Help conceptualize and coordinate key projects, including city-to-city learning, policymaker education, resource creation and curation, and demonstration projects

  • Lead the media strategy, including identifying and executing press opportunities

  • Liaise with and continue the conversation among elected leaders

  • Lead day-to-day operations of the project

  • Lead fundraising

Required Education, Experience, Knowledge, Skills and Ability


Idaho Town Calls for Fiber Investment; Cable and DSL Not Good Enough

This is the third time we have found an occasion to highight the community of Ketchum in Idaho. We previously noted their work on a strategic plan and that Cox cable was booted off the broadband advisory board after trying to sabotage the process with a push poll. Now the local paper has editorialized on the "Need for Fiber."
While it is tempting to marginalize the need for such services as just a way for Johnny or Sally to download games or movies faster, increasingly the lack of fiber optic capacity is also limiting health care and advanced education options for residents, as well as impacting the growth of telecommuting and home-based businesses for which Ketchum has noticeably been successful in attracting in the past. Now owners of home-based businesses are increasingly saying they can not operate effectively without fiber to the home, and telecommuters contend their employers will be less likely to let them work from home without fast, reliable fiber broadband.
This is all true and we wish we saw a hundred editorial boards recognizing it every week. The question is what the community can do about it given the challenge and potential expense. The answer from the Ketchum Keystone is smart:
Overcoming these obstacles will be very heavy lifting for any city government, but there are also remarkable opportunities and common sense strategies available including the use of the existing and soon to be retired water pipe grid, simple changes in building codes to require fiber-optic implementation, and government loan and incentive programs, all of which make the prospects for a sooner rather than later solution.
Every community has a somewhat unique mix of challenges and assets. Communities with the asset of smart leadership will seize upon opportunities like maximizing joint projects between the water system, public works, and such. Communities without smart leadership may want to solve that problem first. Ketchum has identified the problem, and that is a good first step. Until a community recognizes that the big cable and telephone corporations will not solve this problem alone and that communities have an essential role in the process, little progress is likely.