We're going to go ahead and get started here. 
I'm going to introduce my colleague, Angela Siefer, the digital inclusion program manager. 
Welcome, Angela. 
I'll have you move us into the session. 
>> Jennifer: We can hear you. 
>> Angela: Excellent. 
I was clicking the unmute and nothing was happening. 
Hi everyone. 
Thank you for joining us today.
I'm excited to talk to you about the digital Dodge City folks and the great work they're doing there. 
I will introduce this lovely picture in front of you, Cathy, Jane, Greta. 
We will be -- I will let them explain exactly what that means, but eventually -- 
essentially they did all of the hard work in Dodge City and they have a great story to tell you. 
So, we are going to start real quickly with just what digital inclusion is. 
My guess, most of you could probably give this presentation yourself, with what digital inclusion is, but I thought to go over it real quick. 
Digital inclusion, as you can see, ability of individuals and groups to access and use information and communication technologies. 
I can't tell you how often I write that in various documents. 
But what I encourage you all to think about today, and this is what the folks in Dodge City have been doing, think about what digital inclusion means for the whole community. 
So, to take ourselves from libraries to know a lot of times our focus is different than what it might be for schools, community colleges, the city, nonprofits. 
Our challenge today is to think about what the digital needs are of the whole community, and then how libraries fit into that community-wide project or efforts. 
You're going to get a little sneak peek here of an info graphic that Webjunction will be releasing soon. 
This tells us who doesn't use the internet and who doesn't have home broadband. 
Home broadband, again, is one of these issues libraries tend not to focus on, but as a community-wide issue, within digital inclusion, it is important. 
This -- the four populations, seniors, low income, less educated and the disabled. 
What this info graphic does is put those numbers in front of you, showing you how high they are and it is pretty astounding. 
The percentage of the particular populations aren't using internet and don't have it at home. 
The next part of the info graphic is the why, right?
Why aren't folks using it?
Cost, relevance, lack of skills. 
Those are things I'm sure you all have seen. 
There is often a lot of discussion on relevance, like if folks don't want to use it, why should -- I'm sure you all know. 
The folks who come in grumbling that don't want to use it and then need to for various reasons. 
But I would also encourage you to think about folks who might say that they don't need it when, in fact, maybe they're embarrassed that they don't know how to use it. 
There may be some data challenges, information out of folks regarding whether they think they don't need it or whether they just don't know how to use it. 
And then finally, how is it that we solve this question of digital inclusion?
You know, on a simple kind of level, the answers are pretty clear. 
More public access, more home internet service, more training, and definitely we need federal policies that enforce this, but what we're going to focus on today is the local aspect, and what we can do locally and the importance of us all working together, from the local standpoint and our folks in Dodge City will explain that to you. 
And being how I expect quite a bit of our population today is libraries, for you all to be thinking about the role of the libraries in crafting community-wide solutions and I would even propose that we need libraries to be out there pulling the different partners together and figuring out what the community solution is.  
And now I'm going to pass it over to Cathy so she can tell you about the local solutions in Dodge City.
>> Thank you, Angela. 
So, libraries. 
Do we need libraries?
We do need libraries and librarians to be leaders, building a community-wide digital inclusion solution. 
On the screen, you can see a quote from Susan Hildreth, director of the institute of museum and library services saying what she sees as the future of libraries. 
So, in the chat box, I'd like for you to write what it means to you to be a community anchor institution. 
To me, being a community anchor institution means being involved in your community, and making a difference in the lives of all of those people who live in your community.  
Instead of just sitting back and checking out books, doing the things libraries traditionally are thought of, librarians today are involved in their community. 
They are some of the leaders. 
And that is part of being the anchor institution. 
By being this anchor institution, we're saying that the library is important and that we are working for the betterment of the community.  
As we begin our work on building our digital community, we base this work on the publication building digital communities framework in action. 
This is a project of IMLS. 
OCLC received a grant from IMLS to work with nine pilot communities, and Dodge City was fortunate to be one of those pilot communities.  
So, Jane, Greta and I were fortunate to attend a summit in St. Paul, summer of 2012. 
We were really excited to be asked to join. 
We went, came back with lots of ideas, learned lots of information while we were there, and knew that we had some work to do to make Dodge City a truly digital community. 
But we also knew this was not something that we could do just the three of us.  
For this to succeed, we had to work together as a team and involve other people in our community. 
And this truly is a community project.  
We're proud of what we have done so far. 
But we are still working. 
One of the things that you need to know for your team to succeed, it has to be a team that works well together.  
And we do that.  
We have the support of our organizations, and we have a lot of community members who are becoming involved in different ways. 
And for the three of us, and this is also important to know, we have a team, the three of us, who know different people. 
We could get different people involved. 
So, as you're thinking about this, in the chat box, write down who you would consider reaching out to to become part of a local leadership team. 
Who would you invite to join you in a project such as this?
But, again, I do want to emphasize that one person cannot do this. 
It has to be a team that works together, and that is supported by their local organizations and administration. 
It's also not something that you do in a day or two. 
We started working on this over a year ago. 
And we will be working on this for awhile. 
But it will be worth it. 
It does take a commitment and involvement with many community members. 
Like I said, you don't do it overnight, but you form partnerships and you have a worthwhile project that you're working on.  
We do want to thank OCLC and IMLS, because we know that we would not be doing what we are doing today without their support. 
We've received expertise, guidance, and organization skills and backing from these two groups, OCLC and IMLS.  
And thanks to Angela for everything that she has done, because we know we would still be sitting in this room making our initial plans if it was not for her.  
I know everyone can't have an Angela, and we might consider sharing her with you. 
Angela has been documenting our progress and what we have been doing. 
So you will want to check that out, and I believe that Jennifer will be putting a link to her documentation in the chat box.  
Now I'm going to turn it over to Jane.  
>> Jane: Thank you, Cathy. 
What is showing on the slide at this time is the five steps in the building digital community framework. 
The first two steps are to convene stakeholders and develop a shared community understanding of digital inclusion. 
And that's where we're really at at this time. 
When we were trying to figure out who the stakeholders were after our meeting, naturally we came up with the major stakeholders of government, education, and business. 
And that's, you know, we focused on those because we all knew who they were. 
But being from a smaller community of 28,000 population, we knew who the leadership was in all of those entities. 
But we truly needed to identify those who actually work with information technology, who really understands what digital inclusion could mean for our community. 
We knew we had to buy in the leadership of those organizations to allow their staff or those who are knowledgeable of digital inclusion to allow them the time to work on this project. 
So, we were floundering for awhile on how we -- what our next step was going to be and how we were going to get them to sit down, but because we do know so many of the same people in our contacts, we were able to successfully get the major players on board.  
And then, of course, Angela brought in the expertise from the University of Illinois. 
With them and Angela, we were able to define what we wanted to accomplish and to start the ball rolling by scheduling meetings and getting our people to attend.  
So, as we defined the stakeholders, we mentioned government, business, and I saw on the chat, where you had other sectors involved. 
Social services. 
Angela gave us a list of sectors for us to consider. 
So, all of the sudden we expanded our list to be thinking of who will represent the seniors, our disabled, our refugees. 
Social services, because they have special contact with all sectors, we needed to get them involved. 
Once we defined more clearly our list of the -- we sat down together and started to pencil names who we thought were key people we needed to bring in to these meetings. 
So, we compared our list and defined more clearly who we really hoped we could get on board with this.  
And then we -- then we decided to schedule our meetings, which were held in April. 
And we were very pleased to have 66 participants come in our first meeting. 
During that time, we had four different sessions in which we actually all talked about the very same think so that we could -- everyone could know what we were going to be talking about.  
In May, then we held a summit, which we invited everyone back who was interested in continuing the conversation, and of the 66 participants, we had 55 come back to continue the conversation.  
Then we defined the stakeholder alignment. 
Illinois folks continued to help us understand who the stakeholders might be, to make sure that we were covering, because when we say community digital inclusion, we have to make sure that we are thinking of every single person within our community, and we have to make sure that we have someone who is going to represent them to get their ideas and their needs brought before us. 
A case that was very interesting was our refugee population. 
We had a gentleman who is in charge of refugee services attend the meeting, so that he could tell us what do our refugees need in the way of digital inclusion?
What are going to be their needs and how can we achieve their goals?
So, it was very, very helpful to us to have all of those sectors represented in our meetings. 
And what we learned from that is that as a team, we had to personally contact our stakeholders, invite them, to let them know that their presence was important to achieve this goal. 
And then we also had to continue to not only phone calls, but emails to remind them of our activities coming out. 
So, we were able to fill in all of the gaps because of our personal contacts. 
And then our local media, we contacted them to get them involved and to let our general public know what was going on, what our plans were, and we were very pleased to have a front page story telling the community of what we were doing.  
So, once again, looking at the stakeholders sectors, we have city, county, governments represented. 
Our public and government agencies, nonprofit through our united way organizations, our Mexican American ministries, rotary organizations -- they were all invited to attend. 
Businesses, banks, our chamber of commerce was in attendance. 
Of course, the library, the library board, since they were one of the team leaders in this. 
And then also, community residents, just, you know, to give us their views as residents what is important to them. 
So, we identified all of the stakeholders in those sectors. 
We penciled names to all of the organizations, and then follow-up and make the personal invitations.  
The University of Illinois group put together for us an online survey for everyone to take. 
We actually performed the survey at our meeting, but for those who were interested in participating but could not attend the meetings, they were also invited to participate in the online survey. 
And we had very good success with that. 
What that did, the survey did was it made us all realize how truly far-reaching that this little inclusion concept was. 
Speaking personally, there were questions I was not capable of answering because I just didn't understand or just didn't know the full scope of what digital inclusion means. 
When you're talking about the broadband and the hard wire and all of that accessibility, and who are our providers, that is important to know as we are moving forward. 
So this online survey certainly provided all of us with information to help us know how to go forward with this. 
So, we gathered their views of the current information technology, and we compared it then to what our community needed. 
It served as an anonymous platform for our stakeholders to note their or their community's reservations or concerns with potential digital inclusion efforts. 
Some of the questions we heard is, and I know this was at the beginning, because people had that perception -- should public resources -- that was something that came up. 
It could be something that was blocking the process. 
Our public access -- are public access locations good enough or do all folks need home broadband?
In the chat, we with like for you to share any concerns you think might come up from stakeholders in your community so that it can help you start deciding what are some of the issues that you will need to address? 
In our meetings, we had the -- 
the small groups were asked to discuss in what ways has Dodge City, community member access and use of information technology?
One of the things we learned having so many people represented is that there are locations within our community that have wi-fi accessibility. 
So, the public library naturally is one of those. 
McDonald's restaurants. 
Some of the hotels. 
And we since learned that Dodge City Community College makes their computers available to the residents of Ford county during their working hours. 
I don't think a lot of people knew that at the time. 
Some of these things in your discussion group were coming forward. 
And what challenges does Dodge City face in achieving full community access in use of information technology?
Some of the challenges are socioeconomic. 
Language barriers -- we are a community represented by numerous cultures.  
People can't afford to have them in their own homes. 
So, these are some of the challenges and do they have a knowledge of how to use the equipment, if they have it?
So, what kind of training is available. 
So, that is some of the challenges that we knew we were going to have to address.  
And what would success look like if the community members had access to and knew how to use information technology?
One of the successes we see is that because we are a rural community, and the largest community is 150 miles from Dodge City, having access to health information, to doctors who are further away in those larger communities, it may allow our residents to stay and continue living in this community because they'll have access to that kind of information.  
So, we see that as a benefit to our rural communities. 
So, these are some of the questions that we talked about in our groups. 
And the discussions and survey data are all documented so that we can continue to refer to them as we move forward, and one of the benefits of having someone like Angela assisting is that she has such a wide knowledge of this, and she can gather all of that information, and she has personally met with a lot of our leaders and talked to them, and she has documented and helped us create a very good record for our information. 
So, this building digital communities framework is really very important to help us as we move forward. 
So we convened the stakeholders, we now have committees that are going to start meeting. 
We've kind of gained an understanding of what our digital inclusion goal is going to be. 
We've developed a shared understanding of the digital inclusion, and we realized that it's never really going to end.
It started out with the survey, and the gathering of the information. 
The stakeholders meetings, which we felt were very beneficial, very successful, and now we're using what we discussed at those meetings to form the basis for the steering committee and working group and we're really excited that the first group is going to be meeting tomorrow. 
So, our lessons learned so far is that continually adding stakeholders is essential, but it does slow the process of creating the shared understanding of digital inclusion. 
I'm now going to allow -- give Greta the opportunity to share her information. 
>> Greta: Good afternoon. 
The fundamental principles of building a digital community are considering access, adoption, and application. 
And in our conversations with the Dodge City stakeholders, these issues were defined just as predicted. 
As has been referenced in our conversation already, Dodge City is a community of over 50% of the population are what we would define as newcomers, immigrants from all over the world. 
And we are beginning to see how we can use technology to increase the social cohesivecohesiveness between the long-term residents and the newcomers. 
We are beginning to see -- we do not have an exact road map, but we are beginning to see if we can utilize the technology, if all folks in our community can utilize the technology, that we can accelerate the assimilation of the newcomers and accelerate the understanding and the acceptance of the long-term residents. 
So, we're extremely excited about the cultural benefit of this technological advancing community.  
In step two of the building digital community, the framework is to create a community action plan, and that is what we are doing right now.
Given the information that we gained in the survey, followed up by the summit conversation, we have more specifically defined the understanding of the digital -- what a digitally inclusive city is, and we are involved now in actually creating the community action plan. 
To create the community action plan, we have established eight working groups. 
And the working groups are -- 
the chair of each working group came from people who attended those early conversations and who expressed an interest and, you know, we always ask the busy people to do the extra work. 
These folks are willing to commit their time and their talent, in spite of their regular day job, and because they believe in the project, not that it is clearly defined.
There is a lot of -- still a lot of questions out there on the table. 
But these folks know that the goals and direction of the project is worthwhile for the community development, making our community a truly 21st century community. 
And each of the working group chairs serves on what we call the steering committee. 
Right now, the steering committees are being asked to convene their groups individually in -- on their own time and in their own individual setting, so that they can clarify the goal of their particular group. 
And those eight groups, the subject matter, the topic of the eight groups are defined on the screen, and those could change or be modified slightly, but they are generally the direction that the working groups are going to go. 
We'll see how differently they may look after they meet in this next -- just in this next month or two. 
They are asked to review and clarify their goal and it will be interesting to see if they may or may not be modified. 
In order to keep our momentum, in order to keep our project alive and well, we realized that we had to be very clear about the long-term goal, and purpose for the Dodge City digital project, and the purpose statement is to define first and then build a 21st century cohesive Dodge City. 
How to do that is established in our goal, and that is that all Dodge City residents will be technologically adaptable self-learners. 
And that came -- that's a very interesting point, because we heard over and over again, I don't have time to learn this new technological device or program, because tomorrow there will be a new one. 
And I just can't keep up.  
And so it became very clear that our community members needed to be adaptable self-learners, and that given the basic confidences of some initial training, that that's a possibility. 
So, the long-term goal, we understand, is not a goal that we will achieve quickly. 
What we will do is we will claim small Victories as progress towards the goal. 
We all -- in order to keep our project alive, we know we have to feel some forward movement and understand that the initial small Victories very much play into a successful, long-term situation. 
So, given the long-term goals, we defined the short-term goals. 
And interestingly the community college, our local community college, as well as our local school district, and a private school here in the community, have all adopted the iPAD initiative to help our learners be 21st century learners, and so this comes at just a perfect time that we can, we the digital Dodge City project leadership can play right into that community development because all of those children in the schools and all of those children in the college are going to be taking iPADs home and learning on iPADs in their day-to-day routines, which is going to give a lot of exposure to their parents and their family members. 
We know that, you know, not everyone has internet access at their homes. 
And so we've been identifying the places in the community, such as the library, where people can come and use their internet with their device that they get at school, and so, the Dodge City digital Dodge City people are realizing that we can utilize these iPADs and the college is taking on the responsibility in cooperation with the high school. 
The high school students are actually going to do some teaching -- we're going to do many workshops, mini workshops on how to use this device, this iPAD, to email, send pictures, to face time, to banking, all of the kinds of things that can be done, so that people from all walks of life in the community and whether or not they have internet in their home or not, they will be able to have a digital literacy being built and established for themselves. 
We're extremely excited about that. 
Plus it is a wonderful opportunity to collaborate between the high school and the college. 
Working together. 
The school district -- what we're learning is that there are many side benefits of our time spent in this project. 
We get to talk to people that we have known, but maybe we didn't talk to very often, or talk about as an interesting topic as this is. 
And it has brought a lot of hope to our community, a lot of excitement in the community and among the community members. 
So, the project is developing in such a manner that it is opening all kinds of doors that were not expected. 
The iPAD project is a tangible, what we can do today project with the focus on immediate results and at the same time knowing that the long-term project result will develop. 
So -- and, Cathy, can you tell us about some of the community problems?
>> Cathy: Thank you, Greta. 
As you know, you always need numbers or statistics to start working from, and even though as on this chart, we're looking at national numbers, it does give us a bases for what we are doing here locally or what you might be doing. 
The pew internet and American life project surveyed advanced placement and national writing projects. 
This is a national study, as you can see here, the teacher has had some definite thoughts of internet access. 
As it says, 54% of the teachers say that all -- almost all of their students have sufficient access to digital tools while in school, and that number to me should be even higher, but, you know, at least that's a start. 
But they also say that 18% of their students have sufficient access to digital tools at home. 
So, that means there are many students who once they leave school, they have no internet access. 
So, this could be a problem especially as students are learning in schools to use the internet, to use iPADs, technology in general. 
But when they get home in the evening, or after school, what do they do?
Where do they go?
Well, thank goodness a lot of them come to the library. 
Some go to community-based organizations. 
But we're not all open 24 hours a day. 
Where do they go when the library is not open?
Or in the summertime, when the school is closed?
Perhaps McDonald's, as Jane said, we recently found out that McDonald's has free wi-fi.
The dairy queen has wi-fi, or other places.  
Maybe they go to parking lots and sit in the parking lots and access the open wi-fi network. 
We know that does happen here at Dodge City public library, because we're open six days an a week. 
We track our usage of our wi-fi network, and we have people accessing it seven days a week.
And those numbers are only increasing in these six, seven years that I've been here, people who bring in their own laptops and iPADs and the like is only increasing.  
So, these numbers are very important to give us a basis for where we want to go forward and something to compare our community with as we maybe at some time get accurate numbers there. 
So, this is why Dodge City, or digital Dodge City is focusing on the iPAD project for our short-term goal. 
We know this is going to affect everyone in our community, the students, their parents, grandparents, the library, the other places in the community who have wi-fi access, and we want to take advantage of this opportunity and use it for our students in the betterment of our community. 
And I believe the Pew report --
yes, it is -- the link is on the chat box. 
What are some of the impacts of the iPAD initiative?
You can see these on the web page we spent a lot of time at our first steering committee talking about the iPAD initiative and how it was going to affect the community in general and it came up there are challenges here and many opportunities. 
This list is also a good example of why increasing digital community is a community-wide issue. 
It's not something just the schools can do, just the Library can do, just the community can do. 
It's something that we all have to work together to do, which is why we have digital Dodge City.  
So, I'm going to turn this back over to Angela now. 
>> Angela: Thank you, Cathy. 
Thank you to all of you. 
That was great. 
We have a couple of questions in the chat and if you have any other questions, zoom in there and we will relate that to the panelists. 
One of the questions in regard to the online survey. 
This is a issue that we struggled with. 
I think it would be great for you all to relay. 
Talking about folks who don't have access online, how comprehensive are your results from an online survey?
Who would like to respond to how we use the in-person meetings to make sure that we reach the folks who are a little more hesitant or maybe even didn't use the internet?
>> Certainly. 
We did predict this question, and so, several things occurred. 
One is we invited -- the personal invitations went out to come to our meetings, and have this conversation. 
When the folks came, then there was an opportunity to take the online survey while at the meeting.
And the leadership provided the iPADs to take the survey on. 
Of course, as is also predicted, some people said well, I've never used an iPAD before. 
And so it was a matter of several others, a number of leadership people being on hand to help get to the correct place on the iPAD in toward to take the survey. 
And then additionally, some folks said, well, I can't come to the meeting. 
And we said, okay. 
What we would like for you to put your, you know, provide your input via the survey and they would say, well, I don't have a computer or internet in my home. 
So, we -- there are -- the public library, or the community college has computer labs and we invited them to come to -- to complete the survey at one of our institutions. 
And certainly, there is undoubtedly a number of -- some segments of the community who may not been represented completely. 
As we had indicated before, our community is a large number of immigrants, and some folks just are not that well connected to be able to be reached in our initial, you know, reaching out to invite people, what we would call stakeholders to the table.
So, in our working groups, our working groups are led by a chair who is on the steering committee, and one of of the responsibilities of the working groups is to reach out to people they know who have not already been part of our project, and include, so that we will have a more comprehensive input across our community.  
>> Angela: Thank you, Greta. 
Another question that was posted is regarding the availability of the online survey. 
I am reformatting that and making it easier for folks to use. 
But, yes, we will be posting that publicly. 
We are trying to make sure that everything goes on with building digital community pilot project, the work that has occurred in Dodge City is well documented and available on Webjunction so that their experiences can be helpful to others. 
That's a great question and be watching for that hopefully this week. 
The other question posted was regarding the building digital community principles slide. 
Those principles that were listed, the access, adoption, those columns, access, adoption, and application, those came directly from building digital community framework from action. 
The work that we're doing is based upon the framework which was created by IMLS and is in a link in the chat. 
Those by themselves are available to you and also if you want to find more information about those three categories and what's inside them, you can find that inside the building digital communities framework for action.
>> Angela, I might add, when we attended the summit in St. Paul and we first were introduced to that concept, you know, it takes some time. 
You know, those of us -- we, in the leadership in Dodge City, we are not experts and we did not have expertise in this whole topic when we attended the summit. 
But we heard that those were the principles and we got the paperwork, you know, the conference materials and they were identified. 
But honestly, even given that, we were a little surprised when our conversations actually brought those very issues to the forefront. 
Just talking to people and, you know, our stakeholders in those conversations with the stakeholders, those very issues were defined again. 
That was a little evidence of how accurate and well researched the whole framework is.  
>> Angela: That's great. 
Thank you Greta. 
Could one of you speak to any stakeholder population that once we were reaching out to folks, we realized was missing and how you targeted finding a representative of that sector? 
>> One area that we had reached out to, but had trouble getting participation in is the health care area, knowing that doctors are very busy, and the like. 
We did have a representative from the hospital who recruits doctors at one of our initial meetings in April. 
And we have had contact with the IT department at the hospital. 
And that person is working with one of our working groups. 
But that group is a hard group to get involved in, and I think a lot of it is just because of the time commitment and the fact that they're busy during the day. 
Probably our immigrant population would be another area that was hard to get involvement with, and some of that I'm sure is due to language, contacts. 
A lot of them who have come here work in the packing plants, have families, and just to take that commitment and have the time to attend meetings and get involved could be an issue for them. 
 So, we're trying to reach them through other groups like the person Greta mentioned. 
And Greta, herself, because she works with this population. 
So, Jane, Greta, can you think of others?
>> I think the health was really the big one.  
>> Jane, Cathy, Greta, any final advice or suggestions that you think we haven't covered that you would like to relay to someone who would be thinking about pulling together a local collaboration in order to figure out where it is that they want to focus services and efforts around digital inclusion?
>> Well, I think one of the things that we've done that is going to really begin to move us forward is we're not looking at the total big picture completely. 
We're trying to identify some of the things that can be accomplished in a shorter period of time. 
One of those is training. 
One is identifying, you know, and then marketing what is available to the population if they don't have the access at home. 
So, I think that would be a discussion is to have that long-range goal in mind, but try to accomplish some things that can be done in a shorter time frame.  
>> Angela: Thank you, Jane. 
We do have another question. 
Did you have to sell the importance of digital inclusion with your stakeholders?
Were they on board right away? 
>> I'll just say this. 
As we were inviting people to attend our initial meetings and we tried to explain, most people did not know what we were talking about when we say digital inclusion, when we would say broadband. 
So you might be aware of terminology. 
Sometimes to get them to the meetings, it was I need you there. 
You need to be there. 
You're my friend. 
Would you come?
And one of the things that happened at our initial meetings, we had four of those, was everyone went around and introduced themselves and why they were there, and after the first three or four people, they had to, they meaning Angela, had to make a rule, you cannot say because Jane, Greta, and Cathy said I had to be here. 
So, sometimes you had to, you know, I won't say knock them over the head, but you had to use some influence and say we really would like you to participate, or we would like you to participate because you're working with this organization or this group. 
And I think that helped. 
It got to be kind of funny. 
But sometimes you do have to pull a few influences, a few favors.
>> I really would like to add we couldn't sell the importance of digital inclusion, because that was too unclear as to what that means. 
What we did have to sell is that this is a project for our community that's going to advance our community and everyone is interested in a socially cohesive and economically successful community. 
So, we were, you know, we quickly learned to emphasize those benefits and then how to was going to be the technological advancement and so, you know, it does take a little tweaking of -- depending on which stakeholder you're speaking with. 
A well-informed stakeholder you might talk about digital inclusion, but a person who doesn't have much experience, you might talk about the other aspects and to invite them initially. 
Once they got there, though, you know, we -- people began to be clearer about wanting to be there, and now, you know, it's pretty well recognized. 
When we say digital Dodge City, people know what we're talking about.
>> Yes -- 
>> When people left the meetings, I heard several who were kind of reluctant initially to come, but they said this was really good. 
They learned things, they got to talk to people about the issue, and they met people that they had not met before. 
So, I think in that respect, it was the initial start and it put it in the forefront in many people's minds.  
And since then, several things have happened, like you may have picked up in our conversations that people did not know things that were going on. 
And people got to share and are more aware of what is going on in Dodge City, or people met each other and they said, hey, we could work on this project together. 
So, there is all of these little side benefits that have taken place that may not be our initial project, but they're helping build towards that.  
>> A surprising benefit of conducting the online survey at those initial meetings was that it ended up serving as an educational tool. 
We hadn't really intended it that way. 
We were pleasantly surprised that that is what ended up happening, that folks were then -- were then already starting to think of the different aspects of digital inclusion. 
Like health is a good example. 
Not everyone in life thinks about the impacts of broadband impacts on health care. 
Now all of the sudden that was being thrown into their thought. 
It definitely had a side benefit. 
And another question for you all, and it will probably be one of our last, do you have difficulties with turf wars? 
>> Nothing is coming to mymy mind. 
If you are talking about the different providers.
We didn't have them all there.
>> I wasn't aware of any.
>> I agree. 
I don't think we had turf wars.
One comment that we heard as we continued to reach out to providers, that they all were not at the initial meeting. 
As we have continued, they have said thank you for informing us, you know, first of all, sometimes the comment is, you know, we're a for profit and we're not interested in doing anything that is not going to make us money. 
And, you know, they put that clearly, maybe not as clearly as I just did. 
A pretty direct comment. 
But they are saying thank you for letting us know what you're doing. 
We appreciate being updated about what you're doing even though we don't necessarily see how we can help you right at this minute. 
But we're glad to know about it. 
So we learned from that about it's great to talk to everyone regardless of whether they are going to be on the front line or not.  
>> I couldn't answer that -- 
when I saw that question posted, I agree. 
I don't think we did have any turf wars. 
There was definitely a little bit of discomfort as we started to talk about the iPAD project figuring out -- the role of everyone -- feel like we want to support what the schools are doing with the iPADs. 
We had to be very careful about the language that we used because it could have been mistaken very easily. 
Which was one of the reasons it was essential for us to have a representative of the public schools on the steering committee to make sure to know that we were never thinking that the iPADs were a negative thing, but rather, an opportunity to be taken advantage of for the broader community. 
Jennifer asked on chat if maybe the turf wars happen in larger communities, and I think that probably is an accurate assessment.  
>> Jennifer: Yeah, this is Jennifer. 
I know on some of the other projects that we worked on that involve convening community members and stakeholders together, sometimes the issue of where the money is coming from, whose bucket it is coming from tends to be the one thing that maybe comes up. 
But I think coming to it from, you know, finding those stakeholders, convening them before that, happens in a wider scale is the trick certainly to have those conversations early on so that folks are on board and understand that this isn't about competing. 
It is about working together.
>> We were also really careful to say at the in-person meetings, that this is a community-wide project. 
Just because the first meetings were held at the library does not mean it is a library project. 
Local leadership team, representatives of the library, community college -- that it was intended to be community-wide. 
And I think having multiple stakeholder meetings and the survey and being really careful to involve anyone who wanted to get involved, even if their voice was one ofdy -- of deSENGS, they were welcome to the meetings. 
>> Jennifer: We can begin to wrap up. 
Thank you Angela and to all of you in Dodge City and to your communities. 
I know that there is lots of other folks that deserve credit for joining you in these efforts. 
I always like to be sure and recognize those folks as well. 
As you know, this project will continue -- we'll be sure and share lots of the great resources coming out. 
Angela mentioned the info graphic and we will get the survey information up as well. 
Excellent way to stay informed of those resources being added and other news and events is to subscribe to our newsletter, "Crossroads", and you can do that either on the home page or through the "Crossroads" landing page I posted to chat. 
Reminder that I will send you an email once the archive has been posted and you'll also be sent to a survey. 
Speaking of surveys -- after the webinar, and your feedback is helpful to our panel and well as to Webjunction as we continue to develop future programming. 
So, thank you all for joining us. 
And thanks again for all of the great work going on in Dodge City and with digital inclusion. 
Have an excellent day.