Necessary Features of a Connected Community
Strong vision and cause, grounded in your community’s unique needs and identity
Ensure your efforts are grounded firmly within the context of issues that interest your community throughout all stages of development and deployment. Your project vision — your definitional statement, guiding principal, and rallying cry — effectively anchors your work from start to finish and mobilizes your community around your cause.
Program and application-focused objectives
Devise program-focused objectives. In other words, do not build or market your initiative around the technology upon which your programs ride. Rather, focus on the programs that you’re providing and their outcomes and values to the end-users. While technology is a means to an end, remember that it is not an end unto itself. If your focus revolves around improving educational opportunities, make sure that your objectives relate to the educational outcomes you wish to achieve. These might be improved access to learning opportunities for educators and students, improved testing scores, etc.
The “right” leadership
As is the case in all successful projects and long-term endeavors, leadership is critical. Whether your project has one overall leader or a handful of strong champions, this individual must possess the skill set necessary to drive your project through to successful completion. When determining who will fulfill this critical role, remember that your leader must be able to rally the troops, carrying your project’s vision throughout your team and throughout the community for the duration of your project execution and beyond. Characteristics we’ve learned to seek include and individual known for the following: political neutrality; ability to execute; enthusiasm; highly influential; community-oriented; and civic minded.
Solid stakeholder mix, buy-in and participation
Whether your project has five or fifty stakeholders, they each play a key role in its success. In the various communities we’ve helped connect, we’ve found that a broad spectrum of participation from vertical areas of interest (health care, education, government, etc.) is important because it tends to catalyze engagement and ultimately adoption across the community. At the same time, it is absolutely crucial that your stakeholders are engaged partners. They must invest (people, funds, space, in-kind resources, etc.), partner, help to deliver, or commit to using the programs, services, or applications your initiative is delivering. In order to achieve this level of investment and commitment from your stakeholders, in turn it’s crucial develop and refine a set of value propositions that motivate and engage each one.
Thorough preparation
Preparation impacts almost every aspect of your project planning and execution phases. As a result, it plays a crucial role in ensuring that your roll-out is a success. In our experience, preparation takes many forms, but can best be described as engaging in preliminary research to get a sense of where your community may stand regarding a potential connection project. Some important things to uncover include:
• Developing an up-to-date list of “C” and senior level contacts with whom you will likely want to discuss your ideas.
• Your community and the surrounding area’s history of digital inclusion and community broadband initiatives.
• Potential funding bodies (such as foundations) and potential partners who may be engaged in similar work or have an interest in the work you’d like to undertake.
• Your community’s current political landscape and potential “hot buttons.”
• Your community’s particular culture and identity as well as unique concerns that may be addressed or dovetail with your initial ideas for your initiative.