Workgroup Faciliator
Eric Ogle, University of Tennessee
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Eric Ogle works at the University of Tennessee for the Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment and the Community Partnership Center. Placed at the crossroads of the university’s mission of education, research and outreach, Eric’s role is to develop and facilitate participatory planning programs to generate sustainable economic and community development opportunities for Tennessee communities. This is done by creating equitable partnerships between university resources and community stakeholders to understand core problems faced by communities and develop sustainable solutions to those problems. Recent outcomes include the first ever participatory planning process that was awarded $1M from the EPA to implement citizen recommendations to lessen human impacts along waterways flowing out of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Another project led by Eric brought together local businesses and nonprofits to develop a tourism application for the iPhone, called the Beck Tour, a historic tour that integrates location-based narrative text, historic photos, and videos in attempt to educate and entertain visitors while walking around downtown Knoxville. Eric has a BS in Business Administration and a MS in Planning, both from the University of Tennessee.
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Subject Matter Experts
Gene Crick, Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network
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Gene Crick is executive director of the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network (U.S. oldest 501c3 community telecommunications network) and the national TeleCommunity Resource Center. He designed the Texas Health Information Network rural telehealth project ($14M FCC pilot grant) and is a partner currently developing the Texas statewide public computing center project, funded by a $9.6M BTOP grant. Gene has an incredibly long list of awards, honors, recognitions, titles, etc., that we can’t possibly list here. Come to the conference and ask him about them, but remember he is painfully shy and terribly modest. One distinction that should be mentioned, Gene was participated in the early days of the Rural Telecommunications Congress, way back in the last century! |
Frank Odasz, Lone Eagle Consulting
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As president of Lone Eagle Consulting, founded in 1998, Frank has been a prolific and aggressive advocate and presenter at national and international conferences on rural and indigenous broadband training leading practices, 21st Century Workforce Readiness, Rural Ecommerce and Telework Strategies, and online learning. Working from a rural ranchhouse in SW Montana, Frank teaches online graduate courses for educators on best use of the Internet in the K12 classroom and designing online courses for K12 for Alaska Pacific University and Seattle Pacific University. Specializing in fast-track online Internet training for rural, remote, and indigenous learners, Lone Eagle Consulting's current emphasis is on designing local, regional, state, and national broadband awareness and adoption campaigns, specifically for vulnerable populations.
Under current development are motivational incentives for collaborative engagement, volunteerism, and instructional entrepreneurship, utilizing social media and Internet video, focused on new social metrics and measurable outcomes.
As one of the early pioneers of both online learning and community networking, Frank served on the founding boards for both the Consortium for School Networking and the Association for Community Networking. While serving as faculty at the University of Montana; Western, 1985-1997, Frank founded the Big Sky Telegraph network; connecting one-room rural schools online. Since 1988, Frank has been teaching teachers and citizens online courses via multiple universities and rural workforce projects. |
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