Sandra Says

I attended the WITI Houston Event on the Digital Houston Initiative, where the city of Houston’s Janis Jefferson (deputy director for the city’s IT Department) told us that the wifi cloud will be complete in 24 months.

Timeline she gave us:

• 50% citywide coverage by August 2008
• 100% citywide coverage by August 2009

She also said that speed would be 1MB up and down.

Other info I thought was interesting: the city hired a Digital Inclusion Project Director earlier this year. “The former Executive Director for The Technology Opportunity Institute (TTOI) will develop and engage partnerships among business, philanthropic, education, health and nonprofit sectors to create technology-based opportunities for Houston’s underserved residents.” Might make a good speaker for a future NetSquared meeting (hint, hint).

I can’t wait to see how the wireless/wifi network will actually work.

I went to today’s Social Media & Public Relations workshop, hosted by PRSA. Social Media guru Josh Hallett gave a great presentation on things to do to monitor the blogosphere for your clients and ways to wade into it.

Things I learned:

• I’m already doing quite a bit of the things recommended to monitor the blogosphere
• I already knew more than a few of the things recommended as the right way to get into blogging and social media (though I should point out that Josh doesn’t like the term “social media”)
• I’ve got to actually do some of these things instead of just preaching — lead by example, I guess.
• never give Ed Shipul your blog address unless you’re willing to have him call you out on your less-than-stellar content
• today was happykatie‘s birthday
• I’m very quick to come to the defense of twitter as something useful

The most important thing — I seem to be ahead of the curve in expertise and implementation. I felt good about that.