blabnow.blog (Better Los Alamos Broadband NOW)

I have waited till the new year to contact the Council because the
newly elected Councilors take office on January first. Yesterday I
talked to Randall Ryti, the Vice Chair of the County Council. He says that the Council will have an infrastructure priority in 2021. I told him that ultimately I want the County to own any communication infrastructure that constitutes a natural monopoly. I believe that optical fiber that runs to every neighborhood in the County will be the key piece of such infrastructure. I also said that my short term goal and the request in our open letter is more modest. We simply ask that the County Council make Better Los Alamos Broadband a priority NOW (BLABNOW). I also talked with Councilor Ryti about how to effectively communicate with Councilors. I hope they all appreciate that I did not set up the WordPress petition software to send new email to the Council each time someone signed the open letter. Here is my current plan:

• Friday January 1: Send email to those who signed the open letter with a link to this blog posting. I will suggest that email from individuals to the council will be particularly effective before the Council meeting on January 12, and that I’d like additional signatures before the 3rd when I will incorporate the signatures into the letter.
• Sunday January 3: Send our open letter to the new Council.
• Tuesday January 5: Make a public comment at the beginning of the virtual Council meeting.
• Tuesday January 12: Attend the virtual Council meeting. At that crucial meeting, they will talk about priorities for 2021.

After launching this site Friday evening 12/5, I tested the SpeakOut! plugin for petitions by signing the open letter myself, and I sent email to Barbara Calef asking her to look over the open letter and test the comment function. Barbara signed the open letter Saturday morning and posted the first comment on the blog. I thank her for helping.

On Saturday 12/6, I collected a list of 70 email addresses of Los
Alamos residents by going through my address book and my old email.   I excluded friends who I suspected would not want to sign the open letter. In the evening, I sent email to those addresses asking people to look at the open letter and consider signing it. By the end of the day, we had 10 signatures.

In the morning of Sunday 12/6 I contacted both the Los Alamos Daily Post and the Los Alamos Reporter to ask if they would post something about the BLABNOW effort.

By midday Sunday we had 25 signatures, and I got a call about the open letter from Councilor David Izraelevitz. After that John Pearson (Signature #9) called and asked how many signatures we’d need to get the attention of the County Council. I told John that the evidence showed 25 signatures got the attention of one Councilor. John wondered if we’d need 175 signatures to get the attention of all 7 Councilors. I’ve known John since the 1980s when we studied nonlinear dynamics at the University of Texas.

Also on midday Sunday, the Los Alamos Reporter published our complete open letter with a link to our website for collecting signatures.

At the end of the day Sunday we had 53 signatures.

At the end of Monday 12/7 we had 73 signatures including leaders in the community and at LANL such as Pieter Swart, a LANL Group Leader. Swart’s comment highlights the importance of reliable residential broadband for productivity at LANL.

I’ve heard from two people who’ve had trouble signing the open letter.  Apparently LANL blocks our site, and an early signer told me that after her first signature simply never appeared, she signed again.  This technology is new for me, and so far I don’t know how to address these problems.

I am pleased with the response here. When I set up the petition, the SpeakOut! software offered to display a progress bar showing fractional progress towards a goal. I didn’t know what goal to set.  I thought 50 might be too optimistic. As I am writing this post we’ve moved from 75 signatures to 92. Less than half of the names are from the list of 70 people I contacted directly, and I recognize names of community leaders whom I have not yet met.

Thank you for supporting BLABNOW. Please tell others about the site.

Andy