So, now that we’re open for business, what do we do next?

If I was running a business, I would be trying to bring in customers and waiting to serve them. For PBDD, we want to add partners, work to meet their needs, and to increase the visibility of our organization.

One exciting thing I’ve learned about this month was the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, founded in May 2015  as a unified voice for local technology training, home broadband access and public broadband access programs.  We work collaboratively to craft, identify and disseminate operational resources for digital inclusion programs while serving as a bridge to policymakers and the general public.  Two benefits of this are that we have joined with others in a broader organization to promote Internet access, and that I can find other organizations that are committed to the same goal. One of the early organizations to join was the city of Milwaukee. I was delighted to see them because contacting them was on my list of things to do. I want to discuss their support for launching a bridging agency in Milwaukee to serve the low income population there.

On other fronts, I’ve been working with Katherine on a white paper to describe the purpose and structure of a best-in-class bridging agency. The first draft is out for comments by partner agencies, and I plan to update it make it publicly available soon.

We’ve been planning a trip to visit Net Literacy in Indianapolis next month, so look forward to a partner profile of their organization later this summer.

And of course, we’ve been working to add content and improve our website, with one major addition this month including the training course material from the People’s Resource Center in Wheaton.

On the visibility front, we have started to publicize our Facebook page, and are glad to see an initial set of “likes”. Thank you to those who have, and please spread the word.

There continue to be a large collection of things to do, and not enough time to do them. All-in-all, I think that’s an accurate depiction of most meaningful lives.

I look forward to the next steps.