 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be offended. We try to embrace that. When we cover a variety of topics, anything that would be of interest to libraries, we bring on the show. The show is free and open to anyone to watch, both our live shows and our recorded sessions. The live show is Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. Central Time. But if you are unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. You can always go to our website and all our recordings back to the very beginning are all available there for anyone who wants to watch. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions. As I said, anything that may be of interest to libraries, we bring on the show. And we do have Nebraska Library Commission staff come on the show often. And we do bring in guest speakers sometimes. And this morning, we have kind of a mixture of that. Our topic for this week is, as you can see, getting connected, broadband. Broadband plus libraries equals community growth is the official topic. And we're going to be talking about a survey that was done for broadband and the state and what's going on with increasing broadband and broadband map, just all sorts of things. Next to me is Charlotte Narges, who's the Special Projects Manager at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They're centered for applied rural innovation. And on the line with us remotely is Connie Hancock. Hi, Connie. We've unmuted you. You should be able to say hi. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. And she is a UNL Extension educator. And I'm not sure where are you at this morning? Well, actually, I am in Luke City, Nebraska. Ah, OK. Because I knew you're based out in Sydney, but I knew you were not there today. That's the nice thing about broadband. Yeah, exactly. Yes, you can be wherever you want, and do these training sessions and these meetings. It's awesome. Also with us today is Holly Wolk, who's, what is your title now here? What are you? I'm a library technology specialist. She helps out libraries out there with their computer issues and things, and is also part of the VTOP grant that the library commission has. Primarily focused on public computing centers. Right. Public computing centers that we got set up. And if you have any questions or things related to that, Holly will be here to answer those kind of questions that we have. On that, I think I would just hand it over to you guys so you can, Charlotte and Connie, and take it away with what you've got to present to us this morning. OK. Well, thank you, Crystal. And we've got Crystal here with a mouse. OK. Thank you so much for having us here today. I'm looking forward to the conversation. And I'm glad that Holly and Crystal are both here. And I hope that you'll ask questions throughout too. And we'll see how this is connected. Just a little bit of background before we start. The project that we're going to be talking about is part of the Nebraska Broadband Initiative. And the Public Service Commission is the lead entity of this effort. Each state was designated to do some broadband mapping and planning. And the Public Service Commission received the overall grant and then the planning side, the Nebraska Information Technology Commission, the Department of Economic Development, the AEM Institute, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have been working on the planning efforts. And so the information that we're sharing is an outcome of that. And we kind of wanted to just give you an overview of the server results, what we've been doing, and then from our perspective, ask some questions on how this impacts libraries. And we'll try to keep this connected to the libraries of what we've learned. So please ask questions if you have any information. Let me have questions that way. And just go through, okay. You should be able to use the keyboard now. Okay. Again, as Christa said, our topic is encompassed live, broadband plus libraries equals community growth. And what we're planning to do again today is we'll go through the survey results, talk about a business project, resources we have available, and just other questions. When you go through, let's see. Oops, what am I doing here? Sorry. Right there. Try again. Yeah. Click on this left side? Yeah. There it goes. And again, broadband is a foundation for economic growth. Job creation, global competitiveness, and a better way of life. Talked about there were four areas that we worked in, and just thought I'd show briefly. In September, you're actually going to have Colin Robbins from the Public Service Commission join us, and I didn't mean to do that here. Getting used to the setup. I apologize. I'm right there. There you go. And he's going to be talking about the Nebraska broadband map. And for your information, and Holly Wolfe can answer any questions about the map, too, to find things. But I'll explain how to use this map and how it can be of value to you. But it basically, the Public Service Commission gathered data points on how fast speed is and the type of broadband and who your service providers are across the state. And they're a major component of this project, and just wanted to highlight it briefly. And if you have questions about it, please. It's in September, I think you said it? Colin Robbins, who's from the Nebraska Public Service Commission, who's right upstairs from us here in our building. September 17th, he will be on doing, talking specifically about the map itself. So in a few months down the road, we'll see that come up on the Encompass Live calendar. So look forward to that and register for that and see what he has to say to expand a lot more and that's all now. Okay, thank you. On the planning side, we really had three overarching goals. One was the adoption and utilization of broadband. The second one, develop regional broadband plans. And three, the increase understanding of importance of broadband as a foundation of economic growth. And so all of our activities were around that. We're first going to show you, and the benchmarking household surveys, the first one we'll talk about. And we actually had two household surveys that were conducted, one in 2010. And then the second one in 2014 to do comparisons of how people use broadband over the last few years. So just a few highlights from that. And Connie, if you have anything you'd like to add, please share some things too. I'm running through the first part of this pretty quickly just to give you an overview. But the household survey highlights, one of the things Nebraska households within an access at home increased from 81% to 86% this year. So in the last few years, from 81 to 86%, and households with broadband, and in that service increased from 76 to 82%. And by broadband in Nebraska right now, what we use is basically anything over higher than dial up. That's how it's been termed. And then we can pull out on the survey if somebody's using DSL, how many people answered the respondents on that, use DSL or cable or any other access like that. So from 76 to 82 or 81 to 86%. Nationwide for your information, in 2013 the Pew Foundation did a survey and of those using broadband, it's 70% was in 2013. So in Nebraska you can see people are using broadband at least at a higher speed and they would use the same definition of just anything higher than dial up. So we actually use it quite, we're using it more. When you look at it by demographics, it's interesting I think when you can see the blue line, and I'm not sure on your screens, hopefully you can see this, and we do have it. If you wanted to download this, and we'll show more where you can find information at broadbandin Nebraska.gov, there's a full report. But you can see that on all the demographics we've actually increased. And significantly in like 65 and older from 48% we're using it in 2010 to 64% now. And what's interesting to me about that even if you look from a nationwide perspective, it's still 47% in 2013 nationwide. So a lot of what you would probably call people that aren't the typical adopters, we're actually increasing at a higher rate of people utilizing it. Using broadband which I think is interesting from that perspective. We also, those with no high school diploma, it's now 45% with no high school diploma, and nationwide is 28%. So some of our demographics that might be considered maybe not having as much, not as likely to we are utilizing broadband more. And see another, when it comes to college and some college we're right about the same, but again just high school grads quite a bit higher from 58% to 65%. Some of the data from this, you may wonder it could be of interest to you in a library, but you may have people that come into your libraries that are trying to find justification for maybe having a project, maybe getting more broadband. Perhaps a business is coming in what's there. A lot of this data can be used as background information for grants. So if you sit down on the site, this kind of thing can be downloaded and people can use it and manipulate it in the staff group. I'm not sure if we have a survey researcher. I think right now it's just a static report, but we could actually put the raw data and we could get things too. Connie, anything that you think that you'd like to highlight here on the demographic before we move forward? No, I don't think so. I think it's kind of encouraging that Nebraskans overall have began to utilize and see the importance of Internet and primarily it's no longer a luxury. It's almost a necessity in terms of communication and doing business. I think that's very true. Just one other little interesting thing when I'm looking at one of the things that's been done by the survey researcher because this survey was just conducted in February-March, so the reports are still fairly new. We're planning, she's going to be pulling out other things, and so I just was pulling out the Pew Foundation and on rural even, 60% of rural were accessing broadband. And you can look at throughout all of the regions what central would be, and these are the Nebraska Development Districts, so central would be like around Valentine and that whole area in there, would be utilizing compared to 60, so no matter what region you're in, we've increased in use of broadband. I just want to say something. And Connie, I know this is an area you work in. Hi, Joanne. Hi. Just joining us just to interject your signature. Joanne McManus, who's, what is your title now? Grant's Coordinator. Grant's Coordinator. She's also part of our VTAP grant that Holly was with, answering questions you might have related to that. Thanks. Connie, this is an area you work a lot with and helping people use internet activities, and this list here is where some of the most, the higher percentage of people of how they're doing that. Were there any surprises to you in this? You know, I don't know that there was too many surprises in terms of the internet activities, but our survey result did show that at least 92% of the folks either sent or received email at least once a week, and over three-fourths of those folks use email daily, and for some of us, we use it almost hourly in terms of communication. In terms of doing research and search for information, 82% of our folks are doing that, and so as we think about our constituents and even the constituents that come into the library system, helping them understand what information can be researched or how to do better searches for information I think is critical. Getting news and weather information is 81%, which doesn't necessarily surprise us either, as the new apps that are available to us on mobile devices and our laptops, computers is pretty sophisticated today. Using a social networking site is about 72% of the folks are using some sort of social networking site, and online banking and bill paying is around that 50% mark, so there's still some use there that I think people are concerned about security with their online banking efforts. Watching videos and listening to music and playing games were the other three pieces of internet activities that people were doing a lot of here in Nebraska. In terms of access to them, public use facilities, places like the library, 77% have access to, or we're telling us that they have access to a public use facility, and that they actually are using those facilities because they don't have a computer at home or they don't have internet access at home. So that's really encouraging, I think, for what we're seeing in our communities and libraries and the importance of that. 32% of the households without internet are also accessing those facilities, and again, if we look at, drill down deeper into the survey and some of the demographics part of that, our Asian Pacific Islanders and American Indian, Alaska natives were also using these computer resources extensively. We have a question that came in and I'm not sure if this is something that you asked about in your survey or not, but I'll just grab it now while it just came in. What percent of folks do you think are using broadband to power a router for Wi-Fi for their own wireless devices? Is that something that you asked about in the survey if you're doing Wi-Fi in their own homes? No, but we did, what percentage? I'm trying to think, Connie, I think we did ask, and I can glance here quick at the survey, I'm pretty sure we did ask if you had a Wi-Fi router in your house and how many devices we're asking. We asked a lot about different devices. And I think we may have asked about the Wi-Fi and just kind of, we asked about the type of internet connection. We can, as we move along, we'll kind of go through and maybe Connie can be looking and I can, we can find that. But I think we did ask something about the Wi-Fi. Yeah, I know, how many, what percent of people did, or did say they did not just their regular internet. Yeah, and one of the stats, Charlotte, that I just found is, most home internet users, 86% have a home wireless network. I don't know if that answers that question or not. That would, yeah. Compared to 60% in 2010. So that has increased dramatically. That is huge, yeah. A question we didn't ask either. And I know Holly was at a meeting Connie and I were at recently, a national one. And they were, there's evidently some research now that's showing that with broadband, there's people that if there's like several people, students, high school students accessing, they're going to the libraries now to use broadband more too because the more people utilizing those wireless networks, kind of slows it down and trying to get their homework done. Cool. Yeah, they said, okay, thank you. That's exactly what they were looking for, yeah. Another component that we had a survey that we asked, and there are a lot more, the survey in fact right here is 20 pages long that gives just the overall. And right now we're breaking out further. One of them, a little briefs and looking at further demographics around all populations and things that may be of interest. The one right now that Becky's just finished is older Nebraskans, older than 65 and how they're using broadband. And specifically how many they're emailing and where this report doesn't have that. So if there's questions as you look through the report that you'd like to know further, that's something else we can break out further or look as well. Cool. We did conduct a lot of surveys through this process. One, everything from economic developers to the League of Nebraska municipalities to NACO. And we've even had quite a few little small work as we did more at national organizations for FFA and FBLA. But we've got a lot of youth perspectives and how their perceptions of broadband and their using it. I think from the youth perspective especially, they all would like faster speed. And that they also recognize, especially when you think of FFA and FBLA, there's a lot of rural people that people outside of the communities don't realize how good of access it is. And they talked about that need to address that from a youth perspective. But it's their way of life. You know, they use it. I mean, there's not one person that said they didn't use it. They have to have it to go to school and to do their work. But another area we focused on is strengthening Nebraska businesses. And we conducted a survey. We actually work with strategic network groups that has a process of looking at those, going to the surveys. And Connie's going to explain more about the whole process. But the survey was conducted in October and November of 2013. And we had over, I think it was the 1,084 businesses respond to the survey and how they're utilizing broadband. And some of those 184 that responded, some of them are nonprofits. And there were 184, I believe, actual businesses that responded. And so Connie, would you want to explain a little bit more about our whole process of what our goals were? Sure. So some of, as we look at the three different pieces here on this particular slide, we really wanted some benchmarking data so that we could measure impact of when businesses were telling us and they completed the survey of how they were using it to the process of going through what we had identified and then what kind of impact that showed to them as a business owner economically. We were able to provide them with some resources. And then we have identified coaches, business coaches across the state that had conversations one-on-one with their local business owners. And so right now, many of our business owners are having those conversations, whether it's with the local business coach or we're also able to provide some more in-depth with some experts on campus at the university. So it really was kind of a nice mix that each business owner that completed the survey received a scorecard and that scorecard rated them on how they were currently using applications, technology to enhance their bottom line. That scorecard then was our way of getting into the business and then having that conversation about what additional things are you looking at, what additional information are you needing, what additional education or resources can we help provide. We then have that conversation so that we can bring in these additional experts or give them some tips, simple tips, like even just claiming their Google map, their bubble on the Google map so that as we look about location-based features, that becomes very critical in this mobile world. And so that was part of our process in this whole survey with the business owners. And Connie mentioned the scorecards. 44 businesses receive scorecards. So I think that, and we've contacted all these businesses to at least ensure if they wanted to follow up and to do anything. At this time, 52 of the businesses have met with coaches and wanted to have additional information and whether, like Connie said, it might be putting Google map on, but other times it's more challenging of how do you set up crowd computing in their organization. And we're also working with a couple health care organizations right now that are not hospitals, that have moved to a lot of ever-sat-way, but more like clinics or even long-term care facilities, that how they can better access, utilize broadband to sort of their population and moving, and we're connecting them with some resources experienced in that area now. So I think overall, Connie, it's been successful and I know you and I both have met with some businesses, and I think it's been received well. I think so too. I think for the businesses that really are in remote locations and don't have a lot of service providers and helping them think about using some of those applications, I think it's been extremely beneficial. And as we look at the next slide, Charlotte, I think that even talks about the impact that the business piece has made. I agree with you, Connie. Again, the business is reported having a positive impact on jobs with 364 response reporting the net increase of 654 jobs. Not everyone answered the questions, but that just shows the impact broadband is having. And broadband used by businesses typically increased revenue 24 to 45 percent. So it has a huge economic impact on a business. There's still a long ways. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to mention, there's still a lot of work around our small business owners and our rural communities in helping them make wise decisions about their online presence or the technology that they're utilizing and with the whole cloud-based applications now, I think there's a lot of things that they need to think about in terms of utilizing that to their best benefit. And one last slide here, just kind of showing how Nebraskans are using broadband so we've combined some of the results from the household survey and the business. You can see 89 percent of the household's business is advertised online. And so, you know, since they're purchasing and searching for it, the businesses have an opportunity to grow more if you would kind of look at that since people are searching for it. 62 percent sell products online, but again, you look, 89 percent of households purchase online. So the importance of having a web presence and being able to do that. Connie talked about searching before 97 percent of households search for information. And I think of those, especially that do not have access, they're probably looking at the libraries to do that. I think so. Yeah. I think when, could you talk about things before, you know, that you're finding that's an increased demand on libraries even, is to know how to find some of this. Right. And I think sometimes, even when a person has internet in their home, if they're not savvy at using it, they'll go to the library to get someone else to help them to figure out how to search for that. Yeah. Thank you. Right. And then 76 percent of businesses are providing customer service online. So I think Nebraska, another little tidbit on the business survey, the company that did the analysis, I think they have, I think it included eight states. I remember, right, eight states right now is how many, in the current timeframe, because, you know, if you go back three, four years, we're almost two different data sets, but within the last couple of years, and the Braskans of the states that they were comparing with, and this included Illinois and North Carolina, Georgia, we're utilizing broadband higher. Our businesses are. And just one of the questions that they asked is that because of a remoteness, that we know we have to have that presence out there more than if you're in a higher populated state, more populated, do you still have that audience or, you know, your customer support? Yeah, that's probably it. We know we need to reach out a little bit. Next area that we're going to resources, and Connie, tell me when you want me to move to, can I direct, direct me, but Connie's kind of going to go more through the resources in the area that she's worked in a lot, and we'll highlight just a few of them that we have available. Well, these are the ones that we have specifically created during this timeframe of the broadband grant. We do have quite a bit of other resources that might be of benefit or of use to librarians across the state as well. But we did go to many of our communities to look at best practices. And so we have over 20 short videos. They're about five minutes in length around the best practice piece. And we do have a YouTube channel that it's just YouTube.com Broadband, Nebraska Broadband, I believe. And, or Broadband Nebraska is the link there to the YouTube channel which Charlotte has directed us to our website. But there's many things from businesses who understand that to businesses that are doing more precision kind of things with their broadband piece and selling online, there's just a ton of information there about best practices that if you direct people to that particular location that will help them through thinking about those videos. And you can see other, I was just going to say like Connie, you have a little video and then there is a little excerpt that just kind of explains what the person will see too. But whatever that organization that was interviewed, what they saw is the benefits of broadband and the results that they've seen. And so you can glance at any one of these videos has a little summary like that available. Yep. The other videos that we have just completed in March and April were the tech fair videos. And we had eight tech fairs across the state and they were kind of like a health fair kind of a deal where people could come and go and visit with the experts that had created the content for that. But in order to capture that and to move it out to other folks, we did some videos of those topics. And so as you go to, again, our broadband site and the tech fair component of our site, you'll find more information about cloud computing. You'll find more information about broadband mobile apps for business. You'll find more information about security and the importance of security and having a security plan. We also did one on cool tools, new things for business owners, and there's another one on remote video and sensing. And so we've got the videos, plus then there is a print version of that as well, that if you are getting questions around any one of these topics, there is that information that would be available to you as a librarian to share with your constituents. But it looks like there's a lot of good tools on there. And I think Justin added something with the University Ed Media, which is a group within the University. They were some of our primary trainers during this time, and they are available to help answer questions, especially the focus of this is on how to make the best decisions. Because I think that sometimes with overwhelming, there's so many resources out there and many consultancies and businesses of who to purchase something from, and they can help to maybe answer some questions and give the business some questions to ask. And I think all of these little webinars or tech fairs do that as well. It gives them what they should be considering when they're going to purchase a particular vendor or an idea. Connie, are you ready for me to go to the webinars? Sure. So the other piece that we really started out with were the hour long webinars. And we did those monthly for a couple of years. And we have a variety of topics as well on utilizing broadband, things that were happening in the state of Nebraska. And so we do have those archived as well. And they're all listed here in the webinar library. And the link then is on the slide as well. And not all of them have a summary, but some of them do. If we had one made. So there's that set of resources as well. Some of them have PowerPoint presentations. Some of them have a PDF that go with them. It just depends upon the topic and who the presenter was. Well, and I think, didn't we? Do you have something on the library? Yeah. Yeah, I saw Holley's up there. Yeah, there he is. One of our other resources then besides the videos and the webinars, we do have a statewide conference that's coming up. And we all want you to mark your calendars of October 1 and 2. That will be in Kearney, Nebraska at the Jonas Center. And so we're looking forward to that particular conference for coming together face to face and having those conversations. Just getting in the planning stages. We've got some things organized. Rod Armstrong from the AEM Institute is the conference coordinator and working with the partners of Department of Economic Development, the University, Nebraska Information Technology Commission, as well as the Public Service Commission. And then the last newsletter or the last resource that is part of this effort is a business newsletter. It's called Power of Business. And if you go to powerofbusiness.net, you can subscribe to that newsletter. We did partner with our colleagues from North Dakota State University to get this started. They had the newsletter already created and we're kind of tagging on to that and providing some additional information. But it is a resource that we're providing to our businesses, not only the ones that took the survey and are part of the coaching effort now, but to other businesses across the state. And so please, again, tell your folks about that. And it does come out monthly. And we're in this evolution process of creating this Power of Business concept. So that's another resource that's available. A couple of other things that we do have available, and it's not necessarily part of our broadband effort, but it's very much connected, is our ZMAG, Charlotte. We do have three online guides that are geared towards the businesses and it's a resource for the businesses. One is on direct marketing, especially food products. One is on agritourism and marketing online. And the third one is on e-tailing, taking charge of your online presence. And those three ZMAGs are available. The resources are listed here on our broadband site. But it really helps folks who are in that mindset of making decisions about their online presence, helping them get started with that and evaluating the role of technology and what that means to developing that strategy up front. So those are three resources that are available as well. Okay, thanks Connie. I think, and there are like, we have other resources, but how to connect and show, you know, walk through some of those if you'd like to see that in the ZMAG, it links to so many other resources, which is nice. And I think even, we had a conversation just with the library recently and I think you have a lot of resources on your site that I can see that we need to make sure are, you know, available for people as well. The last part of the grant was on creating a statewide plan. And we, in order to create statewide plan, we had regional, there were eight regional plans created all across the state. And we gathered information from the surveys, from focus groups, and then a summary, those were finished last year and then we identified statewide priorities. And right now, through AMBIORS, the Nebraska Information Technology Commission's statewide plan is being created. And the statewide plan priorities are around broadband availability and portability, increased digital literacy, economic development and agriculture. The grant, for the most part, we have focused around the regional efforts and what we are working on right now is starting to move to the community, you know, we've worked at the regional, the maps and gathering more gaps are. From a broadband perspective, for those in Nebraska, I think in the last four years, there's been significant change. Not just from the efforts of your grant, the BTOF, the libraries have had, you know, you have higher speed at how many libraries now? It's, well, 147 libraries were in the project. And I bet there was over 120 that increased their broadband. Right. And quite a few to Fiber. Which is incredible. And at the same time, you have the affordable health care and all hospitals are connected. Nebraska linked one of the consortium that built the middle mile. So many things have changed. And so all this was going on. And so now we're at a point where we can look at what's happened and what areas are there still some gaps and some communities. And we get, Kai and I regularly get phone calls from people that would like higher speed. You know, they will have, at least from the definition of having broadband higher than dial up, that's generally available through satellite or something, you know, there are a few places that there is not any broadband in Nebraska at all yet. So the next step is what do we do? And so we're starting to work on how do you have community plans. And if a community or let's say you're in the library and you hear people are complaining, one of the things that we encourage you to do is create a technology committee. And we would have resources that can come out and help facilitate a process to address that. And not just from, even though right now I'm talking about availability, it could also be on increasing your digital literacy or economic development. If you may have the broadband, but maybe not that many people are subscribing to it or using the more advanced things that really bring, improve their area. Because as you can see we are, I mean, Nebraska we are, we are higher than the United States average accessing broadband, but are we really utilizing it for economic viability? That'd be the... So it related to the availability you're just talking about. And I think you both may have partially answered this question that I'd gotten earlier. I was holding onto it until it seemed like a program. Someone who's out from outside of Nebraska wanted to know, said to try and understand what we did, what you did to get broadband out. Did you get a grant and then hire a cable contractor to actually lay fiber, optic cable, visit the locations or what. And I think what you were saying wasn't really one thing, that there's multiple ways that it's gotten to different places. Like one library's grant and then others. Now the one grant that Nebraska linked had got, they actually went out late. Right. And that was a middle mile that really helped, I think, move things forward. Nebraska, for those that are outside of the state, we're unique in that we don't have municipally owned broadband. You know, you can have, communities can have some things that connect the government. And I don't even want to go all the rules because there's a lot of rules and legislation around that. But I think Nebraska has a lot of, like with the schools, they took advantage of the E rate. And there's an effort that has aggregated all the demand for those schools. And I think with what we've heard is the Nebraska Information Technology Commission that's leading that effort, I believe all of it, one or two schools are a part of, public schools are now a part of the Nebraska network, Nebraska. And we have some of the lowest rates for communities to respond to. And libraries, I believe that's an effort which I know goes back and forth because there's still an annual fee, but libraries can be part of that E rate, too. And I think that's probably a conversation of how that could depend on the Grand Island Public Library is on that network. And of course, through our BTOP grant, we did have funds available for folks who wanted to increase their speed. And so we did actually have quite a few connect to Fiber. And so there was actually Fiber laid for that. And of course, some of the Fiber was overhead, some was underground. So that ours did involve some Fiber. And then another thing Nebraska has is we have, there's a universal, what it's called, the universal fund that helps to fund broadband nationwide. And we have a Nebraska Universal Fund through the Public Service Commission. So there is an extra tax on our landlines, which sometimes people can complain, but it's one of the reasons we have more broadband. They've been helping to fund broadband for a long time. And in fact, just recently, I think it was in April announced, $10 million available to help fund broadband. And not just to your regular telcos, it could be to any provider, to get broadband into communities and areas. Yeah, so they asked the question really, there wasn't one thing that has been done in Nebraska at least to get it out. It's been piecemeal, different organizations doing things for them for what they need to do, we're working together. So it's been bits and pieces here together that in a whole have made it a pretty good system. Yeah, and what we found out in the VTOP grant, while we were working with libraries to get faster speed, is that sometimes, because of the change in technology and the pricing system, they just really had to go back and ask their providers what they could get, what that faster rate was cost, because sometimes they found out that moving to a faster rate didn't cost them anymore, wasn't it? Yeah. And some of them actually cost them. And I would agree, and I think also the opportunity of the grant allowed some libraries maybe didn't think, they didn't know about their choices in their communities. They just weren't asking. They just weren't asking. Yeah. And so it gave them an opportunity to, you know, because of the grant to be asking questions and educating themselves. And I think that Joanne and I have found now they seem to have a lot more knowledge and they know the questions to ask. And again, working with that broadband map I think also will be very helpful for them. I recently worked for the library and I was amazed at the number of choices that were available, you know, that they were holding in on particular ones but I thought, wow, there aren't a lot of opportunities, even in the small community in Nebraska. There can be. There can be. Well, and truthfully in, in making our small communities because of the local telephone providers, you know, that are there, they've actually invested a lot. I don't want to say one more, but because there's so much a part of the community, some of our smallest towns have hybrid of the home, you know, in North Central Nebraska, where it's very densely, you know, sparsely populated. I think we found that by, you know, what they were willing to, to invest in the library as far as giving them an opportunity with a good pricing or they recognize that relationship they had with the community also through the library. Well, and another example that is not a library, but a long-term care facility and Connie, why don't you highlight the facility in Thedford because you were part of the interview process for that. It looks like Connie has, yeah, she's gone offline just a second ago, just a few minutes ago, so she may have lost her connection. Hopefully she'll be able to log back in if she's realized so. That's all right. Well, just briefly on that, the long-term care facility, they have it set up, they've got the connection, and, you know, you're remote enough that they're serving a population of the mile age, 100 miles kind of around where the next larger place and it's allowing people to stay closer. And they have set up a number of computers so that they've taught the residents how to do Skype so they can communicate with their family on a regular basis because if you're 70, 80 miles from the county and to get into town, you're not going to. And I believe it's Thedford, you know, small, if you're familiar with Nebraska, it's a remote area. Oh yeah, I've been there. It's a high standard. They have a nice facility. Yeah, they do. And of course, Holly and I would be glad to talk to any public library in Nebraska that if they had questions about increasing the broadband speed, sharing what we learned in our plans. Yeah. And I guess this next question, you kind of just open this up here after we're coming here. How has the broadband changed our local library? And you've started talking about this some, but if you want to address some of this of what you're seeing changes with technology or if some others want to share some things that they've seen. Well, one of the things that some of our libraries who did move to either very high speeds or fiber, they're seeing a lot more businesses coming in and using the library because when they need to download applications or other things that they need to download for their business, they can do it so much faster on that higher speed than they can in their own homes or business. And so it really is, you know, very beneficial for libraries who are able to bring in faster speed. It helps the entire community. And I visited in the Northeast part of the state. I was working with a library during an installation. And the library director had me have a conversation with somebody who'd come in, who'd gone through the full process of having to access and apply for a job and take a test and do all of this online. And she happens to be up. This library happens to have fiber, but the library director made the comment that this would not have been possible for this woman to do this. And she was looking to a job, you know, not necessarily right in that community if she had not had the opportunity to have the higher speed. So I mean, it's impacting lives and communities. So it's really a positive aspect of it, obviously. And I bet our librarians in the audience would have some good instances as well. We hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If anyone out there who was part of the rubbing grant here or has had their internet increased, let us know how it's, what's happened in your communities. And make it in. Well, one of the things, this grant ends the end of January of this year. And so one of the components that we have in this is again, one of the statewide priorities is digital literacy. Libraries are very connected. So right now we're in the process of looking at how we can help plan or move ahead some of the efforts of the library because you have a lot of very innovative things at the library commission going forward. What can the broadband working together? And one thing that we can do, and this is new, it's not really officially announcing it, but I think in our preliminary conversations, one of the things I think we see, at least one thing that we'll try to do is have a library survey. And this will be to ask how all the libraries across the state, how often are your patrons requesting information assistance on the following internet-related topics? How would you rate your thought level of knowledge? And then to what extent are you interested in receiving training on the following topics? And I think for the librarians and Joanne and Holly can talk about this. I think that was one thing for sure we know that we're doing. I felt safe we could say that we're going to do this. Yeah. The best library commission is very interesting. Yeah. And I think that will really help us to learn more of how the libraries can play a role but also partner in the future because I know within the university and that group that I've been working with, I know we're all interested in how we can move forward to continue to provide services as well in partnering. But I think that one of the questions that I'll be asking are things that have been mentioned, some like even applying and hunting for jobs mentioned that they do that. How often do you ask to help people to fill out applications? So I hope that you'll fill that out. And if you have any questions, ask Holly and Joanne. Yeah. And when you get that survey about digital literacy and what you think of the topics that they list, if you can think of other topics in that area, definitely put that down as suggested areas because I think you're going to have to move relatively rapidly to get for us to pull that together. And so it'll be nice to have their thoughts on what's important to them. And for your information, this process was used in Mississippi. One of our colleagues within Extension, a professor there actually has worked on this and is willingly sharing the process so that we can move forward quickly rather than having to develop something. So we're hoping we find out some good information. Yeah. And I think as we found out in our VTOP grant, all we had the technology summer camps that the librarians were really excited about coming in in the morning. So I think that would be very exciting to them to have that opportunity again. Then I have Connie and my contact information here. Has Connie been able to join us again? No, not yet. She's finally logged out completely. So hopefully she's trying to get back in. So maybe she'll get back to us before we... She's not. And just so that you know, when you think of Connie and broadband, it's good. She's not just in Loop City. She's actually at Sherman County, the reservoir. So she's not, you know, outside of town about 14, 50 miles in the Sandhills, especially for those in... Yeah, so even though she had connectivity through most of this... She's doing good, yes. And you know, she might have just left to go for lunch or something. They could be going... They may be going, they may be going, she is on vacation. She is on vacation. Don't hit a ball. That may be. That may be. And her computer flew off. Well, I hope she's okay. Yeah. They do have one question that came in. So I have a question about the survey. But I'm here at the commission. They want to be unmuted. So I've unmuted you, Michael. You should be able to talk. Yeah. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. I've got a question and maybe a couple of short ones, depending on your answer. For the purposes of your survey, how did you define broadband? You mean in all the household and the business surveys. What we've had to use is what the Pew Foundation is using, is anything higher speed than dial-up. Which, as you well know, isn't really broadband. But what we can do is pull out information by DSL, by cable. And we know also satisfaction of how people are utilizing it. And that's where you start learning. And the same would be on the broadband map you can actually look at where the DSL coverage is, fiber, cable, and the speeds. And I think, and then we compare that to satisfaction because people, there is satisfaction. Depending on how, you know, because the pipe and DSL, people can be very satisfied with. But on the other hand, if you have a lot of users and they're trying to download and everyone at the same time, kind of talk about that pipe that goes through. Some of the people that responded are, some of the least satisfied with the service that they're getting. Does that help Mike? Yeah, that helps a lot. Thank you. Just one quick follow-up. The FCC is considering redefining broadband so that I think they're talking about something like, it's not broadband unless it's like 10 megabits down and two and a half up. You know, if that happens, suddenly a significant proportion of people who answer this survey no longer have broadband. Do you have anything to anticipate what you would do if that was to happen? I think that we'd have to look at, from the survey perspective on the fiber, and you could probably look at, but from the mapping perspective that the Public Service Commission has, they actually have a speed already of what speeds are available. And I think that, you know, I suppose even from a region, we could look at that and probably do a correlation if we needed to kind of show where that hole is. But the map would really, it would clearly show where we do not have 10 megabits. And I think if you make a selection in that map, you can say, I want this speed and up and down and then I think you, at that point, it'll give you who the vendors are that can meet those criteria. Correct. Right. And there is, you know, we've talked about the Nebraska broadband map and from what we need, I think it's probably more user-friendly that there is a national broadband map that shows some comparisons nationwide as well. And it doesn't go into the detail of what we have, and for our residents. And just following up on that, my one thing that's really good that's happened in the last four or five years too is originally, I don't know how many people remembered when the FCC put their first plan out, they had four megs down. One meg up was for everyone and there would be 100 million people that would have one gig. You know, with all the gig by communities, that's changed things, but four megs, even four years ago, we knew that wasn't enough. And 10 megs, whether that's enough, but at least it's moved up for all rule. And so, at least from a rule perspective, my perspective, I guess, I don't want to sound speaking for anyone here, you really put rule at a disadvantage if the four meg is all you're going to give people. And especially when we're trying to promote another effort that Connie and I both are involved on is helping communities, market, rural communities that you can live and if you want to believe in an area, if they want to work and live there. Thanks. One other really quick question on the survey, just an interesting number, you had 97% of people use their broadband to search for something on the internet. Do you have any idea who that 3% is that has never searched for anything on the internet? I guess, you know, I think we could probably try to figure that out by demographics of age. And, you know, there are certain percentage of the population that just do not want to be connected. And there's, there really can't do anything about. And, you know, rightfully so, security, there's a lot of issues of why people don't want to. I mean, that they've chosen that route. But I have a feeling those 3% may be part of that. I mean, that there are a few people in Margarita and they really don't care. That's true. That may be. You might need to find a way. Any other? Is that good, Michael? Yeah, that was it. Thank you. I just want to make sure you didn't have any other phones. Yeah, I think in the libraries too, when you offer Wi-Fi, you think you might need a certain speed. But when you have all these extra people coming in with all their own devices, you're going to find out that you need more than you thought you needed. A lot of times it's the public schools too now are offering, you know, technology, iPads and computers to their students. And so then they all come in in the afternoon and there's the saturation of the broadband because they're all there working. Well, I'm not sure if they're working, but they're collaborating in multiple ways, probably at the library. Another challenge I see, but you've been people are applying for jobs online, you know, whether it's your health and going through the health, affordable health care had to be done online for unemployment benefits. Is the library, I mean, that's even another from security and privacy. There's one thing, security and privacy with a computer, but just that I'm sitting next to Joanne and do I really want to put all my income and personal information in when she may be able to see me? That's a concern and some libraries are more sensitive than others related to that. And the setup of every library is so different too, you know, from coming from the perspective of the public computing area too. But I think that in general, the staff is aware of that. And I think sometimes the customer isn't too worried about that. And they'll even ask librarians, help me do this and then they'll ask the librarian. And here's my social security number, feed that in. And the librarian is going, no, no, no. There are some things you should do. Because I don't want to see it. One other just comment on the libraries of that because digital literacy is one of the statewide priorities, man buyers pull people together and she's had different librarians and be a part of the statewide workgroup. And it really is pretty impressive at what many of the libraries are doing. And so I'd like to commend you. I mean, I just think some of them in rural areas of the training that's been provided already to in helping people that, English is not their primary language in learning. And I know that there's not a, you know, things all statewide, but there are a lot of wonderful examples in this state. Yes. Now, we've collected a lot of success stories from libraries during the BTOP grant. And it wasn't, I mean, yes, some of it was due to the BTOP grant, but, you know, the majority is because the librarians care. Okay. Does anybody have any last questions they want to ask or comments before we wrap up? It looks like Connie hasn't gotten back with us, she was here earlier to do her part. Well, thank you for having us here today. Yeah, thank you so much. It was actually, Joanne, you initiated actually having Charlotte on for a different topic, actually, which will be next month. Charlotte, we'll be back in a minute. Connie, actually, we'll come exactly up. I wasn't sure how. We've had various things we've been organizing at the same time. Yeah. I was talking about right. And of course, the extension educators in that particular project Yes, have a lot of are really trying to connect with communities and help them get projects done. So that community vitality initiative I think is going to be a lot of interest to librarians and of course in our FINRA Financial Smart Investing Grant, the extension educators are being able to do that, provide that training because of that community vitality initiative that they have. This is great. It's all connected. Yep. All right. Well, thank you very much, Charlotte and Connie, even though you're not with us at the moment. If you have any more questions, you can reach them there at their contact information, the URLs there. As usual, all of the links I have been collecting as we've been going through and we'll have that afterwards. So, here. So that will wrap it up for this week's show. See there, you can Google Encompass Live and you find it right there at the top of your search results. So that will wrap it up for this week's show. It has been recorded and will be posted maybe later today. Depends on how busy I get this afternoon. So you'd be able to access that on our website here at community vitality here. It is next month on July 23rd. So if you are interested in that, you can register for that here on our website. Yeah, Connie. Another Connie, Kim, Kathy, a whole bunch of people they're going to have getting together. We're going to recognize that somehow. I'm all on the show. Possibly from multiple locations. I'm not sure where they all are located physically. Kathy's in Lincoln. No one else is. We'll pull it off. No problem. So, Colin Robbins will be on the side of the schedule yet. It's not until September, but September, September 17th. He will be with us to talk about the Nebraska broadband map. So if you want to learn more about that, look for that on our calendar and sign up for that. And next week's topic is Edge Connecting Technology and Community. This is about the Edge Initiative, which is something put together by the Gates Foundation involved in many other organizations. A benchmarking tool to compare your library and also the different areas. And Lord's I don't know what the last name is. Exactly sure. I haven't talked to her yet. It's going to be with us from the from the Edge Initiative and the Urban Libraries Council talk about this so you can see what it's all about. So, definitely sign up and join us for that. And lastly, if you are in Facebook and Compass Live is on Facebook as well. So you can go to our Facebook page like us there. coming up, when recording is available, when we're actually starting today's show there, I just said join us right now, plug in. So if you're a big Facebook user, like us there and follow us on Facebook. Other than that, thank you very much, Charlie and Connie, wherever you are, and Chewanna Holly being here too with us. Thank you and we will see you next time on Encompass Live, bye.