small town – Looking Forward

October 14, 2015

The Digital Imperative Of Rural Libraries

The maker movement is one of the hottest trends in the public library world. Maker spaces in libraries have the latest in 3D printing technology, digital media tools and other tools for the creative person who wants to make things. These are full-fledged STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts and math) labs.

As you might expect, there are maker spaces somewhere in most major urban and suburban libraries.

But what is perhaps surprising and intriguing is the growth of maker spaces in small towns and rural areas — and why maker spaces are especially needed in those places and why those areas are fertile ground for maker spaces.

The countryside is known for the mechanical skills of many of its residents. Perhaps these skills were developed in response to distance from major service hubs and the necessity to keep farm and household equipment going.

For at least the last ten years, much traditional mechanical equipment has become computerized. And engines have become more reliable. So mechanical skills just aren’t as useful anymore.

Or maybe they are. That is what I think has caught the attention of rural librarians. Leah Hamilton, the manager of the Phelps Library in a small upstate New York town that had one of the first makerspaces in the USA, puts it this way:

“The library is a place for idea-sharing, … Our region has a wealth of manufacturing industries, and these businesses require well-trained, highly qualified employees. … We can provide the tools for inspiration of invention and the betterment of people’s livelihoods.”

Considering their limited budgets, it’s amazing how many of these libraries in rural areas have built makerspaces.

These are in small towns in Wisconsin, with populations well under 10,000 residents, like Sauk City’s 3D printer or Lomira’s MediaLab. They’re in the old, but small (population 12,000), city of Beaufort, South Carolina.

A couple of years ago, the Idaho Commission for Libraries began its “Make It At The Library” project, a network of makerspaces in small libraries across the state.

There are small and rural libraries with makerspaces arising in places as widespread as Maine, Montana, New Mexico, small town New Jersey, Canada and as far as the United Kingdom and New Zealand!

As interesting as the adoption of makerspaces is, it is part of a larger picture about the technology and leadership role of libraries in small towns and rural areas.

A few months ago, Professor Brian Whitacre of Oklahoma State University and Professor Colin Rhinesmith of the University of Oklahoma published interested research that dealt with another part of this larger picture:

“Rural libraries have long been a crucial part of the small-town way of life … Now we’ve found through a new study that rural libraries may also provide another important benefit: They may increase local rates of household broadband adoption.

“Our study found that, even after controlling for other things that likely influence broadband adoption (such as levels of income, education, and age), an additional library in a rural county was associated with higher residential broadband adoption rates … libraries were the only type of ‘community anchor institution’ to show any kind of relationship.”

Whether it is makerspaces or enabling necessary connections to the global Internet, these rural libraries are playing the role that all libraries should — fulfilling their potential as the central institution in a digital world and a knowledge economy.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/131154892399/the-digital-imperative-of-rural-libraries]

July 15, 2015

Where’s The City? Where’s The Country?

I’ve written in the May 2014 issue of Urban China magazine and here before about the various ways that life in urban and rural areas is converging.

But when it comes to the economy, especially growing global trade, we often hear of great distinctions between city and countryside. Indeed, it is often assumed that most of any country’s economy can be attributed to its cities and public policy follows that assumption.

David Brunnen is Managing Editor of Groupe Intellex and Partner of NextGen in the UK. He has had a long and distinguished career as a leader in technology and public policy.

He has been doing some interesting research and concluded that this urban-rural divide is not as great as myth would have it. This culminated in a report in May 2015 with the intriguing title, “Global Trade Development outwith the Metros: not beyond belief”. He also provided something of an executive summary on his blog.

He observed that:

“Conventional wisdom says that the pursuit of global growth is surely what has led to the success of major cities…

“The notion of growth in international trade from enterprises rooted in our countryside and less-regarded towns may, at first glance, seem unlikely. Scratch the stats however and beneath the glossy megacity headlines you can sniff the fragrance of a less-urban, more rural, renaissance.”

Brunnen points out that part of the myth about the role of cities is a very generous definition of what is a city. As an example, Brunnen cites the work, ending last year, of the RSA City Growth Commission of the UK, whose aim was to “enable England’s major cities to drive growth”.

“Some of these encompass far more places than are recognized by any governmental and administrative boundaries. The South Hampshire Metro area includes two cities (Southampton and Portsmouth) and the entire semi-rural conurbations on both sides of the linking M27 motorway. Their London Metro area extends west well into Hampshire, south to include Gatwick airport, east to include places on both sides of the Thames estuary and north to include Luton airport beyond Bedford. In the debate about building airport capacity for London, it’s a wonder that Birmingham in the West Midlands is not a candidate.”

This is one newspaper’s view of the London Metro area five years ago.

Brunnen goes on to note:

“Not surprisingly, with these broad definitions of their City Regions, the RSA City Growth Commission suggest that Metros contribute 61% of UK economic growth. Ask ordinary people whether or not they live in a major city and the map would be very different – in fact it would be perfectly possible to conclude that economic growth is far more evenly spread with only around 50% of growth generated within those megacity places that demand such intensive management.”

But this is not just a story about England. There are similar situations in many other countries, including the US.

A few years ago, Wendell Cox of Demographia, an international public policy firm, wrote “America is More Small Town than We Think”. He starts with the statement we’ve often heard:

“America has become an overwhelmingly metropolitan nation. According to the 2000 census, more than 80 percent of the nation’s population resided in one of the 350 combined metropolitan statistical areas.”

According to the census, the figure was 79.0% in 2000 and is now 80.7%. Moreover, the official definition of urban is not limited to obvious big cities like New York City. Some of that urban population lives in what the Census Bureau calls urban clusters, whose population is between 2,500 and 50,000.

Focusing more on governance, Cox’s argument nevertheless parallels what Brunnen has written more recently about international trade.

“America is more “small town” than we often think, particularly in how we govern ourselves. In 2000, slightly more than one-half of the nation’s population lived in jurisdictions — cities, towns, boroughs, villages and townships — with fewer than 25,000 people or in rural areas. Planners and geographers might see regions as mega-units, but in fact, they are usually composed of many small towns and a far smaller number of larger cities. Indeed, among the metropolitan areas with more than one million residents in 2000, the average sized city, town, borough, village or township had a population of little more than 20,000.”

The 2012 survey by the Census found more or less the same results. If anything there were more governments. Many metropolitan areas are more networks of small towns than one master urban jurisdiction.

Brunnen goes on to explain why those outside the big cities are able to participate so vigorously in global trade.

“Digital transformation is enabling business to thrive in places where employees like to live – in places where they can afford to live – in places where they can appreciate the value of community – in places where they feel more at home.

“Dig deeper still into life beyond Metros and you’ll find a diverse and complex fabric of connections and capabilities – with very different channels and enablers for international trade.

“These less-regarded places are familiar with making do without much, if any, external intervention (or interference) from their national or regional governments. ‘Just Do It’ … This inbred capacity for action plus our newfound ability to network ideas and contacts without the hassle of travel points towards a greater levelling up of opportunity.”

That story has often been drowned out by reports of resurgent cities and ever declining rural areas. The big city governments of the world have drawn most of the attention from big corporations and governments — perhaps it is easier to sell to or deal with very big municipal organizations?

I’d suggest reading the rest of his report, for the policies — which are both innovative and pragmatic —that he proposes to encourage economic growth.

The bottom line of all this: the sharp dividing lines between rural and urban are not really all that sharp. That calls for a better balance across geographic areas. A nation’s strategy for its economic future, its infrastructure investments, broadband and technology needs to reflect the real distribution of the population and the potential of all areas to contribute to growth.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/124154805794/wheres-the-city-wheres-the-country]

June 24, 2015

Collaboration vs. Competition For Economic Growth

Lots of talk about the economy focuses on how individual businesses compete. Generalizing from the situation of individual businesses, public officials who are responsible for the overall growth of their local economy also often talk about competition. Making their cities “competitive in the world economy” or enabling their “residents to compete" are frequent phrases you hear.

And they worry about where they stand in the competition with other cities.

Even in today’s global economy, the biggest cities still envision themselves as standing alone, in competition with all other jurisdictions.

And, of course, with cash, tax and other incentives, local economic development officials will try to steal – i.e., compete – with distant or even nearby jurisdictions.

Granted that sometimes the word “competitive” is used merely to mean prosperous or good or something else positive. But the use of the metaphor of competition can be misleading, even in those cases.

The fact that individual businesses often find themselves competing with
each other doesn’t mean that regions as a whole thrive by focusing on
competition with other regions.

Getting back to basics, an economy grows as people develop and exchange
specialized services/products and, in various ways, create new ideas and
services/products. The better connected and more collaborative the residents of a region are with everyone else, the more likely they are to be creating more wealth and income for themselves. This means that
overall economic growth of a region is much more about collaboration than
competition.

The value of collaboration has begun to be heard
in some parts of the economic development profession. For example, John Jung, Chairman of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), wrote “Collaborative Innovation – the New Competitive Edge for Economic Development”. From a conference on Global Competition and Collaboration in 2011, there was “New Building Blocks for Jobs and Economic Growth”. The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania affirmed this idea: “We Need More Collaboration And Less Competition For Economic Growth”.

Unfortunately, most of the huge global cities have not yet seriously adopted this approach. In contrast, an increasing number of smaller cities, towns and rural areas have come to the realization that they have a better future if they cooperate, collaborate and network.

An interesting example is Mitchell, South Dakota, which has 15,000 people, but was among ICF’s Top 7 Most Intelligent Communities this year — among cities like Rio, New Taipei and Columbus Ohio. They were in trouble a decade ago. They had lost 30% of their population, especially young people, like many other small communities in the countryside.

Mitchell turned that situation around. They have three Internet service providers that deliver gigabit bandwidth. They’ve seen the growth of tech companies and precision agriculture. Their unemployment rate is 3%, with hundreds of open jobs. Unusual for a small city, it has its own workforce development director.

At the recent ICF Summit in Toronto, Bryan Hisel, Executive Director, Mitchell Area Development Corporation, put it simply: “entrepreneurship is our way of thinking here.” So the leaders of Mitchell view their small size as an advantage, not a disadvantage. That entrepreneurial culture of its people came before they had broadband.

With that entrepreneurial spirit, you’d think that Mitchel is all about the competition. But Hisel pointed out that all the things people elsewhere have started to talk about — especially collaboration — comes naturally to small communities. So Mitchell has extended its service to nearby communities and even provides advice to small cities that others might see as competitors.

Perhaps the tradition of collaboration in parts of the countryside is also why there was increased interest at the summit in my proposal for a global virtual metropolis that connects small cities like Mitchell – a connection for economic success that arises from collaboration rather than competition with one another.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/122336332341/collaboration-vs-competition-for-economic-growth]

June 10, 2015

Main Street Stores Need A Tech Upgrade

Many small towns wish they had a big box store of some kind as an answer to the retail needs of their residents. The owners of Main Street stores, of course, worry about big box stores. After all, Walmart grew into the colossus it is today by first serving the small town and rural market.

Then the growth of Amazon and other e-commerce companies just made things worse for bricks-and-mortar stores on Main Street.

Some stores have sought to survive by focusing on especially narrow niches or creative, quirky products. But this hasn’t been enough to replace all the retail business that has been lost.

Of course, local leaders and economic development officials just want to revive their main streets somehow – and making the stores their viable is part of that revival.

Meanwhile, the retail business is shifting and using space to create exciting and entertaining environments inside the store, rather than stocking up as much inventory as they can.

Stores in small towns need to jump ahead and aggressively adopt the new retail technology. There are some interesting examples of technology that could be used in these Main Street stores.

Adidas built a virtual wall which shows off all of their shoes, lets shoppers see them at all angles and purchase what they want, which can be delivered later. It amounts to a limitless inventory for a small store.

Using an approach several companies have taken, Ray Ban has a virtual mirror that will show how a pair of sunglasses looks on your face.

Similarly, there are variations of virtual mirrors that let you see how a particular item of clothing looks on you before you buy – or perhaps even before the store orders it from the manufacturer.

Since most small town stores can’t be open all the time, there’s always a way to allow shoppers to peek inside when the doors are closed.

Projectors are a relatively inexpensive way of blending the virtual and physical in stores. Sometimes they can be used to provide further information that a customer wants.

And store owners of all kinds realize that part of what draws people in is just an entertaining environment. So here’s another projection example that’s installed for pure fun.

Finally, there’s nothing to stop a retailer with unique products – like art works – from taking pictures and putting those on the Internet for customers to see, both local and potentially worldwide customers.

Indeed, the retailers in small towns should take advantage of their greater agility than the big store chain behemoths. That’s the way they will succeed and, in the process, help make Main Street more exciting to visit.

The lesson here is the same as for small towns and rural communities in general – the intelligent use of information and communications technologies can help them flourish in this century. The impact, indeed, will be much stronger and more visible than it is in big cities.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/121188673865/main-street-stores-need-a-tech-upgrade]

April 29, 2015

Innovation Grows Where You’re Not Looking

When people talk about innovative places, they often refer to Silicon Valley or New York or some other urban megalopolis. By contrast, most of us have a sense that rural areas around the world face overwhelming problems. Some of us – hopefully the readers of this blog – also know there’s great future potential in those areas.

And that potential is being realized in a few corners of the world that might surprise you. Consider the countryside in the southern part of the Netherlands – the small city of Eersel and the other towns and farms nearby.

You may even have an image of the place from Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings of potato farmers 130 years ago. (He lived in the nearby town of Nuenen.)

It’s a different place today. Not different in the way much of the world has gone – with modern cities replacing what had been primitive countryside – but rather a modern countryside.

Taking me on a tour of this region two weeks ago was Mr. Kees Rovers, a long-time supporter of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a noted telecommunications entrepreneur and speaker on the impact of the Internet. Years ago he was a leader in bringing a high speed fiber network to Nuenen. Now he’s working on bringing fiber networks to the nearby town of Eersel.

Perhaps partly, but not only, due to the presence of Philips research labs in the city of Eindhoven, Wikipedia has noted:

“The province of Noord-Brabant [which contains the areas I’m describing] is one of the most innovative regions of the European Union. This is shown by the extensive amount of new research patents by Eurostat.”

The support of innovators and pride about local innovation by the leaders of the community, like Eersel Mayor Anja Thijs-Rademakers, contributes to this local culture of innovation. The Mayor, along with Mr. Harrie Timmermans (City Manager/Alderman), and Mrs. Liesbeth Sjouw (Alderman), joined Mr. Rovers and myself in visits to three good examples of innovation in the countryside.

First, we saw the van der Aa family farm, which has invested in robotics – robots for milking the cows and robots to clear the barn of the manure the cows produce in great quantity. Think of a bigger, smarter, more necessary version of the Roomba, like the one in this picture.

Then we visited Vencomatic, which was created by a local entrepreneur but is now a global business, still based in the countryside. In addition to pioneering animal-friendly technology for the poultry industry, their headquarters won the award as “Europe’s most sustainable commercial building”.

The final stop was at Jacob Van Den Borne’s potato farm in Reusel. He described his use of four drones, numerous sensors deep in the ground, analytics and scientific experiments to increase quality and production on the land. You can see his two minute video in Dutch about precision agriculture, with English captions at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlS8nVaI698

This is a picture of a potato farmer that Van Gogh could never have imagined.

Of course, what’s missing in this picture of innovation – and ultimately limits the growth of that innovation and its spirit – is broadband beyond the more densely populated villages. That’s why Rovers and the City of Eersel are deploying broadband away from the town center, using the motto “Close The Gap”. (Mr. Rovers is also the Founder/Director of the NGO of the same name.)

It’s also something that Van Den Borne knows, so he has organized a co-operative to build out broadband in the countryside that doesn’t have connectivity yet. Then he can take his innovations to a whole new level.

Whether it’s just an unusually strong regional culture of innovation or the historical necessity of being creative in rural areas where you can’t just pay someone down the block to solve your problems, this region of the world sets a good example for many other rural areas. That, in part, is what motivates us to continue ICF’s efforts to build a new connected countryside everywhere.

[Note: you can see a local report about my trip and more pictures at http://www.eersel.nl/internet/nieuwsberichten_41633/item/werkbezoek-norman-jacknis_68294.html . If you don’t read Dutch, Google has a pretty good translation.]

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/117688410990/innovation-grows-where-youre-not-looking]

February 11, 2015

The Decentralization Of Health Care

Eric Topol is a physician and editor-in-chief at Medscape. He was interviewed on the Colbert Report last year. His new book, published last month, has been reviewed in the major newspapers. Yet this book, “The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands”, hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

The book is about the future of health care – what’s already happening and what could be coming that’s even better.

Topol’s theme is that new technology and practices make it possible to democratize medical care – to move away from the traditional, paternalistic, hierarchical relationship between doctor and patient.

Hence the title which inverts the traditional words of a medical receptionist that the “doctor will see you now.”

Here’s a sample of some of his key arguments:

“… the world is changing. Patients are generating their own data on their own devices. Already any individual can take unlimited blood pressures or blood glucose measurements.”

“We are embarking on a time when each individual will have all their own medical data and the computer power to process it in the context of their own world. There will be comprehensive medical information about a person that is eminently accessible, analyzable and transferable.”

“Today patients can rapidly diagnose their skin lesion or child’s ear infection without a doctor. That’s just the beginning. … your smartphone will become central to labs, physical exams, and even medical imaging; … you can have ICU-like monitoring in the safety, reduced expense, and convenience of your home.”

“The doctor will see you now via your smartphone screen … they will incorporate sharing your data – the full gamut from sensors, images, labs, and genomic sequence, well beyond an electronic medical record.”

The book is very well researched and comprehensively covers all kinds of ways that technology is interacting with and affecting health care. Dr. Topol provides dozens of examples from all over the field – a laboratory on a chip, smart phones with all kinds of attachments that enable easy measurement of health conditions anywhere, etc.

As a physician, he rightly is concerned about the doctor-patient relationship. As a sometime patient myself, this is of course of personal interest to me as well.

But more than that obvious reason, why else is the picture he presents so important?

With my perspective on how technology will affect where andhow we will live and work, his story is as much about the decentralization of
medical care as it is about the democratization.

With this decentralization, Dr. Topol envisions the
patient’s home becoming an instant medical lab or even a temporary hospital
wing. This means that you can dramatically
improve the quality of your health care even if your home is in the
countryside, miles from a major medical center in the center of a metropolis.

And it’s this distance from medical care that frequently
worries those who live in the countryside.
So when the transformation of medical care becomes more common, one more
traditional disadvantage of rural living that will disappear.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/110724183408/the-decentralization-of-health-care]

October 22, 2014

A Virtual Metropolis In The Countryside?

People who live in big metropolises, like New York, London or Hong Kong, often say that they can always find someone within a few miles who has a special skill they need to complete some project or build a business. I’ve pointed out that the close proximity of millions of people with so many different skills is part of what has made cities successful economic engines during the industrial era.

When the population of your town is just a few thousand, there is a much smaller likelihood you’ll find the special skill you need nearby – and thus you’ll be less likely to achieve what you have in mind.

In the US alone, the Census Bureau has noted in its report “Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change” that 10% of Americans live in one of the 576 small urban areas (where there is at least one urban cluster of less than 50,000, but at least 10,000 people). That’s about 32 million people.

Another 6% lived in neither major metropolitan areas nor even these small urban areas. That’s just under 20 million people.

In this century, with broadband Internet, physical proximity is no longer necessary for people to collaborate and share their skills in a common project. Yet the small towns of these more than 50 million people are mostly not connected to each other.

So here’s my wild idea for the day: why not create a virtual metropolis of millions from the people in the small towns and communities of the countryside?

Imagine if even half of those 20 million (or 52 million) people who live outside the big metropolises could work together and be combined to act as if they were physically next door – while not actually living in such crowded conditions.

Such a network or virtual aggregation of small towns would offer their residents a much higher chance of succeeding with their business ideas and making a better living. If someone, for example, had the engineering talents to design a new product, that person might more likely find the necessary marketing talent somewhere in that network of millions of people.

Clearly, anyone connected to the Internet can try to reach out to anyone else whether that person lives in a small town or a big city. But a network of small towns alone might encourage greater collaboration because of the shared background of country life and the perceived greater friendliness (and less wariness) of non-urban residents. In most small towns, people are used to working with each other. This would just be a virtual extension of the same idea.

Initially, of course, people would feel most comfortable with those in the same region, such as within North America. Over time, as people interact more with each other on a global basis, that comfort level will expand.

Whether on a regional or global basis, this virtual metropolis could compete on a more even playing field and even establish a unique brand for the people and companies located there. It would make it possible for rural residents to keep their quality of life and also make a decent living.

What do you think?

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/100663996332/a-virtual-metropolis-in-the-countryside]

September 17, 2014

Small Town, Big Story?

Can a town of 2,300 people in the countryside of Mississippi create a future for itself with broadband? The answer is yes if you speak to the visionary leader of Quitman – its Mayor, Eddie Fulton – and about two dozen community leaders from business, education, churches, health care and other fields.

Quitman is not what you might think of as the likely star of a broadband story. It has suffered de-population, economic difficulties, community tensions and all the other problems people in many small towns across America have witnessed.

Then along comes the Mississippi-based telecommunications company, C-Spire, who announced it would deploy gigabit Internet connection through fiber to the home in a small number of communities. The key requirement was that a fairly sizable percentage of the community’s residents had to sign up for the service in advance.

Quitman was the smallest town to take on this challenge. It would not normally be considered because of its size, but they had such a strong commitment to building on broadband that the company decided to make the investment. Now, Quitman is ahead of the others in deployment and plans for developing their community.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a big technology project knows that the biggest obstacles to success are not technical issues, but human issues. That’s why the chances that Quitman will succeed are good. They have the necessary leadership, motivation and willingness to innovate.

They’ve also been helped by one of the long forgotten secrets of America’s agricultural and economic success – the extension service. In particular, Professor Roberto Gallardo at Mississippi State University Center For Technology Outreach has helped to educate the community and been their adviser.

And so it was that last week I was in Quitman leading what the Intelligent Community Forum calls a Master Class, as part of its community accelerator program.

I pointed out that, rather than being an anomaly, a small city like Quitman could be the quintessential broadband success story. I told the community leaders that a number of recent studies have shown that broadband has a much greater impact on small towns and rural areas than in cities. As I’ve written before, this is not surprising. Big cities provide many traditional ways that many people can interact with each other. It is only when residents of small communities get connected to everyone else through the Internet that they can start to level the playing field.

I reviewed the historical context that is opening up new opportunities for rural communities. I provided various examples, from elsewhere in North America and beyond, of the ways broadband can make a difference to the countryside. The point of the examples was to give the community leaders ideas and also to see small towns, like theirs, doing great things with broadband.

Then to bring the strategy and examples home, I asked them what they would do with broadband when it was deployed. The community leaders separated into three groups, one each focused on education, health and economic growth. They had a good discussion and came up with good ideas that will enable them to move fast when the connectivity is available later this year.

The signature line of the old song “New York, New York”, written at the height of that city’s industrial prominence, proclaimed: “If I can make it in New York, I’ll make it anywhere”. This century, in the post-industrial era, the line should be: if broadband helps make Quitman a success story, then it can happen anywhere.

I’ll keep you apprised of their progress.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/97730847152/small-town-big-story]