Past Initiatives e-Vermont Toolkits Communities Webcasts Reports Stories Vermont Digital Economy Project Final Report of VCRD’s Vermont Digital Economy Project Project Guides 2014 Vermont Connected Summit Reports Stories Webinars are a great tool for bringing an expert (virtually) into your house for instruction on an important topic. The e-Vermont Community Broadband Project webinars were recorded…
Past Initiatives e-Vermont Toolkits Communities Webcasts Reports Stories Vermont Digital Economy Project Final Report of VCRD’s Vermont Digital Economy Project Project Guides 2014 Vermont Connected Summit Reports Stories About e-Vermont From 2010 to 2012, the e-Vermont Community Broadband Project helped rural towns realize the full potential of the Internet. e-Vermont worked locally to ensure best use…
Here are some of the broadband efforts in Vermont communities that have happened or are still in progress. Ascutney Area The Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission, working with the towns of Reading and West Windsor, sponsored a project to bring broadband service to the area. The Commission has selected WaveComm to provide a wireless…
On October 3rd, I had the great pleasure of moderating an educational panel at the Vermont League of Cities & Towns Town Fair 2013. The purpose of the panel was to educate municipal leaders from the four corners of the state on how they can leverage digital tools to build community resilience and improve overall…
The Snelling Center for Government is partnering with their Vermont Leadership Network (VLN) to harness skills and knowledge in Vermont communities to aid in the development of the municipal website project. VLN consists of graduates of the Vermont Leadership Institute and Vermont School Leadership Project which promote stimulating citizen enthusiasm for and participation in public…
This past weekend was the National Day of Civic Hacking. While for many of us, hacking brings up ominous images of security systems being overridden and important data being stolen, a hackathon is quite the opposite. During a hackathon, a number of techie people get together to solve problems. When you have engineers, programmers, user-interface…
At the start of the 2012 school year, Mount Abraham High School opened the school library and its computers to the public in early evenings, Monday through Thursday. During the summer they sorted out the technical details of the project. Once the school year started, they were ready to introduce the a new community resource.…
Congratulations to Lars Hasselblad Torres, the winner of the 2012 Beginner Friendly Website Design contest. Our panel of judges selected Lars’ entry because they felt it best exemplified innovation and creativity in design. It began with a strong, easily navigable foundation and then experimented with new ideas for beginner friendly design elements. Judges felt that…
This toolkit offers best practices for designing websites with Internet beginners in mind. The section "Why Design for Internet Beginners?" provides more details on the types of websites experiencing beginner traffic and the benefits of beginner friendly design. We start with the assumption that websites already follow Basic Usability & Accessibility Guidelines Many beginner friendly websites…
Conclusions Broadband opens up unprecedented opportunities for Vermonters. With access to people and information anywhere in the world, we can broaden the reach of business, education, and social connections. With interactive communications tools we can strengthen community close to home, through civic engagement, information shared with neighbors, and tools to launch and manage projects of…