Rural TeleCon '10 will not feature the usual "talking heads" and "death by PowerPoint." Instead, it will feature YOU... and every other attendee. Your ideas, your needs, your work. Please visit Propose content! to tell us what we should include (requires RTC membership, so join up first).
During this year's conference we will explore best practices, identify unsolved problems, and begin creating solutions for increasing the availability and use of broadband. The work will be organized around five "tracks" to which all participants will have the opportunity to contribute:
- Anchor Institutions and Applications - The organizations that use broadband and the purposes for which they use it, particularly how to increase use and make broadband more usable and useful
- Business Models and Governance - The form, function, and structure of broadband initiatives, from private for-profit through open cooperative to public, and the means of assuring the effective and efficient deployment and sustaining broadband systems
- Collaborative Engagement - How to make sure all requirements and voices are heard in the process of planning information infrastructure, tapping the full range of resources and maximizing the benefits
- Converged Infrastructure - Fiber or wireless? Yes, and more! Traditional infrastructure such as transportation and utilities can benefit from and be jointly deployed with broadband. Isn't software is infrastructure, too?
- Mapping and Using Data - Decisions about information infrastructure must be based on good data. What is "good data"? How do we get it and use it? Mapping the geographic footprint of broadband is just the start.
The result will be a "best of breed" toolkit. The process of the conference will build participants' capacity to use the tools. We will also develop a shared action plan for applying, developing, and testing our toolkit.