By Teresa A. Martin
This week I was out and about to the Open Cape Summit. It was held this past Thursday at the Cape Cod Community College and was sponsored by The Cape Cod Economic Development Council, The Cape Cod Five Charitable Foundation, MECNet, Atrion, Unwired Village, and Motorola/Sideband.
Open Cape is a proposal to build a redundant broadband wireless data transport network for our region. The Summit was the event that drew together some 100-plus regional leaders, policy planners, IT leaders, vendors, developers, and emergency response experts to explore the concept and launch the development process.
The cross section of attendees spoke to the need we have in this region for a network like this – a need for lots of reliable bandwidth to serve our region’s educational and research organizations, a solid infrastructure to help drive our ongoing economic development AND a network that will survive a disaster and provide a path for business continuity and recovery after a disaster.
It also spoke to the realization that none of us can do this alone – but together we can achieve great things.
The basic concept of Open Cape is to bring together a group of partners into a regional effort and, as a group, specify, develop, and deploy the network. The process will happen in phases over about a year. Open Cape is working to raise an initial $150,000 in funding for engineering studies, specification development, and RFP development and an estimated $2.3 million to build out the network across the region.
One of the themes of the day was ‘doing and deploying’ and the afternoon was devoted to the formation and initial meeting of four working groups:
The partnership group is exploring how the non-profit management organization might be shaped and structured, and where both seed and development funds can be raised.
The economic development working group is exploring ways that this network can be used on a daily basis as part of an economic engine and how commercial traffic might be able to flow across it.
The emergency working group is exploring the emergency and disaster services that could ride the network and how it could integrate with other elements of emergency communications.
The technical group is developing the technical network specification and exploring different design and solution options.
Each group has an active forum at http://www.opencape.com. A follow-up meeting for the partners group is tentatively scheduled for July 27, with a set of specific tasks around organizational issues to be researched prior to that.
If it sounds like a lot of action occurred, well, that’s because it did. The energy, excitement, and forward momentum were palatable. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Cape isn’t capable of accomplishing cutting edge things, because it was clear that the people attending on Thursday had both the will and vision to take on the challenge of solving a critical need and are committed to making this happen.
There was very little of the regional bickering we too often fall prey to. Instead, teams were really looking at the entire Cape and which points here would provide the best links to points on the other side of the water -- without debating what side of a town line or which zip code they fell on.
Technical discussions were remarkably productive too. The focus remained on exploring solutions and the merits of different options, rather than taking on religious stands over one flavor of technology or another. It was problem solving at its best.
There was also a healthy amount of humbleness – not the kind so self-denigrating cycle that can reduce us to inaction, but the kind of openness that says we need to learn and research because no one really knows all the answers yet. That’s the kind of approach that leads to effective solutions.
This was only the first baby step, but it was a very real step. We didn’t just talk. Well, we did talk, but we also took the next steps into planning and setting action items, and setting deadlines and deliverables.
When I was researching some background on hurricanes – you know, the natural disaster that is just waiting for us out there -- I came across a national weather service map. Covering the whole entire map was a giant orange, red, and yellow swirl named Bob. There, at the upper corner of the map was a tiny little pinpoint called Cape Cod. Wow. That really put it all in perspective for me. We are in this all together.
And maybe that’s why I was so moved by the energy on Thursday, because it seemed that everyone else realized that same fact – that we do need to stand as one. And in that moment, I was really proud to be part of that pinpoint on the map, of that community called Cape Cod.
Yes, together we can achieve amazing things ... and we even accomplish more mundane things, like building the infrastructure we need to thrive and survive.
Become a Member
