News Archives

11/2009
by LARRY DALE

RUTHERFORDTON —Tim Will, who went to California recently to collect $100,000 on behalf of Foothills Connect, came home with $150,000.

The extra $50,000 was awarded by Hewlett-Packard for computer equipment.

Will, executive director of Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center, was one of five national winners of the $100,000 Purpose Prize, and while he was at the ceremony in San Francisco receiving that award, he was told to remain on stage while the others took their seats.

“We had this rehearsal, prior to the dinner,” explained Will on Wednesday. “And they told us where to stand, where to get on and off the stage. My last paragraph was, ‘I accept this in the name of the people of the southern Appalachians. ‘

“And they gave me an ovation. And I went to walk down, and they said, ‘Tim, stay up on the stage.’ They called up Mr. Michael Mendenhall. This is being MC’d now by Sherry Lansing, the first female head of a major motion picture studio. She ran Paramount Studios. And she is one of the backers of the Purpose Prize. And he (Mendenhall) said, in the name of one of their employees, that they had set up what will be an annual award, the first time it has been awarded, for Technology in Social Innovation. ‘And $50,000 worth of Hewlett-Packard computer equipment goes to Tim Will and Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center.’”

Will had talked with Mendenhall earlier in the evening, so the announcement was especially fitting.

“What’s so funny about it is he was sitting at my table,” Will said. “And during the dinner I said, ‘You work for Hewlett-Packard?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m the vice president of marketing.’ And I said, ‘Well, it says on the agenda you’re going to give an award.’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘Well, who to?’ And he said, ‘Well, I don’t know yet.’ And I said, ‘Look. Don’t go anywhere after the awards, because I’ve got to talk to you about getting some used computers.’”

The Foothills Connect director had just been wondering how he was going to get upgraded computers at the office, and the $50,000 award was a godsend.

We’ve got so much broadband, and it’s jamming the machines, and they’re not able to process the stuff.

“I had woken up one morning,” he noted, “and said, ‘Lord, you got me into this. How am I going to get this equipment? Help me out.’”

Then he added with a smile, “I’m not used to stuff coming Fed Ex.”

Foothills Connect will be ordering computer equipment online directly from the Hewlett-Packard Web site.

Although the $100,000 was awarded to Will, he has announced that the money would be going to Foothills Connect since, as he told the banquet audience in California,

“I am merely the straw that stirs the drink.” Will has often said that the Foothills Connect effort is a collab-oration of hundreds of people,
so he immediately noted that he was merely accepting the award on behalf of all the others.

Will said the trip to California was memorable.

“They treated us like kings out there,” he said. “There were five major winners. And the first night of the festivities was on Saturday (Oct. 31). They took us up to a winery above San Francisco and they had the awards ceremony right in the winery. You were looking out over a balcony right at the vineyard. It was gorgeous. It was up in the mountains. And you could see the lights of the San Francisco suburbs.

“And there were these outstanding people. You would think they would almost have to make up some of the stuff they are doing. James Smallwood was a crack addict who was on the streets, and a carpenter. And he asked the Lord to take away that affliction and he would only work for social justice for the rest of his life. And he has trained hundreds of drug addicts to be contractors.

“It just goes on and on and on. These people are doing these fantastic things.”

Ironically, Will followed a Mohican Indian up to the stage. Ironic, because in Will’s speech he explained how the movie “The Last of the Mohicans” influenced him and his wife to come to Rutherford County, where part of the movie was filmed.

“Here I am up there, ready to tell my story,” Will said, “and we follow a Mohican.”

At one point in his speech, Will said, “Eleanor and I discovered Appalachia in an unusual way. In the movie ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ Russell Means, playing Chingachgook, throws his son’s ashes into one of the most stunning valleys I had ever seen. I turned to Eleanor and said, ‘No matter where that is, that’s where I want you to bury me.’ We discovered that the scene was shot in Rutherford County, North Carolina. To fulfill our 30-year dream of retiring to a farm, we decided to buy a little land amidst the beauty of a hardwood forest near where the film was shot.”

The Foothills Connect executive director also thanked his wife for believing in him, even when he sometimes didn’t believe in himself.

“And I told them about some of the things we just happened to do to make things happen here. Sure, we set up this Internet connectivity, but Internet and computer literacy presupposes reading literacy. And so when we find them (illiterate people), we teach them to read. And we teach them to use computers. And we teach them to use the Internet.”

He concluded his speech by asking his listeners to join in the sustainable agriculture movement by demanding local and fresh food.

The Purpose Prize is awarded to social innovators in their encore careers. The Encore Careers campaign is run by Civic Ventures, a national think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. Funding for the Purpose Prize comes from The Atlantic Philanthropies and the John Templeton Foundation.

Go Back

11/2009
By Larry Dale

RUTHERFORDTON — Tim Will, executive director of Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center, has been selected for a national award that includes a $100,000 prize.

He is one of the 10 winners of the 2009 Purpose Prize. Announcement of the award winners was embargoed for Monday from San Francisco.

The six-year, $17 million program honors entrepreneurs over 60 who are using their experience and passion to take on society’s biggest challenges. The Purpose Prize is now in its fourth year.

The five $100,000 winners and five $50,000 winners were chosen from more than 1,200 nominees for their creative and effective work tackling a range of problems.

Will, one of the five $100,000 winners, has announced that he will be giving the prize money to Foothills Connect because he feels that it is the organization, not him, that is being honored.

“It’s humbling,” Will said. “I’ve read the biographies of some of the other people, and it’s like a lineup of Mother Teresa. It’s not an honor I deserve. It’s Foothills that deserves it.

“There are a lot of organizations and people that have gone into these programs. There’s a lineup here, starting with E-Rutherford and Realize Rutherford and Leadership Rutherford. That’s what got us here. That’s what got us the money.

“And county government, the school board, the school board’s IT department, R-S Central out there with Brandon Higgins, and Thomas Jefferson Classical Grammar and their third-grade classes, and Dr. Chris Burley and the Community Health Council, and ICC with Doris Crute and the FACT program, the help of Kim Alexander and now Ted Hamrick at the Small Business Center, my advisory council, the board of directors, the county commissioners, Chivous Bradley and dozens and dozens of farmers.

“We did this regionally, with Polk County. So to say that I did this is ridiculous. I’ll accept this honor in the name of the people of Rutherford and Polk counties. That’s how it got done.”

Alexandra Céspedes Kent, director of the Purpose Prize, explained why Will was selected.

“Tim Will is a former telecommunications executive who saw an opportunity to connect his community’s agrarian past to a new digital future. Tim Will won the Purpose Prize for his innovative approach to solving important and timely issues: job creation in a depressed economy, environmental sustainability and the preservation of family farms. He is an inspiring role model for other adults who want to use their life and work experience to improve the lives of others.

“We see The Purpose Prize as an investment in what Tim Will is going to do next because he is already planning his next big thing.”

Will was nominated by Anna Levitsky, marketing and education coordinator at Foothills Connect.

“I received an e-mail about this award,” Levitsky said, “and as I read through the guidelines, I realized Tim absolutely fits the bill for this. And so it sort of inspired me to go ahead and try to win it. And it turns out we did. So it was really kind of serendipitous. But he’s perfect for it.”

The Foothills Connect farm program has linked area farmers to Charlotte chefs using the Internet.

“If you don’t have broadband, go get it,” Will said. “Don’t wait. It is passing you by already. Don’t wait. Go get it. But Tim Will couldn’t go get it. It is a big team of people And they’ve been working on it for years.

“This effort started in 2000, so somebody has been working at this for nine years. I’ve only been here since 2006. I came here to be a school teacher. So it’s an honor, it’s definitely an honor.

“I would love to be able to describe the way that somehow I deserve it, but it is the pain of a community that has struggled to dig themselves out of a hole that they didn’t put themselves in. They got put in. It’s not the other way around. These folks didn’t do anything wrong. It was done to them. They fight back.

“You can only imagine my board of directors that sat there, and I told them, you have his huge market in Charlotte, and you’ve got these assets here, these thousands of acres of rural unused land and unemployed people, and 6,000 or more families that own between five and 20 acres of land, and if we can organize them the only thing we are missing is the connectivity. And they went out and got that connectivity. Without that connectivity none of this would have happened.”

Will emphasized that when he goes to San Francisco to accept the award, he is only the representative of a large number of people who made the program possible.

“Maybe I will take credit for being the ringmaster,” he said, “but I am not the star act. I’m not one of the dogs that jumps up on the horse’s back.

“I will, with great honor, go to Stanford University and pick up that award in the name of the people of the foothills. And I will do everything I can to find dot.com philanthropists in the Silicon Valley that would be willing to support us so we can pull ourselves out of the muck. All we need is a little push.”

“More than ever, the problems facing our communities, our country and our world call out for creative solutions,” said Marc Freedman, co-founder of the Purpose Prize and author of “Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.”

“Fortunately, Americans do not run out of ideas as we age but rather combine creativity with past experience and personal passions to make an even greater impact. Purpose Prize winners epitomize not only the promising spirit of innovation that can occur later in life but also how that can spark meaningful social change.”

The Purpose Prize, according to a news release from the organization, is part of the Encore Careers campaign that aims to engage millions of baby boomers in encore careers – the combination of social impact, personal meaning and continued income in the second half of life – and to produce a windfall of human talent for the very public interest sectors that need experience and talent.

The winners and 46 Purpose Prize Fellows of 2009 will be honored at a Summit on Innovation Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business’ Center on Social Innovation, one of the leading academic centers focused on social entrepreneurship.

The 300-plus attendees of the invitation-only event will hear a keynote address from Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman.

The Encore Careers campaign is run by Civic Ventures, a national think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. Funding for The Purpose Prize comes from The Atlantic Philanthropies and the John Templeton Foundation. Additional funding for the Summit comes from AARP, Erickson Companies, the New York Life Foundation, Hewlett-Packard Company and Legacy Works.

The other $100,000 winners, their ages and their projects are: Elizabeth (68) and Stephen Alderman (68), Peter C. Alderman Foundation, Bedford, N.Y.; Judith Broder (69), The Soldiers Project, Studio City, Calif.; Don Coyhis (66), White Bison, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Henry Liu (73), Freight Pipeline Co., Columbia, Mo.

Go Back

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer
January 2008

RUTHERFORDTON - Many plans were made at the first ever Technology Symposium in February. With Technology Symposium II just around the corner, Tim Will and those at Foothills Connect are incredibly pleased that many of their plans are coming to fruition.
“The mandate for Foothills Connect has always been to use technology to help create economic opportunities for those hit hard by the collapse of the textile and furniture industries,” Will said. “And as we’ve looked at the situation, we’ve studied the current markets, we know that the biggest obstacle people are having to face with regard to the new knowledge based economy is that of connectivity. And specifically we knew we had to get broadband access to the world installed here in the county.  This was what we started planning at Technology Symposium one.”  Almost one year later, the main plan conceived that day is on its way to being completed.
“We formed a 70-person committee, full of all the community leaders, the movers and shakers in the broadband field and many educational leaders,” Will said.  “After numerous meetings and 90 days later we came out with a plan to connect the county to a fiber optic network to provide broad­band access to everyone. It was ambitious, it was revolutionary — and it was absolutely vital to economic growth in the county.”  The plan called for miles of fiber optic cable, cooperation between schools and fire departments and all manner of logistic concerns, not to mention it wouldn’t be cheap.
“As fate would have it, the Golden Leaf Foundation did a study about their money and found that Rutherford County, along with a few other counties

was not getting its fair share of the foundation’s money,” Will said. “The county was asked to submit projects that would ‘move the needle’ when it comes to the local economy and so we put together a 12 page grant describing our plan.  The idea called for an extension of the great work done by Pangea and the schools in Rutherford County. Connecting the schools to a high speed fiber-optic network was just Step one.  “Step two would involve running a fiber-optic line from each school out to the nearest fire station or EMT facility,” he said.  “This would extend the fiber another 50 - 60 miles. Finally, a wireless provider will be sought to propagate wireless Internet access from those points at speeds equal to DSL technology.”  Golden Leaf officials were impressed by the plan and even more impressed by the level of cooperation.  “They awarded us $1.44 million to complete this project,” Will said. “And it is well on it’s way to being completed even today.   That was the focus of the first symposium, to edu­cate the people and help them see how important connectivity was both for education and for eco­nomic growth.
“When Symposium Two meets in January, our focus will be on making this new network more reliable and reaching out to form a more regional network.”  Will went on to explain how having other counties connected could add to Rutherford County’s network.  “Fiber-optic networks actually work a lot better when they’re in a ring shape rather than a tree with branches, which the tree is what we have now,” Will said. “When the ring exists, the individual routers will redirect the signal away from a break in the line and make sure that no one experiences any data loss except those right at the break. It’s almost like reversing the flow in a pipeline to make the water flow back to the other side. If we can complete more of these rings it will be great for security and reliability in the network.”

Technology gains in county…now, that’s some good news

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

One of the things I like best about my position as “unofficial” technology reporter here at the Courier is getting the scoop on all the new things possible in the world today. Many of the things I thought were just the purview of fiction writers are stuff I get to talk about on an almost daily basis as I study the ins and outs of the field.

Take for instance my recent conversations with Tim Will at Foothills Connect regarding the broadband connectivity project for the whole of Rutherford County. He and I have talked about this whole idea many, many times before and I’ve even written a column or two about the plan. But these days it seems like it is much closer to reality than ever before.

For those who don’t know the plan, the basic idea is this: A company called Pangea (from Polk County) has connected Rutherford County schools to a high speed fiber-optic network that will allow them to connect to the Internet with incredible speed. This is really great news for all of our students as it pretty much allows them access to the sum of human knowledge on demand. But it is going to be even better news for those entrepreneurs in our county because this fiber optic backbone is going to one day (and I mean one day SOON) power that kind of blazing Internet speed right to your home computer.

The second step of the program is to string that fiber from the schools to local fire stations and EMT buildings. This will have the added benefit of providing high speed response time for those groups as the Internet connectivity helps with communications in an emergency.

But, the final step (which is happening now) is to connect the EMT buildings and fire stations to large antennas that will be a send-and-receive hub for home computers to wirelessly connect to the web at DSL level speeds.

And what’s the best part about all this? The DSL level of speed will be free. Yep — free! If you find you need higher speed you can purchase a higher speed, but for those of us paying $60 a month or so for DSL at home, a free alternative will be a welcomed sight.

So, how will this all help the economic situation? I could lay into you with all these statistics about connectivity, a knowledge-based economy, the new state data center and so on and so forth — but that all sounds a little boring right now. No, my best example to you is to point to another Foothills Connect project that is doing pretty well, a virtual farmers’ market, if you will.

Many months ago my colleague, Larry Dale, wrote a great article detailing the plans to sell produce grown in Rutherford County to high-priced and high society type restaurants in Charlotte. Those chefs over there in the Queen City need melons that haven’t turned brown in the crate while being delivered from California (or, more likely, Mexico) and the farmers here in Rutherford County need someone to buy their melons.

The Internet, specifically high speed Internet that allows for real time pricing changes and crop yield updates, is the bridge that crosses that gap between the suppliers and the consumers. And they’re making pretty good money at it right now.
It can only grow upwards from there, and I sincerely hope that someday soon I can report to you in another article about expansion of that project.

Next month, Foothills Connect is going to host Technology Symposium II. The first symposium is where this wireless access plan was created, this one is going to be about making the fiber-optics work better by connecting in large rings to Henderson, McDowell, Polk, Cleveland and Burke counties.

The long and short of it is, if we work together, we’ll all work better. And that’s some good news.

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

TRYON — Bringing the information superhighway to Rutherford County is a process that actually begins in Polk county, with a little non­profit company called Pangaea Internet. And like their namesake, the company is trying to connect the far corners of the globe. “I like to think that the Interstate Highway system is a perfect analogy,” said Ron Walters, executive director of Pangaea. “And the railroad is also a good analogy for the way the Internet affects cities today. It is the umbilical cord for the economy. But one of the best things about our operation is that people aren’t seeing this on their tax bills. We’re a non-profit company funded by grants and other interested partners.”

And Pangaea’s mission these days is to run fiber optic cable throughout parts of Rutherford County, Polk County and almost anywhere else there’s an interest­ed party and some funding available. But running fiber through the countryside or up and down existing roads isn’t like pulling telephone cable or electric lines. “Fiber is a very different material,” said Stu Davidson, operational director for the company. “It is an entirely different process of connecting things together.
You’ve got to have the right equipment and the right skills to cook the fiber and join it together. This isn’t a metal wire at all, so when you need to splice it you’re really melting it and joining it to other pieces. It is very labor intensive and requires a specialized set of skills.”

And so what will happen when that project is finally completed? Well, Pangaea’s main focus right now is getting Rutherford County Schools connected to the Internet with fiber optics. “We’re really just making our first connections into Rutherford County,” Walters said. “And our focus is on the schools at the moment. If we’re able to connect some businesses here and there, that’s good, but the schools are our goal.”

Plans are in the works locally, with groups like Foothills Connect, to link up fire departments and emergency services to the fiber

network and then branch out locally so homeowners can wirelessly connect to the web. But no details are firm just yet. Still, the company has made serious inroads in the region with more than 90 miles of fiber already installed, and having gathered some $2 million in grant money for funding the project. “Our easiest selling point is the speed of a fiber optic connection,” Davidson said. “When we show people our speed test, comparing the Pangaea connection to DSL or cable Internet, it is usually three to four times the connection speed that they have at the moment. One of the things about the DSL and cable services is the variance between the upload speed — sending things back up the pipeline to the Internet — and the download speeds. Those networks were built really with a one-way traffic model because 10 -12 years ago the Internet was much more about downloading than it is today. People have new digital cameras, for one, that produce much bigger and better digital photos they want to share with friends and family. Fiber has no limit on speed, it is really only limited by the electronics you put on either end. Also, cable and DSL are limited by the traffic on the network, whereas fiber has no problem with that.”

Walters takes a more demonstrable approach to explaining the speed changes. “Think about when you go to work everyday and you are trying to get to the Interstate,” Walters said. “You start out on the city streets, the tiny cramped ones along with tons of other drivers. By the time you finally get to the Interstate, you’re having a good speed. But getting there can be a real problem. With Pangaea, it is like you start out right at the on ramp.”

Applications for the high speed Internet are almost too numerous to list, but Walters points out medical technologies like digital x-rays, telecommuting jobs and data centers as some of the biggest draws. “So many times people tell us that what they have now meets their needs,” Walters said. “But, the Internet is growing exponentially and web sites are changing everyday. If you sit still and do nothing, it will all pass you by — and it’s moving at the speed of light.”

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

RUTHERFORDTON — The Foothills Connect building in Rutherfordton is lit now, but don’t expect to see it glowing after dark. It’s been connected to fiber optic cables, and those cables are now live.
“This is something we’ve been working on since I arrived,” said Tim Will, executive director of Foothills Connect. “But it all really came to a head here in February. We had a strategic planning committee meeting and discussed what the county needed. We met about ten times between March and June and what came out of that was a recommendation for a county wide communications internet system. Thanks to the hard work of Pangea over in Polk County, we have been able to connect this building to the fiber optic network and soon we’ll be connecting the county schools as well.”

A grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation has already been approved to run the fiber optic cables from the Foothills Connect building in Rutherfordton south to Chase High School and East Rutherford High School, and then north to R-S Central High School. But Will and the Foothills Connect group already have a plan to run the fibers even further. “Right now there are about 30 miles of fiber in the county,” Will said.
“After we expand to the schools we will have about 70 more miles. And what we want to do after that is run the fiber from each of the schools out to all of the fire departments around them. We also have talked with Pangea about running the fiber up to the fire departments around Lake Lure."

"After the fire departments are connected, we can set up wireless Internet towers and the whole county will be able to connect to the Internet wirelessly, with DSL like speeds, for free. If you want something faster than that, it will be available for a fee.”

The particular provider for this wireless Internet service hasn’t been decided yet, but if the wireless network is in place, the possibility exists to bid out the contract for the county. But it wouldn’t all be about faster Internet. “This network would be a way for you to have three operations taken care of at once,” Will explained. “The three needed levels are the fire departments & emergency medical services, the police departments and then the wireless Internet for the citizens of Rutherford County. This network will be fast enough to handle all three of those in stride. We know we have to get those fire departments hooked up to the fiber. Not yet, but soon, it is going to be required of them by the Department of Homeland Security so that they can have the response time they need for disasters.”

The miles of fiber won’t come cheap, though, and Will is hard at work trying to convince the Golden Leaf Foundation that the plan for providing Internet access is the kind of program that Golden Leaf is looking to fund. “The main criteria that Golden Leaf has asked groups to consider is how their particular project will ‘move the needle’ for the people who live in Rutherford County,” Will said. “Well, if we can provide everyone with DSL speed Internet — for free — that will certainly change lives around here for the better.”

By Tim Will, Contributor
The Mountain Breeze
July - August 2007

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN Daily Courier Staff Writer
RUTHERFORDTON — Congressman Heath Shuler held a special sub-committee meeting on rural broadband connectivity Wednesday, and the topics discussed could have far-reaching implications for Rutherford County.
"Many rural communities across the country are struggling to remain competitive" said Shuler in his role as chairman of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Rural and Urban Entrepreneurship. "By harnessing new technologies, we can create new opportunities, improving the way businesses — especially farms — operate, and reverse this trend." The benefits of the connectivity for farmers in Western North Carolina can be substantial, with technology that not only helps keep costs down but also helps with remote temperature monitoring.
"We’re doing the right thing tying together the needs of the large metropolitan areas like Charlotte with the resources of rural areas like Rutherford County,” said Tim Will, executive director of Foothills Connect, an Internet business incubator.
“Here, we have large areas of arable land, and in the cities they have a great demand for freshly grown food." The Internet can bring those two things together — if you can connect.”
Connectivity can also help to link together businesses in other industries.
'As today's economy changes, so do the needs of this nation's entrepreneurs,' Chairman Shuler said. 'Expanding the economic benefits of broadband is one way to help this nation's farmers and rural small businesses increase the efficiency of their operations and, in turn, support economic growth.'

BalsamWest Fibernet was invited to testify before the Subcommittee due to their unique experience of successfully extending broadband access to the difficult terrain of Western North Carolina.
Brandon Stephens, Chairman of BalsamWest, testified, ' The work of this isolated remote mountain region is a perfect example of the entrepreneurial spirit that has spurred so much innovation in the U.S. By collaboration and pooling of capital, resources, and expertise, the isolated mountain communities of this region are networked together, and can network small business and entrepreneurs together on an ultra­high- speed superhighway of virtually unlimited capacity.' For Will, the ability to connect to the web at high speed is integral to growing new business in the county. “ The Internet does not com­pute, it communicates,” Will said. “And with high speed you can do so in a much more media rich environment.
“As a former teacher, I’ve realized that students, and people in general, learn more visually than they ever do orally. With this kind of presentation available, you can make all sorts of business deals happen. I am pleased that Congressman Shuler understands this importance,” Will added.
Shuler added, “ There are many debates going on right now about broadband policy.  We must ensure that the needs of rural small businesses are taken into account whenever local, state or federal govern­ments act to change the broad­band marketplace...I hope we will begin a dialogue that will help make sure this happens.”
 Contact Baughman via email at sbaughman@thedigitalcourier.com.

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

Even in the digital world, there are the “haves” and the “have nots”. In this case, the field is going to be split between those who have broadband Internet access and those who do not. It’s called the Digital Divide.

“The high-speed revolution is going to affect every aspect of our lives,” said Tim Will, director at Foothills Connect, the business and technology center with headquarters in the Woodrow Jones Building.
“County and town officials have been working with companies to get them to bring these connections here, but we are often told about how it isn’t easy to do it. However, if we look at the big-time new developments in Queens Gap and the like, we see that those homes and neighborhoods are being built with the high speed capabilities already set up.
“Pretty soon, you’ll be able to look at a map of the county and see the mountain developments are wired up and the valleys — where your population density is highest — aren’t lit yet. That’s going to be the real digital divide.”

So, there needs to be connectivity, but what are the real world effects from this new high speed Internet age? What will it really mean for those who aren’t connected?

“It’s going to change everything,” Will explained. “ This is sort of like when Gutenberg invented the printing press. If you don’t have broadband access — it will be like not being able to purchase books in Gutenberg’s time. You’re going to be left so far behind.”

But aside from knowledge, Will also said the digital divide could affect physical well being by its impact on the health care available in the county.

“Rutherford Hospital is the second largest employer in the county,” he said. “They are taking their first big steps toward upgrading with their latest digital imaging technology for X­rays and CT scans.
“Dr. Jerald DeLaGarza, who is on the board here at Foothills Connect, has been really involved in helping people in healthcare understand how important this is for the field.
"The image quality is much better than the regular analog, or film X-ray,” Will said.
“First of all, doctors can now zoom in on the image because it is digital. The software involved means there are all kinds of applications that doctors can use now to manipulate
that image to see all kinds of data about the patient.”

Doctors have seen that the real draw, though, is the ability to transmit the information created by new scanners.

“The broadband change is already affecting us in many ways,” said Dr. DeLaGarza, a local pediatrician.

“Sometimes on weeknights or weekends it is difficult for me to get an X-ray technician to the hospital to review images.

"With the digital technology, when I need some­one to review one of those CT scans I can have it sent to someone who is ready to review them, sometimes in a different state.”

The potential exists for even more ease of use with the digital images.
“When we were educating doctors about the benefits of this, I contacted a spinal clinic in Florida who already used the technology,” Will explained.
“The clinic has about 30 doctors there and they have been using these digital X-rays for some time. Their system is already so integrated and wireless, that they can have the images sent to their cell phone or PDA (personal digital assistant, such as a Palm Pilot) and review the images — with zoom and all that — almost anywhere in the country. Imagine, they could be reading patients’ vitals while on the golf course!”

While Rutherford county doctors aren’t quite there yet, they do have more options for reading the test results, once the rest of the equipment arrives. “I can have the data sent from the hospital to my desktop or laptop at my office that is down Highway 74,” DeLaGarza added. “ This is not only easier for me and my staff, but it can often lead to a faster result for patients. I won’t have to wait as long for that information to come back.”

There are substantial cost savings involved, too. “When you factor in the price of gasoline and then paying the extra employees to meet you and the film itself, taking time to travel to the hospital to review even one X-ray can be pretty expensive,” Will said. “I have spoken to some doctors who estimate they can save about $100,000 a year if they don’t have to go through that with each patient X-ray.”

Finally, the broadband applications for healthcare don’t stop at physical uses. “A lot of medicine is about experience,” Will added.
“Doctors learn a great deal in school, no doubt, but any doctor will tell you that there are some things you learn better from actually doing. Well, the Internet makes it possible for doctors to have collaborative efforts with patients much faster than ever before.
“Medical journals, articles and first hand accounts of step- by­step procedures are now accessible in minutes, online. And most of these are complete with statistics, photographs and even video of the doctor and the operation,” Will said.
"If you don’t have access to that technology, you won’t be able to get this information. I talk a lot about information technology when it comes to making money and producing jobs, but this? This can save someone’s life — right here in Rutherford County.”

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

RUTHERFORDTON — There’s always been an understood break between the haves and the have-nots. As the world moves toward broadband this trend seems to continue, and it’s producing a Digital Divide. “The way we share information has changed,” said Tim Will, director of Foothills Connect. “Very soon, you’re either going to have broadband access to the internet, or you’re going to be out of the loop. The way the world talks about subjects and issues is changing. People are learning to assimilate information at a much faster rate.

“Look at the textbooks that college students are using these days. Almost all of them come with a CD in the back of the book that leads to a website with much more up to date topics about the subject,” Will said.
“These books are making their way to all schools, and so you’re going to have students with broadband and you’ll have stu­dents without it. Education is to assimilate information at a much faster rate. You’re going to see that via homework and test scores. For our kids, this will be the digital divide.”

But Rutherford County School officials are making it a goal to be ahead of the curve on this sea change in the way students study and learn.

“Improving the technology infrastructure of Rutherford County Schools is one of my top priorities,” said Superintendent Dr. John Kinlaw. “ We are working on numerous fronts to make this happen. Increasing internet access speeds and capacity via improved broadband connectivity are a key part of this effort.
“Efforts are under way to fully integrate technology into instruction, using ele­ments such as multimedia projectors for displaying web-based instructional content, interactive white­boards, and an interactive Classroom Performance System. We are also working to improve the technology skills of our instructional workforce. “Each of these areas are vital as we seek to maximize the benefits of instructional technology,” Kinlaw said.

Funds to expand the county’s use of long-distance learning and the North Carolina Virtual High School are already a line item in the 2007­2008 budget.

“The current education system, nationwide, is based on brick and mortar facilities,” Will said. “Even the different market or even an entirely different part of the world. Education is about sharing knowledge, and students can conference with instructors from all parts of the globe — if they have the access to broadband.”

The learning needed for today’s job market might have to come from new sources and outside the classroom or school building.

“According to the U.S. Department of Labor statistics, the average kid in school today is going to have 14 jobs,” Will said. "Gone are the days of picking a company and working for them until you retire. And so, too, should an education system predicated on that be gone.

“Too many times we are churning out students who have been trained to work in an economy based on the industrial revolution from the 20th century,” Will added. “That was a huge watermark in the history of the world, but that industrial economy died in the year 2000. We have seen the effects of that death right here in our neighborhoods with the loss of textile manufacturing. Economies don’t run like that anymore, so we need to prepare kids for the world they’re going to face.”

Sharing information for students is also becoming easier — for those who are connected.

“The entire curriculum at MIT is online now,” Will said. “And there are those in the former Soviet Union who are working on taking all of the diplomatic documents that they used to use, translating them one at a time and posting them online for people to review."

Budgetary constraints are often based on how many pupils are coming into that building. But the future is going to be LD (long distance) learning where students do their work via a computer at home or somewhere out in the field.

“Even when I was in school, back in the stone ages, the information in our text books for the computer field was out of date almost before the ink was dry on the pages. We couldn’t learn it from text­books because the subjects were too new.”

Today, almost every subject can be taught like that. “Aside from those CDs that come in text­books now, you have the publisher’s website,” Will explained. “It won’t just lead you to new chapters or footnotes, it will lead students to ongoing discussions and blogs ( journals) that will open up whole new areas of learning. Who better to learn economics from than a real world economist? And, you can possibly learn from one who lives in and learn from. It is sort of, really, another watermark in the annals of history.
“When the alphabet was first invented — it was hoarded and kept secret by the nobles and the rich and the ruling elite. They could learn and profit from the past because they had it recorded,” Will said. “Well, once it was released, and then the printing press came, everything just went into overdrive. The first book printed, the Bible, gave rise to the Protestant reformation and then the renaissance. Now, we have the next revolution.”

This change, like the others won’t come cheaply. “It will take money to set up the Broadband connections, there’s no question about it,” Will said. “ The question we now have is, where will it come from? Large developments like Queen’s Gap are being constructed with the capabilities already there, what about the rest of the county? Is it not in the best interest of the county government to make sure that our students have the best education they can?
“I think we can infer that from the fact that about 40 percent of our taxes go toward education. So, is it in the best interest of our students’ education to have the best Broadband network available we can?
I suppose that is an open question, but it is one we must answer, and soon,” Will said.

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Digital Courier Staff Writer

RUTHERFORDTON — With unemployment rates in the county soaring, a new broadband Internet-based job market might be leaving some folks behind. And it will be the ones who can least afford it that get left on the wrong side of the Digital Divide.

“The top 10 most sought-after jobs in the country did not exist 10 years ago,” said Tim Will, director of Foothills Connect, the business and technology center based in the Woodrow Jones Building. “I can’t tell you where all this is going, but I can say this. If you don’t have access to broadband technology that you can utilize to find and then get these jobs you’re going to be left staring across that great gulf that is the Digital Divide.”

As more and more parts of the area become lit up for broadband, or digital, Internet service, Will is seeing a significant pattern to where the networks are going.

“There’s no doubt that it costs money to set up these networks,” Will said. “What we are seeing, as we try and project where the networks will be in the county in the near future, is that in some ways they are following the population centers.
“The DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) areas are sticking to high population areas, but the high­end services like wireless access and fiber optic connectivity, aren’t as easy to get going. Large developments and subdivisions, though, are being built with this technology already in hand. Soon, our map might show all kinds of high speed connectivity in the mountain­side, but hardly any down in the valley where (most of ) the population lives.”

Connectivity, or lack of it, will have an impact on which jobs can come to the area — or which jobs the area will find.

“It’s not a question of sitting in a cubicle anymore,” Will explained. “I have several ten­ants at the Foothills Connect incubator that are telecommut­ing to all over the world.

“There are networking system operators who use our high speed connectivity because they can’t get it elsewhere. When you are a systems administrator for the hundreds of servers that this company is maintaining — any slight delay of 30 seconds or more causes big problems.

“The security software involved automatically locks down because it assumes there’s a hacker trying to access the network and cause problems. If your basic Internet service in the area is too slow for that, companies won’t want to come here and they won’t want to hire people from here to telecommute.”

But even beyond hackers and security problems, the lack of connectivity will affect the quality of workers available to new high tech firms.

“When we get the new state back-up data center, high-tech companies will begin looking seriously at Rutherford County,” Will said. “The question is, will we be ready for them? That Digital Divide will affect the hidden poor. And by hidden poor I mean those people who are still languishing from the job loss of the textile industry.”

He added, “Probably some 9,000 people lost their jobs, and if you multiply that by the average three other members of their family that is like 30,000 plus people affected by that countywide. In a county this size, that’s huge. But, as new jobs come in, and higher average salaries show up, they get lost in the shuffle. So, per capita the income of the county looks okay on paper — because the high-wage earners cancel out so many of the low-wage owners.”

And those low-wage earners are the ones left in the dust on the dirt road that won’t lead to the information superhighway.

“It will be especially difficult on those students who can’t get their homework done online,” Will added. “They will be far worse off, as their parents might even be illiterate and so they won’t care about school. They won’t think they can get a high paying job and so broadband will be the furthest thing from their mind. It will perpetuate the cycle of misunderstanding about the way this network should function, and the poverty that goes with it.

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

“The sad thing is, many people in the county still can’t get DSL.wireless connections.”
— Tim Will Foothills Connect

RUTHERFORDTON ­ Mergers and acquisitions of new companies have created a few more “hot spots” of connectivity for high-speed Internet service in Rutherford County — but not enough to pro­vide the service the county needs, says Tim Will of Foothills Connect.

“A company called Skycatcher is moving for­ward with plans, and the merger of AT&T with BellSouth is producing more availability,” Will said Tuesday. “ The deal with AT&T was pretty much federally mandated.

One stipulation for approval from the Federal Communications Commission was that the new company would work hard to build out with high-speed Internet options. The main way they are going do that is by making DSL, or Digital Subscriber Lines, available to many places where it was not available before.

Probably about 15 percent of that will be done via Internet.

With higher availability of DSL in the county, one might expect Internet gurus such as Will to be jumping for joy – but it isn’t exactly party time yet for the techno-savvy citizens in town.

“I’m glad that the federal government understands how important high-speed Internet is, especially in the rural areas where it is almost unheard of,” Will explained. “ The thing is, DSL probably won’t meet people’s needs in the very near future. It would be helpful if the wireless became the standard.
“Here’s a little background on where we are nationally and internationally with connectivity. When the Internet first began to hit big in the 1990s, dial-up was the standard for connections.

“Then, around about the year 2000, many people and companies began investing in new technologies so that all the local networks could talk to each other. The first time we had the Internet boom, we called it Net 1.0. It was e-mail and those kinds of things that people were just learning about. That isn’t what the Web is really about today.”

Newer applications for Internet technologies have required more and more bandwidth to be efficient. “ Think of the Internet via dial-up as a spaghetti noodle,” Will said. “And now imagine trying to send hundreds of pages of type or code along that tiny little noo­dle. It just won’t work, it’s like forcing a cantaloupe into a coke bottle.

“Today’s Internet is even more intense on the noodle — with streaming video and music and video games and piles and piles of data. This is what we call Web 2.0.
“The DSL just won’t be adept at it, because it can download things very fast — about 20 times faster than dial-up — but it isn’t so reliable when it comes to uploading, or sending things back up the pipeline. The sad thing is, many people in the county still can’t get DSL. They’ve told me about signing on via dial-up and then going to make dinner while their computer loads.”

For now, Will is focusing on touting the benefits of the Web 2.0, and increasing education about it.

“The DSL is a great advancement for those in the county,” Will said. “But in parts of Europe, DSL is no longer considered a high-speed connection. Trying to get people to understand the difference in speed is a difficult proposition.
“The difference between dial-up and high speed is like trying to travel without using interstate highways and then suddenly discovering them one day. It is literally like night and day.”

And the profitability is substantial as well.

“Just in the gaming side of things, the market size is almost obscene,” Will said. “In 2002, the interactive entertainment industry was totaling about $27 billion a year.
“Now, we might think of these things as toys, but on Saturday, I had about 20 high school-aged kids over here to teach them about networking via their XBox 360s, and we saw just how enthralled these kids can be over games. They learned a lot and we learned a lot about their behavior.
“The estimated market for this year is about $60 billion. That’s not toy money; that’s real money. But these games, these online games - be they with XBox 360 or personal desktops or laptops or whatever — they aren’t here in the county because there are people who can’t even sign up to play due to their Internet connection being so slow. And that’s not even mentioning the educational benefits and the jobs that will be brought here by things like the state’s back-up center."
“The question we have now is, how do we let people know how important this is and show them the difference?”

By SCOTT BAUGHMAN
Daily Courier Staff Writer

SPINDALE - Foothills Connect Director Tim Will wants to combine Rutherford County’s future industry with its past - and the old Spindale Mills building seems to him the perfect place to do it.

“Woodworkers and Weavers, Inc. has a thriving business in this wonderful building,” Will said during a report to Spindale commissioners Monday night. “Spindale Mayor Mickey Bland has come to me and told me that he’s ready to do whatever it takes to bring jobs back to this community, so I’ve been operating under that mandate. What we have in the old Spindale Mill building is a meeting of the two eras of Rutherford County. The history here is of thriving textiles, and because of Woodworkers and Weavers it is in this building. But the future, and we know that Spindale is going to come back, is located in these high tech industries. Thanks to the way it is wired, this building can do both things.”

The building is some 460,000 square feet of industrial space - a huge amount of real estate even in the era of the giant textile mills in the region. But today, only about 60,000 square feet are used by Woodworkers and Weavers. What do they do with it?

“They have really found a niche market,” Will explained. “The company has a website where you can submit a photograph of, say, a baby in a blanket. They will take that photograph and print it onto a tapestry. It is a really beautiful project, but the thing that makes it good news for the county and the city is that it has to stay here in America. It is all dependent on the color lexicon. I never knew this until I started discussing things with them, but color is culturally biased. Yellow can mean something totally different in China than it does here in Rutherford County."

"In order to faithfully reproduce the photographs that people order, the company has to stay here and be able to get that color just right.”

In his efforts to pitch high tech industries on coming to the county, Will has been given the ability to promote high speed internet as one of the area’s drawing cards.

“Our contracting right now is focusing on getting ePolk to provide a certain amount of megabits, both download and upload, to a particular building in town,” Will said. “I would like that building to be the old Spindale Mill building for a variety of reasons.
First among them is the fact that it has the space. There is more than 400,000 square feet waiting to be used in that building and we need to find some entrepreneur to come and fill it up.

Secondly, the owner of the building understands this desire to lease it out and he has said he is willing to work with the town on the project.
And finally, it is already wired for the high speed we want to bring to it.”

While the industrial section of the building is humming along - the company just added a third shift to meet demand for the product ­ the old corporate offices of Spindale Mill still sit empty.
“The owner has told me that he is more than willing for us to lease out these offices that they aren’t using and have some businesses grow around the industrial part of the property,” Will said.

“That’s great news, because those offices are already wired for Ethernet service and have the wiring, the air condition­ing and the power needs that we’d have that can easily be met. It’s an exciting time to be here. But if you ask me, the economic future of this city is going to depend on the way that parcel of land across from Barley’s Taproom is developed.”

“What we have in the old Spindale Mill building is a meeting of the two eras of Rutherford County.” Tim Will Director, Foothills Connect

By Josh Humphries
Daily Courier
Sunday, November 19, 2006

Forest City - A couple that recently moved to Rutherford County has utilized the technology and business resources in the county to help them start an Internet company in Union Mills.

Fritz and Terri Jonck will soon have a confectionery company, Lum Hollow Confections, up and running from the kitchen at the Union Mills Life Long Learning Center.

The Joncks hope to expand in the future and hire people from the Union Mills community to work for the company.

Lum Hollow Confections will sell gourmet popcorn, premium candied nuts and spice nuts through a web site.

Terri Jonck said that most of the sales the company will make will be over the Internet, but the public is certainly invited to drop by to purchase items directly from the company when it is up and running in a few weeks.

The joncks have taken advantage of the services offered by Foothills Connect Busines & Technology Center and the Small Business Center at Isothermal Community College to start their new business.

"They came in to see us and they wanted to know how to get set up in business," said Tim Will, interim director of Foothills Connect. "We worked with them in terms of licensing that they need and set them up in the entrepreneur class at ICC."

Terri Jonck said that even though she and her husband have ran businesses for years, a retail store in Sioux City, Iowa and a second in Sioux Falls, S.D., the class at the Small Business Center was a great tool for her husband, Fritz, who took the class.

"We are always excited to see someone take advantage of collaborative efforts like the small business programs provided by Isothermal and Foothills Connect," said Mike Gavin, public information officer at ICC. "It's even more gratifying to see those people turn what they've learned into personal and professional successes."

The web site for the company will be running the week after Thanksgiving.

"The rent at the Learning Center is great and they are bending over backwards to help us," said Terri Jonck.

Will said that Foothills Connect is working with local providers to get broad band internet access to the center to help the business and the computer lab there.

The Joncks moved to the area recently after buying a house in Union Mills a few years ago to be near Terri's family in Greenville, S.C. "We love the quaintness of the areas," she said.

Lum Hollow Confections took advantage of the resources available in the country to help local businesses.

"That is exactly what Foothills Connect is here for," said Will. "We want to create jobs through entrepreneurship."

Daily Courier - December 13, 2006

Forest City - Competition in a global economy is not just about hardware and software. It's also about connectivity, and Rutherford County does not have it. That was the thrust of the presentation given by Tim Will of Foothills Connect on Tuesday.

The Rutherford County Board of Education invited the Rutherford County Board of Commissioners for a luncheon meeting, which according to Superintendent Dr. John Kinlaw, was originally planned as a sales pitch.

But Kinlaw said, after speaking with County Manager John Condrey and Amanda King, he felt that Will had some information that "clearly has a true impact on everything in this county. And what needs to happen and what can the benefits be economically, educationally, and, certainly, in ever other aspect that can take place in this county, if we can address connectivity."

"My board has taken it upon itself the idea that every household should have the capability of getting broadband," said Will.

But, what the county needs to do, according to Will, is to come up with a strategic plan to see that broadband connectivity becomes as much a public utility as electricity. To do this, he suggested that representatives from local government, corporations, non-profit organizations and education should work together to make it happen.

"We need to find out what we need, what we have, when do we need it, and what's it going to take to get there," said Will.

Although some connectivity improvements are being made with Pangaea providing a fiber optic network connecting schools by 2007, and the recent Golden Leaf Foundation Grant helping with that, there are still only 15 percent of households with DSL.

"I think we have to look at it now in the same way as, would the county permit a house to be built without electricity," said Will, "I think that now we're at a point in terms of our economy, in terms of our educational system, that we have to now incorporate into our laws subdivision plans that require broadband, building permits that require broadband."

Will did not specify what method of providing broadband to all of the households in the county would be best. He told the group that with the multiple technologies available, a committee could determine what is best for the county.

"Broadband is the capacity to send, in our context, high speed internet through the wire," Will said. "In America, what we call broadband isn't even considered broadband in Europe.

We're Seventeenth in the world in terms of connectivity. First in technology, Seventeenth in connectivity."

Citing sources from the N.C. Department of Commerce, Board of Science and Technology, Will said the shift in the workforce in the United States has been from unskilled workers to skilled workers since WWII. Now the focus is on workers skilled in working with data.

"The future is about human capital," said Will, "Human beings will be the comparative advantage. The future for the United States of America is to grow what we call knowledge workers."

He explained that these workers will not have a physical location, but will be connected by broadband. These creative knowledge workers will be in science and technology, the arts, law, finance, healthcare and education.

According to Will, much of the global economy has come about in just the last few years and connectivity is what makes it possible. The workers of the future must be flexible, adaptable, quick learners and problem solvers.

The training for these new workers must begin in schools and continue to college and beyond. Will said the key to the future is that workers must be masters of multiple fields and must undergo lifelong restraining which will be delivered, increasingly, over the Internet.

"We're moving into an economy that prizes innovation and entrepreneurship," said Will. "We need to start coordinating our resources on a regional level. We need to get more of a public/private partnership in terms of delivering the technology. Education needs it; business needs it."

Will said that Foothills Connect will continue to partner with the school system, continue to provide skills training, and continue to encourage local skills training at Isothermal Community College.

Will concluded by saying that he believes that in terms of connectivity, the county should no longer rely on the phone company, alone, to provide the kind of coverage that is needed.

"As parents, grandparents, if you believe me when I say how essential the provision of broadband is to the future of your children and grandchildren," said Will, "Then the question has to be answered: Who are you going to leave the abilit to get a job in the future up to? Are you going to leave that up to the phone company? Or are you going to do something about it yourself?"

Following the presentation, the meeting was adjourned. However, several members remained behind to speak further with Will.

Broadband to everyone, panel urges

By PAM BUNCH
Daily Courier - 2006

SPINDALE — The question was: How important is Internet connectivity to Rutherford County?

The answer, judging from the number of stakeholders attending the Symposium on Connectivity Monday, is that it is vital.

Foothills Connect invited business, community and county leaders, educators, Internet service providers and technical experts to a discussion of the county’s broadband accessibility and how to increase ultra high-speed broadband connectivity to virtually every resident.

“It is time to not only dream but to take action,” said Fred Bayley, chair­man of the board of direc­tors of Foothills Connect, in his opening remarks.

“Time not to think about DSL, but ultra high-speed for everyone. “ We are starting the con­struction of a county tech­nology plan,” Bayley said. “A plan that not only will tell us where to insert the backbone of our connec­tivity, but how to go the final mile for everyone’s ultra high-speed connec­tion.”

Sam Adams, senior researcher with IBM Corporation, set the stage by discussing some of the details in the recent IBM Global Technology Report. “Prediction in computing is a really important thing,” he said. “If you go back to the beginning, Thomas Watson, who was the original Chair of IBM, thought ‘ There’s maybe a market in the world for five computers.’ Granted, the computer would have been bigger than this whole room.

“In 1949 Popular Mechanics said, ‘Future computers are going to weigh a ton and a half,’” Adams said. “And I’m not kidding you: The computers he’s talking about, now the computer in my watch is more complicated.”

In the end, Adams said there is no way of knowing how far technology will go or what jobs will be created by technologies of the future, but in Rutherford County, ultra high-speed Internet can open up the possi­bilities for every child and every adult.

“It’s about it being as normal and natural a tool in your life as a telephone, a bathtub, or run­ning water or a light switch,” he said. “And that starts early. It’s not something you learn in high school; it’s something you learn when you’re 2.”

Sky Catcher and Blue Ridge have recently combined and together currently have five sites that provide wireless connectivity to about one-third of the county, according to Thompson. These locations are on Chimney Rock, Railroad Avenue in Rutherfordton, Oakland Road, River Stone Business Park and Cherry Mountain.

Thompson did not specify the cost of deploying the 38 additional sites around the county. Lavoy Spooner, with AT&T (formerly BellSouth), said the placement of broadband tech­nology has to be based on a business model. “Part of the challenge in rural counties is that deploying these networks is a very expensive undertaking,” said Spooner. “And so, decisions on where to place DSL technology have been based on the cost of pro­viding it and the anticipated usage. …

In a rural community such as Rutherford County, you have, on a percentage basis, fewer people who are available to take advantage of the net­work, and then you have to put on top of that the projected percentage of people who actu­ally buy the service.”

E-Polk, provider of Pangaea Internet, is expanding into Rutherford County, and, in fact, according to Executive Director Stu Davidson, will be up and running within the next month on phase one of its expansion. Phase two of the expansion is the fiber-optic connectivity to 20 Rutherford County Schools.

Davidson talked about the partnering of e-Polk with other Internet service providers to reach into the more rural areas. “ We provide to the larger businesses, the governments, the schools, the hospitals, peo­ple who require high band­width,” Davidson said. “ We hope that Pangaea will do a lot for the school system and pro­mote economic development for the county.”

Jennie Pressley, of ERC Broadband, also talked about her company’s partnerships with other ISPs. ERC is located in Asheville, but has a regional network backbone covering the area from Asheville to Boone, Hickory, Charlotte, Greenville, Cullowhee, Waynesville and Hendersonville.

Although ERC doesn’t provide residential Internet service, it works with others who do. In her presentation, Pressley told attendees that people in rural areas would use broad­band at home if they had access. She said that, generally, rural families use broadband access for continuing education. “People who have it, use it,” she concluded.

Following the presentations, attendees broke into groups to talk about the benefits and pit­falls of creating a county-wide technology plan.

Among the benefits cited:

* Pooling of resources in the same direction;
* Opportunity to “leap frog” over bigger urban areas, like Charlotte, in attracting busi­nesses;
* Marketing of the county;
* Education;
* and Cooperation of groups and entities.

Among the pitfalls listed:

* Money;
* Turf issues among the players;
* Implementation of the plan;
* Politics creating delays;
* and Needing a plan that is flexible but focused.

“ It is time to not only dream but to take action." — Fred Bayley Chairman, Foothills Connect