On municipal access to the internet:
- Peter Fleck updates on the status of the Community Benefits stipulated in the Wireless Minneapolis project. It’s a straightforward, easy-to-read breakdown of where the money’s supposed to go and what the community benefits are supposed to be.
- Minnov8 has a story on Mike O’Connor, the urban dwellers rep on the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Task Force. “[H]e’s upset that the Task Force he’s on was seemingly blindsided by a gubernatorial signoff of Connected Nation as the firm who is mapping the penetration and speed of Broadband in MN.” Read on to find out why that’s a very bad thing. Hint: big telecom, governor vs task force. Very important stuff that we should know about and which should make a reasonable Minnesotan angry. And I just LOVE this observation from Steve Borsch, who had called the governor’s office to follow up on the broadband task force and was told that they don’t respond to blogs. “I realized that once he’s a former governor running for the presidency, it’s likely he’ll suddenly get religion about social media and his campaign staff will fall all over themselves engaging ‘bloggers’.”
Hippie stuff:
- In case you missed it: Heavy Table has a talk with Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak about his big ideas about food and water in the city of Minneapolis. CRAZY ideas, like how our tap water is safe for drinking and the Homegrown Minneapolis initiative.
- The MPLS Mirror meets up with some folks biking the new Lowry Ave bike path in North Minneapolis.
Geeky stuff:
- Graeme Thickins recaps his night at TEDxTC (locally organized version of TEDTalks). Graeme wondered about the marketing of it, but did note that the event was filled to capacity and had a waitlist almost as long. TEDxTC’s facebook page is the best place for info and updates.
- Greg Swan lived through the thick of the PGA Championship’s visit to Hazeltine in Chaska and has big ideas for what they could have done to market it better and make more money for the city of Chaska.
- Julio Ojeda-Zapata reports on the Saint Paul Public Library offering free, iPod-friendly audiobooks. Visit stpaul.lib.mn.us/ebooks.
Sad, angry stuff:
- From MnIndy, more on how Wells Fargo hates poor, brown, and poor brown people but loves their money. I recently participated in a focus group sponsored by Wells Fargo on their marketing to the LGBT community. They asked a lot of questions about what influenced my perception of Wells Fargo. I told them that my perception is basically that it might be a great (i.e., gay-friendly) place to work, but otherwise everything I know of them is that they’re a terrible place to bank. Yup.
