More than two hundred representatives of libraries, local governments, community groups, Federal agencies and other organizations — hailing from 28 states and the District of Columbia — showed up at the main branch of the Kansas City Public Library last week for NDIA’s first Net Inclusion Summit.
The two-day gathering featured…
- the keynote address by Gigi Sohn, Counselor to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
- Adriana Furniss of the Benton Foundation presenting the first Charles Benton Digital Equity Champion award to David Keyes, Digital Equity Manager for the City of Seattle
- dozens of speakers on all aspects of digital inclusion and broadband adoption in the plenaries, panel presentations, roundtables and workshops — including a “Lightning Round” of presentations by NDIA affiliates that included twenty-eight speakers in just ninety minutes
- an intense discussion of NDIA’s policy priorities led by Anne Schweiger of the City of Boston
- a great Wednesday evening reception/party hosted by Google Fiber.
Many of the presentations can be found and downloaded at our Net Inclusion Wiki.
If you’re among the folks who joined us at the Summit, thanks for coming. If you aren’t, start planning for next year… because if there’s one thing everybody there seemed to agree about, it was “We have to do this again!”
Photo by Bruce Clark @iBClark 
Photo by Tony Sarmiento @tsarmiento22
A special thank-you to Comcast, Sprint, Google Fiber, Mobile Citizen, Mobile Beacon, the Full Employment Council of Kansas City, the City of Kansas City, and all our other Net Inclusion sponsors… not to mention our incredibly helpful and welcoming hosts, the leaders and staff of the Kansas City Public Library!