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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (16584)	9/7/2006 7:28:40 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

The Daunting Task of Consensus Building [FAC: Pursuant to my reference to the amount of "human capital" and logistics that go into the prelimanaries of municipal network building, the following is taken from the Cook Report account of the Medina County, OH Fiber Ring Project. The entire interview of Macy Hallock by Gordon Cook can be viewed at: cookreport.com ] From the report's Page 24, Macy states: "You have to understand that this is a very conservative county. The county administrator and county commissioners were cooperative but shall we say skeptical. "That they were antagonistic means only that they did not see the vision or understand that there was a better solution in front of them. The key members of the subcommittee went around and made many presentations about this idea and this vision to all the local institutions to all the local major employers and to the schools and even the libraries of the area. We did our best as a publicly oriented committee to try to build awareness and consensus. "We did get some information back. A lot of it was very vague. Yeah this would be interesting but how would this help me? Would it really make my T1 cheaper? One question always was: What’s in it for me? "In the meantime we are trying to gather information to put together the economic impact, as you have understandably wondered about, was a very frustrating process because there was a lack of awareness and a lack of commitment. We ran into apathy and into skepticism: Why are you trying to do this? This should be done by private business. Remember that people who don’t feel pain, don’t feel any need. Many, many of these organizations did not feel pain or believe that they had a big problem. On top of this, apart from the handful of large organizations that we talked about earlier, most of these organizations did not rely on anything beyond basic telephone service or maybe a cable modem or a T1 for essential operations. "Remember the organizations that couldn’t make do with the minimum? Most never came here in the first place. Or, if they did they have turned around and left. We were able to document a few businesses that outright left because they couldn’t get what they wanted. They were not huge businesses. But what we may never know is: Were they just the tip of the iceberg? Suppose you have an organization looking to site a new plant or office with 100 to 200 employees. What do they do? Most of the time they employ a real estate broker or site consultant. "The Economic Development Director is very aware that the site selection process is critical to his task. I will tell you that I have an immense amount of respect for what he does and has to go through. I did not have this when I began this process. I simply didn’t understand how things worked from a county, regional or even city perspective. "The thing that Jim Doutt our Economic Development Director got real early in this process was: “My phone’s not even ringing.” Consultants are looking at site selection and I am not even making the B list much less the A list. I am loosing before I can do anything because I don’t make the cut. "I have some real estate background in my family and remember that I mentioned that my co-chair, Jim Gerspacher, is a commercial real estate developer. In some ways Jim had the situation pinpointed better than I did. We interviewed and presented and over a period of at least two years we tried to build awareness and consensus because we realized that if we had this port authority and this project that the county commissioners were not going to support the project unless they had demand expressed to them by institutions and by major employers. "Both my co-chair and the Economic Development Director are experienced in building consensus and political support for a project like this and it’s kept the project moving forward." ------ FAC

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (16584)	9/8/2006 12:34:50 AM
From: Peter Ecclesine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Frank, >> the length of sustained service that would be required in order to justify the overall effort << Two re-elections? Wikipedia says RI GDP was $33,000M in 2000, per capita Personal Income was $29,685. $100 per POP doesn't seem like much, and spread the taxes over a few years, like hosting the America's Cup ;-) Let's look at SAMCAT tinyurl.com and Smart Valley's backers: Participating Entities as of September 5, 2006 San Mateo County · Atherton · Belmont · Brisbane · Burlingame · Colma · Daly City · East Palo Alto · Foster City · Half Moon Bay · Hillsborough · Menlo Park · Millbrae · Pacifica · Portola Valley · Redwood City · San Bruno · San Carlos · San Mateo · San Mateo County · San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office · South San Francisco · Woodside Santa Clara County · Campbell · Cupertino · Gilroy · Los Altos · Los Altos Hills · Los Gatos · Milpitas · Monte Sereno · Morgan Hill · Mountain View · Palo Alto · San Jose · Santa Clara · Santa Clara County · Saratoga · Stanford Campus Residential Leaseholders · Sunnyvale Alameda County · Fremont · Newark Santa Cruz County · Santa Cruz == I can assure you that Silicon Valley's '1500 sq. miles' are going to stretch to the farthest corners of many city limits, and a recount will ensue ;-) rural Gilroy has never been farther from the action ;-) Note that Mae-West, Stanford, and PAIX are within Silicon Valley, so backhaul should reach a carrier-neutral location or three.