Building
Community Controlled Telecommunications Services in Keewaytinook
Okimakanak First Nations
Tuesday,
November 9th - Afternoon
Community
Profiles
During
lunch we connected with Michel Carrière, the National Program
Manager for Industry Canada's Community Access Program. Michel
talked about the Connecting Communities Agenda at Industry Canada
and the role of telecommunications in community development.
Michel's videoconference was a stark contrast for those who
attended the telehealth session. Michel's image and voice were
squished into a 112 kilobit ISDN connection. The Heart Institute
was using a 768 kilobit per second satellite channel. It was
a great way to understand how important broadband access was
- especially in a medical setting!
The
rest of the afternoon was spent identifying what we expect from
this telecommunications planning session. Ricardo Ramirez handed
out coloured paper and asked us to write/draw one expectation
on each card.
We
came up with plenty of expectations - look at that wall!
We
all spent a lot of time organizing the different cards into
main ideas. But after plenty of discussion we came up with these
seven main categories - Community Planning; Sharing Knowledge/Networking;
Jobs/Skills/Careers; Knowledge and Sources of Information; Applications;
Understanding the Technology; and Affordable Access. A complete
list of all the EXPECTATIONS
is attached.
