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The Montana Center for Sustainable Rural Families

The Center of Common Sense Excellence

1. JOBS:  21^st Century Workforce Jobs Facilitation
       Greencollar workers; rural ecommerce and telework strategies
         Broadband entrepreneurship
         Egov services integration, rural virtual one-stops, minimizing costs across sectors
         simultaneously
         Community education programs: Broadband enabled community wellness best
         practices
         Retirees teleworking to pay health Ins. And Disabled vets, single moms,

2. ENERGY:   Green Clean Sustainable Lifestyles –Education on Solutions
         Common Sense educational clearinghouse for practical cost and energy saving
         solutions
         Energy Conservation Assessments – a curriculum for youth to provide local
         assessments
         Alternative Energies Education to grow understanding and support
         Energy Efficient Architectural Best Practices: Smaller houses, Bigger lives –
         Practical choices for Montanan homes, and lifestyles

3. HEALTH: Community Wellness Broadband Applications
        Rural community sustainability requires broadband enabled community wellness
        best practices across the following nine essential areas;
        1. Safety 2. Health 3. Education 4. Enterpreneurship 5.Ecommerce 6. Social Services
        7. Culture 8.Government 9. Entertainment. 
       At issue is identification of the broadband training best practices and smartest
       applications for each area.   (E-Gov Immaculate Integration)

4. E-LEARNING FOR ALL: Montana Mentors: A Virtual Support Network
     Civic Participation and Inclusion, Service Learning
      “Doing for Ourselves, Together” Sharing best practices and success stories
       Teaching everyone how to establish self-sufficiency (self-directed Internet learning)
       Community service engagement and efficiencies leveraging online social media
       Supercomputing applications; cloud computing innovations

5. GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP:  Thinking Globally, Acting Locally
       Teaching understanding meaningful participation in the global information society
         and economy
        Citizen lending, citizen philanthropy,
         Youth E-entrepreneurship, reverse out-migration
         International trade generation via micro-multinationals
         Cyberseniors and youth global service learning – Renewing America’s International
         Reputation    

 

Suggested Titles:

The Montana Center for Sustainable Rural Families
Montana Sustainable Rural Lifestyles Center
The Center for Common Sense Community Broadband Applications
The Center for Rural Common Sense and Tenacity

Phrasings to describe the Center:

          Combining caring, connectivity, and common sense for Middle America.
          To create a Western Harvard of Common Sense
          Specialized e-learning for all rural Americans: western individualism,
          techno-mavericking,
          Everyone both learner and teacher, both consumer and producer, all the time.
          Facilitating rural innovations: integrating top down and bottom up -  

Mission Statements
         If we all share what we know, we’ll all have access to all our knowledge.
         Everyone both learner and teacher, both consumer and producer, all the time.
         From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
        What we didn’t know we needed to know.
        Where the promise of broadband meets rural needs…
        Create a myspace where the friends list is mentees gratitude for skills training
        and encouragement delivered online.
        Teach everyone how to teach others online and create value and trusted
        socio-economic capacity.

Common Sense Themes:

Combining caring and connectivity with common sense

It would be simple common sense to:

1. Acknowledge and share existing Montana bottom-up innovations using broadband
for home-based self-employment, ecommerce, and/or telework.

2. Celebrate and share Montana mentors’ expertise to facilitate more bottom up innovations: Reward “service” with social recognition and specialized online advanced skills development and related services – such as Instructional entrepreneurship – how to teach effectively online.

3. Provide elearning incentives for Montana Mentors to help share their expertise with those who need it.

4. In an interconnected world common sense cost efficiencies come from addressing
    the commonalities of education, jobs, health, energy and civic participation
   (service, issues advocacy, and voting)
 

Concept Paper for Feasibility Planning Grant for Beaverhead County

The Montana Center for Sustainable Rural Families
http://lone-eagles.com/dillon-center.htm

The future has already arrived, it just hasn't been evenly distributed.

 

Summary:
Ron Swenson has two 1.5+ acre parcels, one across from the YMCA and one North of the fishing pond to potentially be invested into a project beneficial to Dillon and Beaverhead county. Ron will visit Dillon the week of Oct. 20^th to meet with whomever is interested and discuss options. In short, Ron has a strong interest and long background in alternative energies education and is involved with a number of international and national projects, one in particular – educating youth in low-income homes to do energy assessments.

I suggested a Dillon community technology center with emphasis on serving as an Ecommerce and Telework incubator as well as a showcase for new options combining alternative energies, green lifestyles, green collar workers (telework/ecommerce), and other integrated synergies for how new information technologies and alternative energies can improve the sustainability of rural lifestyles. 

Such a center could engage and educate Montanans of all ages, both onsite and online, serving as a national virtual center of excellence. The mission of the Center will be to be THE Center of Excellence for Broadband Training Best Practices: teaching onsite and online “What’s the Best an individual and/or community can learn to do for themselves using broadband at minimal cost?”

The Need:
At issue in these dire economic times is “Where does the promise of Broadband truly meets rural needs?” We’ve all heard the “promises” equating rural broadband with economic growth, but we’ve not seen the validating success stories – in fact the lack of stories about economic success from communities with broadband raises questions as to what broadband training best practices truly produces measurable outcomes. 

Too many Montanans don’t believe in the promise of broadband, including rural leaders at all levels. Community broadband awareness, adoption, and applications campaigns are absent despite the promises. How can individual rural Montanans and local community initiatives address in practical terms stimulating meaningful participation in the global information society and economy? 

In a world of accelerating change, most definitely the community education process is fundamental, and online education is indeed the most cost effective, unless it is associated with university degrees – and then it is somehow suddenly very expensive. The governor gave $100 million to the University system due to continuing tuition raises. Nothing has been provided to post online rural ecommerce success stories by those grassroots innovators who have figured out for themselves how to join the networked global economy.

The social media phenomena where 100 million youth over an 18 month period created a My Space capitalization of 2.6 billion dollars – serves as proof positive amazing things are possible engaging regular citizens online, most particularly peer mentoring and collaboration.

The majority of Montanans are not seeking degrees, just the know-how to understand how to begin to participate in the web-based global economy. The majority of rural economic developers and rural leadership are not part of the first digital generation – our youth, who have embraced the web and social media in ways few adults understand or appreciate. If we’re to recognize we have a generational bias against web-based economic development then we might consider how we can best support the role of youth leadership in this new area.

Using Broadband to keep costs down, to work and learn from anywhere, and to begin to intelligently identify the most practical and beneficial applications across the spectrum of E-Gov, community wellness, and eco-dev applications is our opportunity and is an urgent necessity.

Beyond achieving access to broadband, the issue is more social than technical. Can we each get the level of support we individually need to begin our own learning curve without threats to our self-esteem and/or lifestyles? What E-learning, and Ecommerce and Telework support services currently exist, or can be quickly created, is the immediate question.

Suggested Themes the Center will Champion, locally, regionally, nationally, onsite and online.

Broadband Entrepreneurship
Ecommerce and Telework Strategies Incubator
Made in Montana E-marketing and Ecommerce Incubator
21^st Century Workforce Basics (Instruction onsite and online)
Youth E-entrepreneurship
Digital Citizenship: Online digital inclusion, civic participation
Global Citizenship and global service learning (local and global social media collaboration and peer-mentoring)
Cyberseniors Service Learning (in association with www.cns.gov )
Learning to Learn Online: online education for the rest of us,
Community-driven action plans for awareness, adoption, best applications.
Community driven ecommerce awareness and adoption campaigns
Modeling effective sustainable community technology learning centers
Health Information Technology addressing Community Wellness broadband applications.
Made in Montana Mentoring Services: Growing a social media business brokering the best peer-generated short instructional media modules would be a win-win for creative individuals and communities hoping to engage the majority of citizens. I.E. Instructional Entrepreneurship Incubator.

Where the promise of BB meets rural needs.

Montana Alternative Energies
Ecommerce Rural Sustainability
alternative energies
alternative agriculture
Rural sustainable best practices
Green Broadband Solutions minimizing costs, travel, egov services ( Health, shopping, education, etc.)
Lifestyle careers working from home, or anywhere you prefer to be
Health I. T. community wellness; consumer health resources, egov services, youth E-entrepreneurship, civic life, social media, specialized online services and training for vets, disabled, women, rural entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneurship
Online shopping, Broadband to reduce gas consumption, telework
Health I.T., online consumer health services
corporate social responsibility
online civic participation, access to essential egov services – needs to include online education and mentors
K12 reform, laptop programs, youth E-entreprenership/outmigration, 21^st Century literacy, workforce training, BB clean and green jobs
Smart community pilot projects via Community Tech centers
lifelong learning, peer mentors, summative newsletters, services, lessons
Online service learning training, use of social media to engage volunteers
Global citizenship, international trade, micro-multi-nationals, global service learning
National/State adoption strategies, awareness/adoption campaigns, mentor drives, tutorial competitions

What would a national service learning BB awareness/adoption/measured benefits program look like?

Multi-purposes:
Dillon convention center, one large presentation room with 6+ smaller meeting rooms
Outdoor meeting area by the creek
YMCA, Independent Living Center, UMW Challenge program, local youth and schools

Potential Funders:
Senatorial Appropriation
Governor’s Office
Turner Foundation
Murdoch Foundation
Anne E. Casey Foundation
Others…

Letters and Articles Expanding on Center Themes:

Letter to Governor Schweitzer:
Creating a Rural Montana Ecommerce and Telework Support Network

http://lone-eagles.com/support-montanans2.htm  Please consider Montana’s opportunity for Mining Raw Human Potential by creating a world-class educational system capable of generating social, cultural, and economic broadband applications and online learning opportunities for all citizens.

 

Letter to Sen. Tester:
Common Sense Use of Internet to Economize and Supplement Rural Incomes          
http://lone-eagles.com/tester.htm
Rural Small Businesses, Rising Prices, and Common Sense Use of Internet to Economize and Supplement Rural Incomes          

Article for 2008 Montana Economic Development Association:
Rural Community Economic Sustainability and Global Competitiveness
Share this online at:  http://lone-eagles.com/meda2008.htm
What is your community doing to help your citizens connect with meaningful participation in the rapidly growing global information society and economy?

Invitation to Bresnan Communications: A Web Tour of Opportunities for Rural Innovation
Click through this web tour at http://lone-eagles.com/bresnaninvitation.htm

Health Information Technology, Rural Broadband, and Common Sense
http://lone-eagles.com/hit.htm  
Written for the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS.org) consumer empowerment workgroup.

The New Digital Citizenship Imperative:
Engage to Create Positive Change, Locally and Globally
Now that we can, we must!  
http://lone-eagles.com/citizenship.htm
Digital inclusion and online service learning using social media are rapidly becoming essential to participation in our democracy and many other aspects of civic life; requiring broadband connections and social media skills.

 

In Support of Genuine Rural Broadband Applications
http://lone-eagles.com/ruralbroadband2.htm

”Build it and they will come has proved to be a field of dreams.”  Infrastructure alone has proved inadequate for delivering the social and economic potential of broadband.

 

Letter of Opportunity to Rural Communities

http://lone-eagles.com/rural-solutions.htm
It will be what rural Americans learn to actually DO with broadband that will determine
        their level of global competitiveness and benefits. Today's "new economy" is knowledge-based, entrepreneurial, and globally competitive to an extent that was almost unimaginable even a decade ago. Education is the key to the 21st century, both in terms of economic prosperity and personal achievement. Rural community sustainability requires intelligent use of fast Internet connections for community wellness across the following nine essential areas; 1. Safety 2. Health 3. Education 4. Enterpreneurship/Ecommerce 6. Social Services 7. Culture 8.Government 9. Entertainment. At issue is identification of the broadband training best practices and smartest applications for each area.

 

MEDA 2008 Conference Article lead paragraphs: 
Article Link: http://lone-eagles.com/meda2008.htm

What is your community doing to help your citizens connect with meaningful participation in the rapidly growing global information society and economy?

Rural “Greencollar” Workers: Throughout last year’s Butte Economic Summit multiple keynoters remarked on the new opportunities the Internet offers: “Now that rural Montanans can now use Ecommerce to tap into global markets and can telework from anywhere the rural impacts will be dramatic.”  Supplementing family incomes using Internet is becoming increasingly widespread though the majority of rural citizens do not know where to go to learn how to do this. Montana’s greatest untapped alternative energy resource is the Montanans!

Being rural shouldn’t mean being unaware of best practices for using Internet for rural sustainability when it is so easy and cost effective to put training and mentoring services, online. Affordable online distance learning and mentoring opportunities, for all ages, are profound, cost effective, and desperately needed. Sharing success stories and online mentors is common sense.

It will be what rural Americans learn to actually DO with broadband that will determine their level of global competitiveness and benefits.

Today's "new economy" is knowledge-based, entrepreneurial, and globally competitive to an extent that was almost unimaginable even a decade ago. Education is the key to the 21st century, both in terms of economic prosperity and personal achievement. The rising prices of oil and food are impacting rural sustainability and reassessing the role of Internet for access to essential services, education, online shopping, and home-based ecommerce and telework is timely.

September 2007 Schweitzer letter Lead Paragraphs
Letter link: http://lone-eagles.com/support-montanans.htm 

September 7, 2007

 On behalf of struggling rural Montanans please acknowledge and celebrate the reality that a rapidly growing number of Montanans are preserving their cherished rural lifestyle through rural ecommerce and telework broadband innovations. The State has a role to play facilitating the sharing of such successes to stimulate more Montanan innovations. However, due to the lack of accessible and appropriate training most rural broadband sits unused.

 

The letter I sent you February 2006 has been validated by Senator Baucus’s recent Economic Summit where the esteemed keynote presenters repeatedly stressed the fact that now rural Montanans can live and work anywhere they choose via Internet. Please consider Montanans are in desperate need of leadership able to actively address how rural Montanans can connect with “the promise of rural broadband.” 

Summary of that letter: Montana’s economic development leaders are urged to create a Rural Ecommerce Support Network which would begin with a Rural Ecommerce Champions Award Program to celebrate Montana’s early adapters’ rural Ecommerce and Telework successes. An online Resources Clearinghouse would showcase short video success stories, self-training online lessons, and a peer-mentoring program to establish a convenient means for all Montanans to share successful strategies and learn new skills.

 

Please consider the importance of your role identifying who in Montana genuinely advocates for rural ecommerce and telework, and who is actively offering the necessary training. It is possible for the State to actively provide links to the best online training resources to allow every Montanan the chance to learn these important skills.

 

To: Senator Tester, Lead Paragraphs
Letter Link: http://lone-eagles.com/tester.htm

From: Frank Odasz
           Lone Eagle Consulting

Date: August 11, 2008

RE: Rural Small Businesses, Rising Prices, and Common Sense Use of Internet to Economize and Supplement Rural Incomes          

We first met and talked in person briefly in your DC office June 11^th, 2008, about common sense use of fast Internet connections (broadband) to help rural businesses, farmers, and ranchers keep costs down and grow their capacity for economic survival. As keynoters stated repeatedly throughout last year’s Baucus Economic Summit, “Rural Montanans can now use Ecommerce to tap into global markets to supplement their farm/ranch incomes online, and telework from anywhere.” 

Supplementing family incomes using Internet is becoming widespread though most rural citizens do not know where to go to learn how to do this. Being rural shouldn’t mean being unaware of best practices for using Internet for rural sustainability when it is so easy and cost effective to put online training and mentoring services, online. Online distance learning and mentoring opportunities are profound, cost effective, and desperately needed.

Below are examples of rural Montana Ecommerce successes along with recommendations for a broadband training best practices clearinghouse. Online shopping, as one example, can help minimize unnecessary vehicle travel, and often offers better prices, too. Making life easier and connected to the best solutions as they emerge – is the promise of broadband.

It will be what rural Americans learn to actually DO with broadband that will determine their level of global competitiveness and benefits.

Today's "new economy" is knowledge-based, entrepreneurial, and globally competitive to an extent that was almost unimaginable even a decade ago. Education is the key to the 21st century, both in terms of economic prosperity and personal achievement.

In recent years we’ve seen an explosion of billion dollar social media business success stories (Ex. MySpace) and at the same time confusion regarding the promise of broadband resulting in disappointing take-up rates in rural and Native communities. The economic decline continues and the need for a new form of community education and fast-track action plan is growing dramatically. Montana has over 500 rural communities in dire economic straits along with major youth outmigration challenges. Rural community sustainability requires intelligent use of fast Internet connections for community wellness across the following nine essential areas; 1. Safety 2. Health 3. Education 4. Enterpreneurship 5. Ecommerce 6. Social Services 7. Culture 8.Government 9. Entertainment.

Broadband (high speed Internet) is becoming a necessity; offering the possibility of working from home, making life easier, and more connected. In our world of accelerating change, how you and your community will adapt and tap into the best solutions on an ongoing basis, is your challenge. The rising prices of oil and food are impacting rural sustainability and addressing the role of broadband as a partial solution is suddenly a key issue. Online shopping and broadband services have never been more important to sustain rural lifestyles by keeping costs down and enabling access to essential services and education.

 

The Wyoming Ecommerce Support Network Proposal Lead Paragraphs:
Summary Link: http://lone-eagles.com/wyomingrcdproject.htm

Wyoming Rural Ecommerce and Telework Support Project of Big Horn County

To enhance 21^st century workforce development for Wyoming residents this exciting new public service project will provide information on rural ecommerce and telework networking and training opportunities. Wyoming residents (with emphasis to residents that reside in Park, Big Horn, Washakie, Hot Springs and Fremont counties) who would like to work from home utilizing their computer and high speed internet access will be the primary beneficiaries of the project.   It is expected that a variety of special emphasis groups will also benefit from the project including veterans, handicapped individuals, senior citizens, Wind River Indian Reservation tribal members, high risk youth, entrepreneurial-minded youth and unemployed women with children. 

There are two primary elements to the project. The first is the development of a credible and comprehensive rural ecommerce and telework support website.  The website will provide links to Wyoming educational institutions that offer ecommerce training, other tested Internet training opportunities, Wyoming ecommerce success stories (like Eleutian Technology, LLC), business and community links, at-home job opportunities, special emphasis group links, an ecommerce networking calendar and other types of information to help bring Wyoming residents to the forefront of 21^st century economic and technologic opportunities.  

The project’s second element will be community awareness presentations showcasing the Wyoming Ecommerce Support website within the five counties of the Big Horn Basin Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) area.  Presentations in Cody, Lovell, Burlington, Greybull, Worland, Thermopolis, Riverton, Fort Washakie and Dubois are planned.  If these community presentations are determined successful, other community presentations in other parts of Wyoming will be planned. 

Montana Green Campus Unveiled to Governor

Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education
Tyler Trevor, (406) 444-0307

http://mtgreen.mus.edu

"Distance education is a great way for Montanans to not only access
higher education, but reduce their carbon footprint and save money on
gas all at the same time," said Governor Brian Schweitzer. "Careers in
energy fields in Montana are hot and high quality and this site makes it
clear to students and parents what degrees are available in the
University System that will take you directly into those career fields.
The Montana Green Campus makes it easy to study, work, and live green
right here in Montana," stated Governor Schweitzer.

Note the MT Tech Green University site has primarily degree-related online learning, but what's needed is social networking with a mentoring and instructional focus geared for rural Montanans and Native Americans.

Peer-generated instructional content, For Montanans, By Montanans, would reflect genuine participation in the information age.

Essay related to Higher Education Leadership:

Reforming Educational, Economic Development,
and Healthcare Institutions:
An Executive Summary for State Legislators
A Non-Technical Overview of the Impacts of Information Technologies
http://lone-eagles.com/ncsl-reflections.htm
A summary of key points on Reform of Health Care, Higher Education, and Economic Development, for the National Conference for State Legislators.