"Sometimes it's the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine."
That quote from mathematician Alan Turing, portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game, was thrown out at the Technology Association of New England (TANE) annual meeting in beautiful New Castle, N.H., by a speaker named Yellow Light Breen. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Yellow Light, but I spent most of my dinner sitting next to him thinking that TANE had put the name of his organization in place of his name, which was not a crazy assumption since Yellow Light (caution) does have some meaning for our industry. Indeed, Yellow Light is the CEO of the Maine Development Foundation and an inspiring thinker who connected numerous dots between the rural broadband industry and the communities they serve. I am hoping that I can twist his arm to share his thoughts with a larger audience at a future NTCA meeting.
Among the rich assortment of other speakers at TANE’s annual meeting, Yellow Light showed the value of collaboration and connection between rural broadband providers in New England. The regional flair really adds an entirely new dimension to comparing notes and collaboration.
Mike Reed, executive vice president of TANE, is pretty visionary in that way, too. He helped assemble a wide variety of folks to talk about everything from national grant money opportunities to state broadband and new network deployment updates. We even had a robust conversation about public-private partnerships featuring NTCA members from Direct Communications (Rockland, Idaho) and Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom (Waitsfield, Vt.). NTCA Executive Vice President Mike Romano also spoke, sharing his latest thoughts on Washington, D.C., activities. All these sessions were amazing, not to mention that this meeting was held at a hotel on the 17-mile stretch of New Hampshire that touches the Atlantic Ocean as the leaves were changing here in New England.
The meeting concluded with a panel of leaders from the state chambers of commerce from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, who shared their perspectives on workforce challenges, housing challenges, and childcare difficulties and what that means for growth, development, and recruitment to their rural communities. It was an enlightening and thematic discussion with all roads leading back to why robust broadband is a key component of the equation.
My drive back to the airport included keeping my eyes on the road during the scenic route through Manchester and finally finding a lobster roll that had eluded me to that point of my trip. With or without a lobster roll, it was a terrific visit with a great group of NTCA members. These broadband providers engage with their communities in a way that presents a national model for how to build key relationships and get the job done of connecting those still waiting for broadband. I was glad to be able to spend some time with them.