THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 13, 1996 TAG: 9606130014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By HEATHER J. STONE
LENGTH: 80 lines
As I leave Norfolk to join my husband in Florida, I want to share an incredible story of a regional public/private partnership that occurred right here in Norfolk. My role as a city employee in its creation has been the highlight of my career.
It started with a challenge. When Norfolk was picked to host the 1996 Transforming Local Government Conference, the city manager challenged staff to create a unique experience for conference participants, to occur on the day before the conference.
For Norfolk, leader of a partnership to put seven area jurisdictions on the Internet, the idea of conducting an Internet workshop was a natural.
City employees Ron Hodges, Drew Wallner and I turned to two organizations in Hampton Roads with experience in Internet training and connectivity - Tidewater Community College and WHRO Public Telecommunications Center for Hampton Roads. Peter Shaw and Steve Goad of TCC and Brian Callahan of WHRO joined the team.
We started thinking BIG. Instead of a demonstrations-only workshop, why not a giant hands-on training experience?
The concept was exhilarating! Had it ever been done before? Could it? We didn't know, but the group was committed to try. We needed help, lots of it.
And we got it. Large and small organizations, public agencies and private businesses were either recruited or came to us. The only criteria were brainpower and commitment to the mission - hook up 300-400 computers and, in 15 simulataneously operating labs, teach 300 participants how to use the Internet. The date, April 27. The location, Ruffner Middle School in Norfolk. Energy and ideas poured from the group. Specialized teams addressed needs and problems. Boy were there problems: We needed power, we needed wire, we needed trainers and we needed 400 computers!
When times got tough, the team resolved each new set of challenges. Here we were fierce competitors -- Wes Neal, Kelly Hoople and Jerry Grizzard with Cox Communications and Bill Hadel and Joe Rudolfer with Bell Atlantic; Wayne Tcheng and VisiNet; Mike Aldolphi with iTRiBe; Charles Covey Jr. with I-AM-COMM; and Frank Byrum and Rudy Fidel with Infinet - working together. Tidewater Community College trained 32 teachers to lead the Internet workshop - the teachers attended classes evenings and weekends.
As needs were indentified, new players were recruited. In the end, more than 24 organizations from Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia contributed equipment and technical skills totaling more than $3 million. Cox Communications invested $1.3 million in 400 personal computers to be given to the Norfolk public school system after the conference.
Thirty-six hours before the workshop, nothing was going right. Networks crashed. Computers crashed. Then Infinet's technical engineers, the other technical team members and, via phone, the equipment manufacturer worked into the night to implement a theoretical network configuration suggested by the manufacturer. The solution broke new technical ground. And it worked!
The Internet workshop was a huge success. Nearly 300 government officials from across the country as well as teachers and citizens from Hampton Roads participated.
In the keynote address three days later to the Transforming Local Government Conference, Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter said organizations - including governments - must be innovative and have big ideas, must be competent and persistent and, lastly, must network locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to survive.
Our team was the embodiment of the lessons taught by Kanter and other speakers at the conference. We had a big idea, we assembled a team of mind-boggling talent and willpower. And did we ever network.
Kanter also said communities must have a vision of where they want to be in the information age in order to survive in the global economy. I challenge the members of our partnership, and others in Hampton Roads, to make this region a leader in the application of information technology. Our partnership is a start. Let's see what we can do now.
In addition to the team members mentioned above, others who made the April 27 Internet Workshop possible were: Ambassador Enterprises Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Cox Fibernet, Digital Link, General Foam Plastics Corp., GTE Mobilenet, The Image Company, Nauticus, NEWLINK Global Engineering Inc., Norfolk public schools, Norfolk State University, Norfolk Wire and Electronics, Old Dominion University, 3COM Corp. and the U.S. Navy. MEMO: Heather Stone, formerly a management analyst with the Norfolk
Department of Marketing and Communications, has recently joined her
husband, Keith, in Jacksonville, Fla. by CNB