Posts Tagged “Redwood Technology Consortium”

After months of gather and analyzing data, Redwood Coast Connect is starting to share its findings and plans. Tomorrow they will make a presentation to the Board of Supervisors. RCC has been developing information on the best ways to get broadband deployed to rural areas of the region.

If you can’t make that meeting, a similar presentation will be offered at the Redwood Technology Consortium’s open meeting this Thursday, 5:30 PM at the Humboldt Area Foundation Conference room.

Technorati Tags: broadband, Redwood Coast Connect, Redwood Technology Consortium

The Redwood Technology Consortium’s monthly meeting will feature Chinmaya Lewis from the County of Humboldt. He will give a thorough introduction to the County’s new publicly available online Geographical Information System (GIS). GIS allows you to create maps with layers of selected data. This is very cool technology but the interface can be a little confusing. Mr. Lewis should make it all clear for us.

The meeting is at the Humboldt Area Foundation Conference Room off of Indianola Cutoff at 5:30 PM.

Technorati Tags: GIS, maps, Redwood Technology Consortium

The Redwood Technology Consortium has invited Rich Ryan, CEO of Hunter Communications from Southern Oregon to speak at the monthly meeting tomorrow, March 13 at 5:30 PM. Ryan has built fiber networks in Oregon and is very interested in finding solutions for the North Coast.

Topics discussed will include:

* Hunter Communications background and current composition

* Development of fiber networks and the implementation of the Rural and
Metropolitan Area Network in Southern Oregon

* Vision for the Northern California Coastal Region and what a
regional fiber network could mean for businesses, municipalities and
other groups

* Hunter’s Plan for our region and how it fits in the “big picture”

Hunter Communications’ formed a creative public-private partnership model that leveraged pre-existing, school budgeted telecommunications funds to build a network infrastructure capable of handling regional demands, and currently servicing over 90 sites. Hunter’s efforts have resulted in unprecedented new communications and connectivity resources for a number of previously disregarded rural communities.

The meeting this month is at the Humboldt Area Foundation Conference Room. 373 Indianola Rd., Bayside.

Technorati Tags: alternate fiber, fiber, redundant fiber, Redwood Technology Consortium

We recently completed an upgrade to the Redwood Technology Consortium web site. A few years ago we converted the site from a proprietary Cold Fusion system to the open source Drupal platform. We felt it was time to upgrade since the site was running on a 4.x version of Drupal. 5.x had been out for a while and all the modules we needed had also been upgraded to the current version. While we were working on the upgrade, Drupal released version 6 while progress on version 7 proceeded on a fast pace. All this to say I am glad that we went down the Drupal path. Development on the platform is rapid and core improvements and module development is quite intensive

While for the most part visitors to the site won’t notice much difference since the upgrade, back end functionality is much improved. The system allows multiple users with the proper access privileges to maintain the content and that hasn’t changed. The original design by Carson Park Design remains the same as well.

During the upgrade we did move member management to a major module suite called CiviCRM. This will allow for much easier joining, renewal and display of members. For an all volunteer organization, anything that streamlines the process is a huge benefit.

Technorati Tags: drupal, open source, Redwood Technology Consortium

The Redwood Technology Consortium maintains a discussion mailing list that anyone can subscribe to whether you’re a member of RTC or not. Since the latest fiber outage there has been lots of heated discussion on the list, many people are saying, it’s about time we get this (alternate, redundant, ok second) fiber line built. What’s the hold up? Let’s “git ‘er done!” These are all great sentiments. But in fact the RTC has been advocating and pushing for this second fiber line since the first one finally got completed. Back then the possibility of four outages in a year seemed remote. I can remember an AT&T representative at the first Broadband Forum saying that in spite of a dozen close calls, an actual break was unlikely. And if by some chance something did happen they had their microwave towers as back up. “Ahem”. So much for corporate assurances.

So it’s great that there seems to finally be more people energetically speaking up about how the telecommunications infrastructure needs to be upgraded for economic stability, growth and overall public safety. Even Rob Arkley is busy posting to the RTC list and rousing the rabble.

But channeling the energy engendered by this latest fiber outage remains elusive. It’s a multi-million dollar project that no one is going to invest in unless there’s some reasonable expectation of a return. Still, some people are working on it. Perhaps public officials can be pressured (encouraged?) to support this private effort through a streamlined regulatory environment, low cost loans, etc.

In the meantime an established wireless provider from southern Humboldt is planning on expanding to cover more of the county. It’s a temporary solution and only one for those who can afford to pay two ISPs simultaneously in case one goes down. But if they can pull it off, and some can take advantage of it, more power to them.

Technorati Tags: alternate fiber, fiber, redundant fiber, Redwood Technology Consortium