ExploreMilledgeville.org

In case you ever wondered what Daniel McDonald was up to between May and December of 2010:

Thank You For the Two-and-a-half Great Years

To Everyone Who Has Helped Me Bring Quality News to the Community,

As of Friday, May 14, I resigned my position as a staff writer at The Union-Recorder to accept a communications coordinator position at Digital Bridges in downtown Milledgeville.

I am writing you today to express my appreciation for the patience and understanding you have shown me over these last two-and-a-half years while I tried my best to inform The Union-Recorder’s readers about goings-on in the Milledgeville-Baldwin County community. In addition to lending me your time so that I might convey the importance of pertinent community events and information to the paper’s readers, many times you took a few extra moments to share the humor and unique insight that have encouraged me to want to become a more permanent part of this community.

Although I'm not entirely convinced of the supposed demise of print media, I am confident Milledgeville and surrounding communities will continue to look to The Union-Recorder to read and learn more about Baldwin County’s story, no matter the format it arrives in each morning. But there is a new day rising in this community, and I feel this opportunity with Digital Bridges will put me in a better position to positively impact Milledgeville’s future.

If you have not yet taken the opportunity to learn how Digital Bridges is working to assist Milledgeville as it moves into the 21st Century, then I invite you to come out to the Knight Community Innovation Center, next to the Campus Theatre on Hancock Street, to see how we can work together to build the future we want for Baldwin County.

Thank you again for all the time you have spent helping me cover this community, I look forward to continuing to work with you to help build a stronger future for Milledgeville. Please feel free to contact me at through the comments section of this blog or by stopping by Digital Bridges in downtown Milledgeville

Sincerely,

Daniel McDonald

Digital Going-ons this week in Milledgeville

Milledgeville's Municipal Wireless Broadband Network will be the topic of discussion at several community events this week.

The Milledgeville City Council will be meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to discuss the network's digital inclusion plan during a work session in the Executive Chambers of City Hall.
The Digital Inclusion Plan is the city's way of allowing discounted access to the city's wireless network to low-income community members. I want to remember that there are about 250 discounted Internet accounts available for Milledgeville residents who meet certain income requirements. Expect Digital Bridges to be in on finding ways of disseminating the accounts and the information that will help you apply.
Everyone is invited to attend City Council work sessions, but don't take my seat!

Correction: This may simply be a Chamber of Commerce initiative. Digital Bridges will be holding technology classes at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday and 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Mary Vinson Memorial Library.

Digital Bridges The Chamber of Commerce will also be holding one of their Technology workshops at noon Thursday at the Chamber of Commerce offices on South Jefferson Street in downtown. From the Chamber:

If you have not already signed up for our technology workshop please don't forget to rsvp. The workshop is December 10th from noon to 01:30pm at the chamber. Bring your lunch and join us each month to learn how technology can work for you and your business. Cost is $15 for Chamber members and $25 for future members. This is a great opportunity to expand your technical skills and knowledge. Space is limited please rsvp today.

Contact them at 478.453.9311.

And not strictly related to the Municipal Wireless Broadband Network, but interesting all the same: Milledgeville's Campus Club will be holding an info meeting to introduce community members to this innovative youth-oriented arts program at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Georgia College's Peabody Auditorium.
From Campus Club's release:

Campus Club Milledgeville is a youth arts and enrichment program. Our main objective is to provide training to develop and improve artistic and creative gifts such as songwriting, dancing, singing, instrumentation, and photography to our community youth. We would like to introduce skills needed to successfully enter the job market such as light/sound engineers, graphic artists, videographers, play writers, and web designers. As a registered 501(c)3, we will provide our services at no cost.

You can learn more about Campus Club here.

The Future of Internet Access

NPR had this interesting piece this morning about how young African Americans and English-speaking Latinos are embracing mobile devices as the method for accessing the World Wide Web.



There's some good ancillary info on NPR.org here.

Knight Center Study Says Less than Half of Milledgeville Households Connected to Internet

The Knight Center for Digital Excellence just released a study about the broadband Internet penetration of all Knight Communities.
You can see how the all the communities measured up here. You can also read some depressing news about how Americans' broadband penetration measures against a lot of countries whose a** we totally saved in wars past.
But as far as Knight Communities stack up, Milledgeville has a 41.2 percent penetration rate, which puts us in the bottom five for in-home Internet access. Only Macon, Detroit, Cleveland and Gary, Indiana ranked below us.

If you thought Governor Sonny Perdue was forward thinking...

Well he is--but that's just by American standards.
To continue the host of links I want to feature from this Sunday's NPR Weekend Edition, here is a story about how one European country is making universal broadband access the law, not just a public-private initiative.

Milledgeville Municipal Wireless Broadband Network

View Milledgeville Municipal Wireless Broadband Network Coverage Map in a larger map

City Planner Russell Thompson and I spent this morning driving around Milledgeville testing out the new Municipal Wireless Broadband Network from different areas of the city.
Click on the points above to see a small description of local points of interest and see the download and upload speeds available at each location.