Mayor Ness in New York Times
The mayor’s jump in the lake to support Google Fiber made a splash in the New York Times. How about that?
The mayor’s jump in the lake to support Google Fiber made a splash in the New York Times. How about that?
Here is a photo from Google’s SXSW Bash and here is a note from Austin Techie Friend:
If you agree that Austin would be a great city for Google to build a high-speed data network go to http://www.biggigaustin.org/ for an opportunity for you to tell them. Click on the “nominate Austin” link in the lower left corner.
Click here to see what ideas have been posted.
Donna
We have things to learn from Austin — even if they “suck.” Homegrown is a great thing. Let’s put our brains to work here instead of our emotions.
Help support the effort to bring fiber to the Twin Ports. 2 – 4 at the DECC. Mention that you are going to Google Fest and get free parking. Music, face painting and a chance to see the making of the Hollywood production. I’m not really sure what all is going on, but it sounds interesting.
Catching up on some of my favorite tech blogs this morning and found this familiar face headlining a post on Gizmodo.
Duluth, Minnesota
But wait! Patrick Garmoe, public information officer of the Google Twin Ports Initiative laughs sheepishly as he explains Googlefest, an event that is one part rally, one part carnival and all parts enthusiasm for the promise of Google Fiber. In the midst of bands, choirs and other entertainment, “We’ll be shooting a movie with real actors and a Hollywood director and live-streaming the event to impress Google,” Garmoe says. The new initiative comes on the heels of Deluth mayor Don Ness’s own stunts. In a spoof video proclamation that in honor of Google, all first born males would be henceforth named GoogleFiber and first born females would of course be Googlette. Also, he literally sunk to a new low in the brutal battle for business. He jumped into the freezing waters of Lake Superior. Hizzoner, perhaps you’ll be deterred from further lunacy by these extremely gnarly Google Image results for “frostbite.”
Google biking. Very rad.
The cream is here, the cream is here! At the Coop next to the whipping creams. Man it would go good with a big bowl of Google Fiber.
MARCH 10, 2010 – Minnesota Sen. Al Franken has joined The Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative by resurrecting his Duluth Answer Man clips.
Duluth’s campaign combines a fun and creative grassroots campaign with a very serious effort to build a strong business case for bringing Google Fiber to the Twin Ports.
The Duluth Answer Man campaign was produced in the mid 80s by the Duluth Convention and Visitors Bureau, known today as Visit Duluth. The series ran in the Twin Cites market as the summer tourism campaign for Duluth.
From DNT article…
“We found a Hollywood director with ties to our area to shoot a short movie, about 10 minutes long, that we are gearing for Google,” Garmoe said. “We want to make sure that Google sees us, and this is one of our many efforts make us stand out from other cities.”
In my head, a collage of clips from movies and songs that mention Duluth would be pretty cool. Make it artsy, I says. Other ideas that aren’t terribly cheesy? (i.e. DBU commercials; no offense)
Earth Hour will be coming back to the Duluth area this March! From 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on March 27 the World Wildlife Fund asks individuals and businesses to turn off their lights for the hour. Nearly one billion people from 87 countries participated in Earth Hour last year!
Report by Minnesota Public Radio’s Bob Kelleher
The mayor of Duluth is ready to throw his city’s hat in the ring for a new Google experiment to test ultra-high speed Internet access.
MPR’s Steven John talks to Don Ness about his city’s plan.
Here’s a press release we’ll be sending out about our intent to explore Google’s offer to bring gigabyte speed broadband to an entire community. There are many unanswered questions and any application may be a long shot, but it would be a game-changer for Duluth. I think it’s worth putting our best foot forward and see what happens… If you want to help out, check the bottom of the post. See you around… Don
Mayor Don Ness has indicated the City of Duluth‘s intent to pursue a partnership with Google to bring fiber-to-home connections to city residents. Google plans to select a community to test ultra-high speed connections at more than a gigabit per second later this year through a competitive process.
The following is a statement from Mayor Ness on the city’s intent:
We want Duluth, Minnesota to be at the forefront of a new gigaband revolution in America. For America to be competitive into the future, we need to be aggressive at investing in our data infrastructure. To unfairly paraphrase Tip O’Neill “All bandwidth use is local” – Google’s community initiative will be a powerful tool to demonstrate the positive impact of local broadband improvements.
Google just announced that it will be choosing one or more locations to put in a ultra high-speed broadband service to a community to serve as a test bed.
This could potentially bring millions of dollars to our area as well as spark a lot of new business to be formed on the back of this service.
Help promote Duluth as the test site for Google’s new 1 GB fiber. Here is the nomination form.
There is also a Facebook group that has been started to try and promote this idea across the Northland.
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States and many other books died this week.
Here are references I found to Duluth and Minnesota in “A People’s History of the United States”