Note: A follow-up letter, September 7, 2007 is at http://lone-eagles.com/support-montanans2.htm
To: The Honorable Brian Schweitzer
Governor of Montana
From: Frank Odasz,
Lone Eagle Consulting
Email:
frank@lone-eagles.com
Date: February 5, 2007
RE: Montana has a major untapped alternative energy resource that
requires
your immediate attention.
At considerable cost during the past decade, Montana has been aggressively investing in rural broadband access for its rural communities while promising economic, social, and cultural benefits.
The attached short proposal to “Establish a Montana Rural Ecommerce Support Network” presents a recommended first step toward tapping this huge untapped reserve of Montanan ingenuity by recognizing and celebrating existing successes and sharing them broadly.
Building social and cultural capacity through community Internet learning programs to create healthy communities is an inherent part of building sustainable economic capacity. It is my understanding there has never been an assessment of whether Montanans have received appropriate training, and are benefiting from rural broadband as promised.
Morally speaking, whose responsibility is it to champion community-wide Internet learning programs once Internet infrastructure has been achieved? It is everyone’s responsibility.
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.
Sincerely,
Frank Odasz, Lone Eagle Consulting
Attached: Establishing a Montana Rural Ecommerce Support Network
Rural Ecommerce Resources for Montana’s County Commissioners
Establishing a Montana Rural Ecommerce Support
Network
Montana can benefit from gathering and sharing ecommerce innovations from our own rural grassroots champions as well as from those found elsewhere. Though yet unrecognized, many Montanans have already demonstrated outstanding innovations and economic successes which the Internet makes potentially available for all Montanans, if provided the appropriate education.
Montana’s economic development leaders are invited to consider creation of a Rural Ecommerce Support Network which would begin with a Rural Ecommerce Champions Award Program to celebrate Montana’s early adapters’ Ecommerce successes. An online Resources Clearinghouse would quickly evolve showcasing short video success stories, self-training online lessons, and a peer-mentoring program to establish a convenient means for Montanans to share successful strategies and learn new skills.
Despite Ecommerce success stories existing in many communities, most rural Montanans have not yet had the opportunity to learn how to tap into their own potential uses for existing broadband. Neighbors with Internet skills who are willing to assist those who need such skills exist in most communities - if we can get help make these connections.
Extensive self-training Montana-specific resources, including extensive resources created for Native Americans, are already online; for those who are already self-directed learners. We share an obligation to help all Montanans develop these self-directed learning skills.
Creating Montanan Healthy Communities
By connecting caring and connectivity with common sense we have an opportunity to support all Montanans with the best information and e-learning opportunities available in a very human, uniquely Montanan support network.
Montana needs a Rural Economic Development Information
Technology Specialist
maintaining an I.T. innovations inventory and resources to connect
Montanans with known solutions.
As evidence for how productive all Montanans could learn to become leveraging their capabilities via Internet skills, please note the extent of the following unique resources generated by one Lone Eagle Montanan. To further make the point of how every Montanan can leverage their abilities using the Internet, please consider funding a minimum of one Lone Eagle to implement this proposed model network to support Montana’s rural champions and train aspiring Lone Eagles statewide.
A frequent presenter in Montana, Frank Odasz offers Montana’s leadership presentations on opportunities for statewide rural ecommerce initiatives, K12 reform for rural and Native schools, youth entrepreneurship initiatives, online workforce training, and action plans for short-term proof-of-concept Rural Ecommerce community projects, including Indianpreneurship. A roster of recent Montana leadership presentations follows…
2005-2006 Lone Eagle
Montana Presentations
on Montana’s Greatest Energy Reserve
Over 60 Rural Ecommerce presentations for rural Montanan communities statewide have been delivered by Lone Eagle Consulting over the past three years as documented at http://lone-eagles.com/new.htm , highlights include:
A February 2006 Rural Ecommerce presentation and hands-on “Web-Raising” workshop delivered to a meeting of the 13 Small Business Development Coordinators, state entrepreneurship trainer, Philip Belangie, and state SBDC Director, Ann Desch. Everyone learned for the first time how easy it is to create free Ecommerce web sites in less than one hour.
A “Virtual Entrepreneurship” presentation to the December 2005 Montana Independent Telecommunications Systems conference. - Those who provide Montana’s rural broadband access.
A Rural Ecommerce and Telework Strategies presentation to the Governor’s Economic Development Council, with Evan Barrett attending, October, 2005.
Lone Eagle met with the National Tribal Development Association www.ntda.info in Box Elder, MT on Solstice, Dec. 21st, 2006, along with Steve Galbavy the new director of the Opportunity Links project www.opportunitylinks.org
National and International presentations on indigenous
Internet empowerment
are listed in the Lone Eagle Update below including Canada, Alaska, the U.S.
and the 1st International Indigenous Information and Communications Technology
conference in Mexico City. Lone Eagle Update January-October 2006
http://lone-eagles.com/lone-eagle-update100106.htm
Aided establishing an
Indigenous ICT’s Commission of the Americas, from the Arctic to Antarctica,
March 4-9th 2007, in Guatemala. http://lone-eagles.com/guatemala.htm
Rural Ecommerce Resources for
the Montana Association of County Commissioners
Presentation Feb. 12, 2007 for the MACO Economic Development Committee:
"Empowering Montana's Rural Entrepreneurs with Ecommerce Support
Systems"
The Internet has unleashed an explosion of entrepreneurial creativity
worldwide. We have the opportunity to build on the best successes, as they
emerge, from global sources. Because rural entrepreneurs are limited by the
size of the local consumer base their level of success increasingly depends on
their ability to market to the one billion consumers on the Internet, with
another six billion coming.
This session will present online Ecommerce and Telework curriculum resulting from years of USDA and USDOL demonstration projects, including rural community action plans for raising local ecommerce awareness and strategies for generating local ecommerce support systems. New easy-to-learn, low-cost rural Ecommerce tools and techniques have dramatically enhanced what’s possible for rural Entrepreneurs.
Biography for Frank Odasz
Born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1952, Frank Odasz has been a carpenter, oil
field roughneck, dude ranch manager, college professor and is now a "Lone
Eagle" - that is, an independent instructional entrepreneur. Coming to Dillon
in 1985 as faculty at UMW, he founded the Big Sky Telegraph network in 1988 -
linking one-room school teachers as one of the first rural online educational
networks.
Specializing in fast-track Internet training for rural, remote, and indigenous learners for the last 20 years, Frank has traveled over a million miles presenting at national and international conferences on online learning, community networking, and rural Ecommerce.
The
Montana Choice Demonstration Project
http://lone-eagles.com/montana-choice.htm Three years presenting
Rural Ecommerce Success Stories across Montana for
a U.S. Dept. of Labor demonstration project. This uniquely Montanan project
has generated extensive resources and community-lead activities for generating
individual web-based self-employment, 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 community leadership supported by extensive new training resources
included in this resource listing.
Best Lone Eagle Resources
http://lone-eagles.com/future-proofing.htm
Dillon’s Web-Based Businesses and
Visions for the Future
Making It Happen in Dillon, Montana
http://lone-eagles.com/dillon.htm
A review of the history of Internet innovations in Dillon, Montana.
Net makes rural Americans less isolated
A Montana town (Dillon) struggles to reconcile Old West values with the
new Net economy
http://lone-eagles.com/dillonarticle.htm A front page article in the
Silicon Valley Newspaper on Dillon, MT.
Dillon’s Businesses on the Web
http://lone-eagles.com/dillonbusdirectory.htm
Many businesses do more business via Internet than
through their stores in town.
Montana’s Ecommerce Success Stories
http://lone-eagles.com/montana-successes.htm
More and more Montana businesses are enjoying a return on their investment getting their products and services advertised via the Internet
Opportunities for State Support of Rural Ecommerce
http://lone-eagles.com/montana-suggestions.htm
Other articles of interest from Lone Eagle Consulting, Dillon, Montana
The Power of All of Us? The eBay Lesson for Community
Development
http://comtechreview.org/winter-2004-2005/000261.html
What is Community Networking; And Why You Should Care
http://www.comtechreview.org/fall-2005/000347.html Many related
links are listed in the overall publication.
Community Networking Hits Media Mainstream (Almost)--
And Makes Its Own News (4 pages)
http://lone-eagles.com/mainstream.htm
"Reaching the Tipping Point for the New Generation of Community Networks"
http://lone-eagles.com/tipping-point.htm (9 pages)
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.
Spring 2006 CTC VISTA Digest
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest
Contains the following two articles by Lone Eagle Consulting
Peer-to-Peer Social Networking; The Next Big Thing
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest/?q=node/67
Empowering Americans: CTC VISTAs in Community
Networking
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest/?q=node/64
Lone Eagle’s Best Rural Community
Grant Templates:
Rural Community Grant Templates for both Native
and non-Native rural communities have already been written related to citizen
engagement with Internet collaboration and learning. The grants are all listed
and offered for use without restriction at
http://lone-eagles.com/rural-grant-templates.htm
Sustainable Ecommerce Education Development Strategies
(SEEDS)
http://lone-eagles.com/seeds.htm
This grant model involves youth in raising ecommerce awareness among
adult leaders.
Rural Ecommerce and Telework Incubator Centers
http://lone-eagles.com/summary.htm
A scalable model to engage many communities simultaneously.
An Alaskan Village Bootstrap Academy -
An Education and Economic Development Partnership
http://lone-eagles.com/northstar.htm as a model community Internet
learning program. More templates listed at the end of
http://lone-eagles.com/village-sustainability.htm