UMVRDC staff Dawn Hegland and Jacki Anderson recently attended the statewide Broadband Conference – Policy & Progress: Border to Border Broadband – on November 16 & 17 in Duluth. The conference was co–sponsored by the Blandin Foundation and Connect Minnesota, and featured many Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) examples from demonstration communities around the state.
Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman spoke to the conference about the State’s take on broadband, including a few words on the newly named Minnesota Broadband Task Force.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_ASLv23Q7Y&feature=related[/youtube]
The task force includes a representative of our region, Dan Richter of MVTV Wireless in Granite Falls.
Dawn and Jacki joined other representatives of demonstration communities to talk about the work being done related to the MIRC grants. In this video, Dawn talks about the Big Stone County public internet access project.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkUOmjAAHDc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
One of our MIRC project partners, Pioneer Public Television, was also at the conference and debuted a documentary about broadband in our region. The documentary was created for the PBS program “Need to Know” and will be expanded this winter using MIRC funds.
For more information on the work the UMVRDC is doing on MIRC and broadband, contact Dawn Hegland at 320-289-1981 ext. 1 or dawn.hegland@umvrdc.org, or Jacki Anderson at 320-289-1981 ext. 2 or jacki.anderson@umvrdc.org. You can also check out our MIRC page here on our website.
