Lone Eagle Consulting Resources to Support Rural Innovation
Click Through this Web Tour at http://lone-eagles.com/future-proofing.htm

The Montana Choice Demonstration Project
http://lone-eagles.com/montana-choice.htm   A five-year U.S. Dept. of Labor demonstration project which has established an aggressively innovative national test-bed for generating individual web-based self-employment as well as community strategic action plans, community mentoring programs, and more.

The Montana Choice Process
http://lone-eagles.com/montana-choice-2005.htm
Common Sense first steps recommended for rural leaders supported by extensive new training resources included in this resource listing.

 
The Idaho Ecommerce Success Stories Resources  
http://lone-eagles.com/connect-idaho.htm Reflects three years of USDA funding primarily to work with awareness raising in Montpelier, Idaho in partnership with the Idaho State University Special Programs Workforce Training Office. The bottom line is having high speed wireless available without citizens understanding what’s possible does not result in positive change. Local and regional success stories need to become commonplace for the required cultural shift to occur.

The Rural Community Internet Empowerment Resources
http://lone-eagles.com/ruralempowerment.htm  A key article is listed first “Authenticating Rural Internet and Broadband Benefits – A Reality Check” http://lone-eagles.com/wings.htm Written for the Australian Govt. ICT conference, Oct. ‘03

Creating People-Centered Community Knowledge Networks
 http://lone-eagles.com/smart.htm   A self-quiz for rural communities recommended for rural leaders as a tool to begin discussions on how best to use the Internet intelligently. Includes many community grant templates

The Alaskan Native and Native American Internet Empowerment Resources
http://lone-eagles.com/alaskan-resources.htm Includes a chapter listed first which has Lone Eagle Consulting’s best Native community grant templates listed at the end: Realizing Cultural and Community Sustainability Through Internet Innovations in Alaskan Native Villages  (http://lone-eagles.com/village-sustainability.htm ) See also the best Indigenous community networking success story yet found, K-net in Northern Canada http://lone-eagles.com/indigenous_resources.htm ) Note: Lone Eagle Consulting spent seven weeks in Native villages during 2003 and provided the first Internet workshops for the 11 villages of the Yukon-Koyukuk School District starting in 1998.

Lone Eagle Consulting’s online graduate courses for educators 
http://lone-eagles.com/teachercreated.htm
Educators are offered two online courses by the Alaska Pacific University in partnership with the Alaska Staff Development Network and also by the Seattle Pacific University. Course descriptions, all lessons and participants’ web-curriculum samples are available for online review without restriction.
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Lone Eagle Consulting’s Best Youth Resources  
http://lone-eagles.com/youth.htm
Includes a key youth-driven community action plan proposal  Sustainable Ecommerce Education Development Strategies  http://lone-eagles.com/seeds.htm (This can be conducted without funding by any rural community that wishes to do so.)

Lone Eagle Consulting Best Multi-media Presentations  
http://lone-eagles.com/presentations.htm  Presentations designed to motivate rural citizens and leaders regarding how best to empower themselves and others through informed use of the Internet. Recent and upcoming presentations are listed at
http://lone-eagles.com/new.htm

 

Future-proofing Our Rural Communities
Recognizing the Opportunities at Our Fingertips

What story would you like to tell for how well your community has demonstrated informed use of the Internet to generate social and economic value? Or will the story be told for how your community failed to meet this challenge while there was still time to do so? Most rural communities are suffering 3-7% out-migration per year. Do the math projecting your losses for the next 5-10 years – are “adapt or die “ your only two choices? 

Powering Knowledge and Action for Rural Communities

Lone Eagle Consulting provides extensive free resources in support for preserving our cherished rural lifestyle. You’re invited to use our community grant templates to win funding for direct training services for your community or to use these templates as action plans for the best strategies available that do not require outside funding.

 

Whether for free, or for a fee, we’re ready to help you frame your community success story. Regional leaders might consider how Lone Eagle newsletter updates, new resources, and online mentoring could be shared among all communities in your county or state. The volume and quality of our free resources alone, are unprecedented and well worth sharing. They are the result of many past funded projects and are meant to be shared without restriction.

 

Our fee-based services include motivational multimedia presentations, online train-the-trainer mentoring designed to produce measurable outcomes in the short term and potentially a bi-monthly summative newsletter showcasing the very latest in rural community innovations, new resources, and key trends.

 Recognizing the Opportunities at Our Fingertips

Given the facts on continually dropping costs of PC’s and Internet access, and the rising numbers of web-based self-employment successes, our challenge is to condense the best training models into a fast track curriculum to get as many new self-employment successes started as possible with minimum costs in time, money and energy. Microenterprises account for over 85% of all new jobs, web-based microenterprises have never been easier to generate on a mass scale.

Given the facts on the rising number of successful community web-based innovations, with growing numbers of interactive innovations for allowing citizens easy ways for ongoing gathering and sharing that new knowledge which supports creating new opportunities, -- our challenge is how best to initially inspire rural leaders to review the innovations of others for consideration as opportunities for local replication with emphasis on small first steps.

Community leaders might be advised to talk about the best possible story they’d like to be able to tell regarding the following suggested goals. Within a three-six month period the challenge would be to create the most significant measurable outcomes possible regarding new skills imparted to a specific number of citizens, new self-employment businesses, new web sites for existing business, and a community co-marketing initiative of all businesses plus a rapidly growing telework skills registry of citizen’s new skills to be co-marketed regarding telework jobs.
 

 Creating People-Centered Community Knowledge Networks

         (Extensive resources on this topic are at: http://lone-eagles.com/smart.htm  )

To survive in a world of accelerating change, all rural communities must quickly learn how to effectively create community learning programs to keep as many citizens as possible up-to-date on that new knowledge which creates new opportunities - on an ongoing basis. Community learning programs can start with something as simple as "live" online presentations of the best replicable innovations from other communities.

 

As more new knowledge is put online for convenient access by the community, common sense use of appropriate knowledge sharing tools can have a dramatic impact by providing a means for everyone to contribute to keeping the whole community informed. In the knowledge age, fueled by an innovation economy, the quality of our community knowledge networks will determine the adaptability and survivability of our rural communities.

 

Inexpensive community knowledge networks are one easy way that everyone can work together to gather and share that new knowledge which creates new opportunities.  Below are recommended first steps that do not require outside funding. As citizens and community leaders become aware of the replicable innovations already working in other communities, as included in the self-quiz and web tour below, the benefits for supporting ongoing community learning will become clearer. At issue is nothing less than preservation of our cherished rural lifestyle.

 

The following very short non-technical self-quiz on community "smartness" is recommended as a first group activity for community leaders. Consider "What’s the best your rural community can do for itself based on new knowledge of the best successful innovations already working for other communities?"  As you review the suggested innovations below, make a list of which innovations make sense for your community and consider the potential benefits of routinely gathering and sharing the best innovations from other communities as they emerge, on an ongoing basis. At the very least your community can save hundreds of hours by simply borrowing the gathered links from other community sites.

Following the quiz is a short web tour of examples of great community knowledge networking innovations, and a recommended reading list to better understand what your community can create, even without grant funds. You'll find extensive community planning resources such as community action plans written as grant templates, K12 community service projects, and many more useful resources. Lone Eagle Consulting provides all the following resources for unrestricted use to support creation of more lone eagles and sustainable rural communities.

Creating community learning programs is everyone's responsibility and our challenge is that we have so many diverse communities within each community that could, and should, be players: K12, Higher Education, elected community leaders, unofficial community leaders, business leaders, parents, youth, disabled, faith-based organizations, non-profit organizations, etc. Each "community within the community" has their own agenda and typically none of them are yet focused on Internet empowerment or community learning. Each such community needs to understand how they will benefit by supporting a community knowledge network that integrates knowledge sharing across our "community of communities."

Defining Best Practices for Creating Learning Communities

Community Networking best practices need to be measured according to specific best practices with specific collaborative tools engaging a specific number of persons to create specific measurable outcomes.

We need to define replicable processes for powering learning communities with mass skills transfer creating mass online collaboration using multiple specific tools to generate measurable outcomes such as: Generating widespread web-based self-employment.
The overriding goal is to generate informed use of collaborative tools to build social value and content that makes a positive difference in our lives.

While the collaborative software might be free --the real cost of realizing the collaborative benefits depends on the degree and quality of volunteered unified effort of many persons. A functional process for motivating the engagement of others must be anchored in place if such a community network is to grow. Everyone would need to commit to participation and learning together how to grow value, one step at a time, together.

 

Peer mentoring can affordably meet the need for local encouragement while serving as the basis for generating for-profit peer mentoring services, both offline and online. We need solutions of self-directed Internet curriculum suitable for those who are self-motivated and able to function as self-directed Internet learners. For those without functional self-directed learning skills, friendly face-to-face human encouragement is needed - up until we can help them learn-to-learn on their own.