The Digital Inclusion Forum

	Judy Miller

Community Portals Invite Broader Thinking on Inclusion

While the geek gods and goddesses keep our network servers blinking, digital-learning innovators are standing by ready to fill the pipes with socially beneficial software. Last summer, the MacArthur Foundation, in conjunction with HASTAC, announced a Digital Media and Learning Competition through which demonstration projects would be funded to further define digital media and learning. Thinking they would receive 100–200 applications, their servers instead had to meet the demand as over 1,000 applications were electronically filed by the October deadline.

Clearly, the need is great to enable digital-learning innovators to do what can only be described as a passionate commitment to integrate technology in a meaningful way in the day-to-day, or more accurately, the second-to-second, life that now typifies American culture. Community portals can serve a crucial role as the local destination Web site for wireless networks and could become the Cinderella story as we enter the next phase of local-government wireless.

Too often the discussion within local-government wireless-network deployments on how the network will be used to achieve stated community goals has taken a back seat to the seemingly more complicated conversations about nodes and backhaul. But I’ve always thought a community broadband strategy is a 50-50 deal at the outset with the technical geeks and the social-science gurus requiring an equal number of seats at the table. There may be blank stares at first and different languages being spoken, but getting the two together right away will save problems later. It’s important to acknowledge that both network subsets are not only extremely complicated but also mandate a diligence to ensure that research-based strategies are not just implemented but then studied and modified accordingly to realize positive outcomes.

Community portals can be the glue that holds a network together by providing a platform for user participation, and most important to the ongoing sustainability of the network, expansion to meet individual, business and community goals under a shared umbrella.

To the geeks and the gurus, the name of the game is traffic (the one time that word evokes a positive meaning!). It was a great day when I realized that all of my fellow digital pioneers were on the same page about traffic. Network operators cannot achieve a return on investment unless large numbers of people become loyal users. And communities cannot achieve a network’s social goals unless large numbers of people participate in community programming, delivered effectively because of the network. So doesn’t it make sense to first plan for relevant, compelling and meaningful programming to maximize network use and then have the business professionals come in and make the bottom lines work? Or at least create the plan concurrently? As we all know, it’s relatively easy to build traffic with certain types of content but it’s much more difficult, and some cynics may say impossible, endeavor when a community portal formulates a philosophy to build traffic through content and applications that benefit the community.

Dr. Howard Rheingold, non-resident Fellow at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, asks a fundamental question about the Internet that has greatly influenced my work. “Will the Internet strengthen civic life, community, and democracy or will it weaken them? I think of that charge to action frequently as I develop community portal content and applications.

America’s Promise, a nonprofit organization founded by Gen. Colin Powell and his wife, Alma, just reported that over one million students drop out of public high school each year — one every 26 seconds. How will a community broadband strategy reduce the dropout rate? How can community portals be used to help students who have lost hope for their futures? What can we do for parents who are not engaged with their child’s educational journey because they are unemployed and facing daunting financial challenges? How can we use broadband networks to effectively disseminate vital information on health and public safety? How can community portals be designed to authentically engage the disabled community through a suite of accessible features? I am confident community portals will play a key role in solving these critically important issues.

It will require a renewed dedication to research, collaboration and most important, to each other as digital pioneers, before we can definitely say that we’ve strengthened our communities and our democracy by deploying broadband-wireless networks. It’s a Herculean task, but my bet is that both the geeks and the gurus are up to it — if they’re sitting at the same table!

Judith Stanford Miller, M.Ed., is President and Co-Founder of NinthWave Media in Toledo, Ohio.

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