If you missed today’s Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) livestream event – "Building Connected Communities: Sustaining the Momentum" – no sweat.

You can still see the entire program below. The latest installment of #B4DE was packed with practical information and inspiration on everything from the latest on the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), outreach to veterans, telehealth and broadband adoption – mixed with on-the-ground intel from local communities pushing the digital equity movement forward.

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Co-hosted by ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), the event was capped off by keynote speaker and emerging digital equity leader Joshua Edmonds, CEO of Digital C in Cleveland, who painted a powerful and expansive vision of digital equity work based on insights that have emerged from working in the trenches.

The entire #B4DE live stream, sponsored once again by UTOPIA Fiber, can be seen below. And, for other Digital Inclusion Week (DIW) engagements check out NDIA’s page here.

Lots happening for Digital Inclusion Week 2023, which kicks off this Monday. One free online event that will be of particular interest for digital equity advocates across the nation is the next National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) Livestream.

The popular virtual gathering will be held this Tuesday, Oct. 3, from 12 noon to 1:15 pm ET and will focus on the DIW-inspired theme: “Building Connected Communities: Sustaining Momentum.”

Attendees can still register here.

Building on the success of our previous events, we are excited to present another engaging agenda packed with practical insights and information digital inclusion practitioners can use while working in the trenches to bridge America’s yawning digital divide.

The agenda includes:

With Digital Inclusion Week (DIW) less than a month away, ILSR and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) are gearing up for the next Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) event and encouraging digital equity practitioners to save the date.

The popular virtual gathering will be held Oct. 3 from 12 noon to 1:15 pm ET and will focus on the DIW-inspired theme: “Building Connected Communities: Sustaining Momentum.” The event is free and open for registration here.

Building on the success of our previous events, we are excited to present a fun and informative agenda that will cover:

• On-going efforts to save the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and lessons-learned on boosting ACP enrollment
• Outreach to covered populations
• The power of ethical storytelling in digital inclusion work
• How telehealth can be a key driver of broadband adoption
• The nexus between infrastructure and digital equity

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The keynote speaker for the event will be Joshua Edmonds, CEO of Digital C, the Cleveland-based nonprofit technology social enterprise. Edmonds will focus on the link between building appropriately-motivated physical networks and how infrastructure and digital equity work go hand-in-hand.

With an historic effort underway to expand high-speed Internet availability to every corner of the country, one vital aspect of the nationwide initiative is to ensure that communities that have been left behind get access to the knowledge and digital skills necessary to fully participate in a modern Inter(net) connected world.

It necessitates the creation of an army of digital navigators to work on the front-lines with the right tools as their disposal. To that end, Arizona State University (ASU) and the Marconi Society announced the creation of a first-of-its-kind Digital Inclusion Leadership Certificate program that aims to provide “a foundational understanding of the technology, policy and digital inclusion essentials needed to create true digital equity.”

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University and Marconi Society officials say the Digital Inclusion Leadership Certificate is the nation’s first professional certificate in the field as the program is geared to educate individuals and teams at all levels of government, as well as nonprofits and anchor institutions such as libraries, housing authorities, and healthcare organizations who work with historically marginalized populations that either lack access to broadband or are unsure of how to take advantage of the opportunities high-speed Internet connectivity delivers.

“This certificate is for anyone who wants more background on broadband technologies and digital inclusion, including those who will be drafting plans and managing programs under new federal funding,” ASU’s website further elaborates.

*In partnership with Broadband Breakfast, we occasionally republish each other's content. The following Broadband Breakfast report was originally published here.

The American Association for Public Broadband is calling for industry help in creating a handbook that helps communities examine their option to create and maintain public broadband networks.

The handbook will be a “hands-on, high-level resource for moving through the entire process including getting started, building community support, technology and business case analysis, role of partners and finance,” said Gigi Sohn, executive director at AAPB.

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Sohn asked for leaders for public broadband networks, including both government-owned and cooperatives to complete a public broadband inventory. AAPB will sort through the submissions and select folks to interview for more details.

The inventory asks for network elements, public benefits of the network, what financing has been used to build and operate the network, among other questions. Respondents can indicate whether the data in the survey is available to be publicly released or not.

The AAPB will consider how it can fully capture value from this inventory and may decide to include all or much of it online in a database.

Responses are required by Friday, September 8, 2023.

Vendors, consultants, and other leaders in public broadband are invited to share the survey with those that are eligible to respond.

Just as the BEAD program becomes a major driving force in the ongoing broadband-ification of America, hundreds of local network builders, operators, thought-leaders, and policy-makers will descend on Denver, Colorado for Mountain Connect 2023 early next month.

Themed this year as “Collaborate, Integrate, Innovate,” the agenda is packed with plenty of BEAD-centered panels but also offers a buffet of other focused forums that will cover emerging technologies, local network case studies, and larger community development concerns.

Spots for the conference, which will be held August 7-9 at the Denver Sheraton, are filling up fast. But, would-be attendees can still register here.  

As with the previous eight annual Mountain Connect conferences, this year’s three-day conference in the Mile High City will bring together a veritable who’s-who of people working in the trenches of a national effort to bring high-speed Internet access to the tens of millions unserved and underserved households and businesses across the U.S.

Among the conference participants will be representatives from 15 state broadband offices, which accounts for more than $15 of the $42.5 billion in BEAD funds that will be allocated by states in the form of competitive state grants.

Join us Wednesday, July 12th at 4pm ET for the latest episode of the Connect This! Show.

Co-hosts Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by regular guests Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting) and Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) to talk about all the recent broadband news that's fit to print – and probably a few things not fit for print but worth discussing anyways.

The interactive livestream is always chock full of humorous observations and insightful broadband commentary, including previous episodes that remain relevant as states and communities are putting together their digital equity plans and gearing up for federal BEAD funds to build new broadband networks.

Back in December Christopher recalled how things went when Uncle Sam doled out federal infrastructure dollars in 2009. There's lots of excitement (and rightly so) around the recent announcement of how much each state and U.S. territory will get from the $42.5 billion BEAD program. However, this short clip (below) from Episode 60 is a good reminder that this time around we ought to take what the big telecom and cable companies say with a huge grain of salt so we don’t blow this once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand broadband access only to have taxpayer watchdog groups railing years from now about wasteful government spending because we took the word of monopoly incumbents at face value.

Lots of food-for-thought, with seasoned broadband bits, are served up on our Connect This! Show.

Apropos to yesterday’s BEAD allocation announcement, here’s a sample from Episode 72.

In that episode, ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative Director Christopher Mitchell and the livestream crew discuss whether federal policy disincentivizes new small broadband providers by setting up barriers to the historic amount of grant funds being made available, favoring the big incumbent providers and their entrenched regional monopolies.

You can watch the full episode below:

Email us at broadband@communitynets.org with feedback and ideas for the show.

As communities across the country are implementing digital equity plans and looking to expand access to high-speed Internet connectivity, the second Building for Digital Equity event (#B4DE) of the year comes weeks ahead of when states will receive their BEAD funds from the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Save the date and join us June 7 at 3 pm ET for #B4DE! As with previous B4DE events, this will be another virtual gathering that will offer up strategies to help simplify the complexities (and opportunities) of broadband connectivity. This event, sponsored again by UTOPIA Fiber, will focus on ways communities can foster meaningful action and advocacy.

Fresh off their most successful Net Inclusion gathering ever, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) will join ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks (CBN) team for the event as NDIA’s Pamela Rosales will co-host the livestream along with CBN Director Christopher Mitchell.

The 75-minute free event promises to be informative and include a series of fun interactive games. It will also debut a point-counterpoint component that will focus on the pending release of BEAD dollars for both rural and urban areas and the challenges around mapping as states try to determine how to get the biggest bang for the buck.

Register now for the Building for Building for Digital Equity Event.

See our previous B4DE livestreams below:

It’s not too late to register for our first Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) livestream event of the year. This Thursday, Feb. 16, from 2-3 pm CST/3-4 pm ET, ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative will kick off our Building for Digital Equity series.

The focus will be on two of the hottest topics in broadband right now: mapping and the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

Promising to bring more light than heat, co-host Christopher Mitchell, Community Broadband Networks Initiative Director, will be joined by co-host Kim McKinley, Chief Marketing Officer with UTOPIA Fiber – our sponsor for this year’s series. We are calling this one Building for Digital Equity: Why is Everyone Badgering the FCC?

You can register here.

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The event will give an overview of the FCC’s new broadband map and make clear what has been confusing and convoluted for those who have been working to fix the multitude of inaccuracies the map contains through the challenge process.

Our expert guests will break down the difference between fabric and location challenges and availability challenges and how those challenges may, or may not, affect how much each state will receive from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access & Deployment (BEAD) program embedded in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Our GIS and Data Visualization Specialist Christine Parker will review helpful mapping tools, which will be followed by a Q&A with audience members.