We support and develop local coalitions of community champions and technology providers to realize the benefits of broadband usage.

135 stakeholders attended the inaugural Communities without Boundaries conference in Olds in November 2007. They came from as far away as Fort Chipewyan and Crowsnest Pass and included Mayors, teachers, health workers, entrepreneurs and civil servants. The conference was a joint initiative of the Community Learning Campus and a (now completed) project at the University of Calgary. A planning committee was formed in 2008 which decided to organize a follow-up event. Over the last year we have learned that harvesting the benefits of the public and private investment in rural broadband, both for owners and other stakeholders, is a complex problem.

The planning committee held a full day meeting in Three Hills on June 3rd which recognized that the planned event should not be seen as an end in itself but as part of a larger process and a way of “beating the drum” for rural broadband. Our shared vision is that we need to overcome the barriers preventing people taking advantage of broadband applications. We were aware of many fragmented discussion of rural broadband and saw the need to merge the many conversations about broadband into a single conversation.
Objectives
The objectives we stated in our funding application were:
1. To identify local champions (individuals and/or organizations) to help promote the benefits of rural broadband use (through organization of the proposed CWOB rural broadband (31st October 2008) event);
2. To assist local broadband champions organize themselves through education and the development of local, interconnected multi-stakeholder groups;
3. To encourage rural youth to play a leading role in technology adoption in their communities (by involvement of rural youth in rural broadband issues through a video competition);
4. To help rural citizens (and rural entrepreneurs in particular) gain the skills and confidence required to use interactive media (e.g. videoconferencing and websites) by strengthening of digital literacy ;
5. To build on the success of the existing planning committee through its evolution into a province-wide multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee;
6. Act as catalysts for development of other initiatives (such as a Voluntary Tower Register);
7. Development of extra-provincial relationships including assessment of the feasibility of an inter-provincial multi-stakeholder meeting;
8. Construct a firm foundation for future action-oriented collaborative initiatives by development of a Partnership Plan for continuation of the Partnership after 31st March 2009;
9. Develop the CWOB website to assist in all of the above.
Strategy
The letter Kevin Edwards (Mayor of Three Hills) sent to ARD outlined our strategy:

The vision we have developed is of an action-oriented collaboration focused on delivering real-life practical benefits to regular rural Albertans who are broadband users, or to the providers serving them. To do this, we will provide a forum where those involved in the many initiatives underway can share information and initiate joint action.

The next major event we have planned for 31st October 2008 is a conference that will be very different from the event in Olds. Instead of taking place at a single central location, this event will to be a peer-to-peer video-conference connecting 15 rural communities, with participants distributed throughout Alberta and connected by the SuperNet. It will be a practical demonstration of the power of this technology and help develop a culture of use around the SuperNet.

The conference theme will be “Using Rural Connections to support Alberta’s Rural Development Strategy”. We will have a total of 6 sessions in the day, a welcome, a closing discussion on first-mile issues, and four sessions addressing the four pillars of the rural development strategy and the roles of different technologies in taking action on them.

Holding the event at many locations throughout Alberta has significant advantages in addition to demonstrating the power of this technology and helping develop a ‘culture of use’. First, it will enable almost all Albertans to participate in this event with an hour or less of travel time. Second, it will help create a living legacy of videoconferencing skills.

And, by no means least, we believe it will stimulate the formation of local coalitions of community development champions and technology practitioners. Through the process of organizing this event we will identify local broadband champions and encourage the development of local multi-stakeholder partnerships to realize the benefits of broadband technology for rural communities. We will develop connections amongst these and facilitate province wide collaboration through our Advisory Committee and website.

Last year we focused on a single event and our website was a supporting marketing tool. This year we intend to reverse that relationship. We see a need for an ongoing forum to identify and address issues related to rural broadband. We believe our website (www.communitieswithoutboundaries.ca) can play a valuable role in sharing information and initiating joint action amongst the many disconnected stakeholder groups. For example, participants at the Round Table on Rural Connectivity on March 28th this year (a cross-section of over 40 industry, government and community representatives) agreed that a voluntary tower registry would assist in deployment of wireless services to remote communities, but no single group is well positioned to take action. Our aim is to be a catalyst for rural broadband stakeholders to take these kinds of beneficial joint actions.

Communities without Boundaries plans to remain a fluid collaboration but we have taken important steps to develop the governance structure and funding necessary to achieve our objectives.

The Alberta Council of Technologies (ABCtech) has agreed to play a central role in acting as managing partner, relieving us of the need to create another layer of formal organization. Jann Beeston and I have joined ABCtech’s Board. Jann and I have both been engaged around broadband issues on behalf of our rural communities for many years. Jann is Executive Director of the Hanna Learning Centre and is a member of the Board of Directors of Rural Alberta’s Development Fund; she will chair an Advisory Committee (an extension of our existing planning committee) that meets quarterly and provides the Project Leader with policy and strategy advice. The Project Committee I will chair provides operational and fiduciary oversight for the project team.

As managing partner, ABCtech has submitted an application to the Government of Canada Rural Secretariat’s Rural Partnership Development Program (RPDP) and will also seek additional funding from a wide range of rural broadband stakeholders.