Dakota Future Initiatives
The Dakota Future board of directors has set a goal to achieve TOP SEVEN Intelligent Community designation by 2012 from the Intelligent Community Forum. Detailed information on the Intelligent Community Forum and this exciting economic development framework can be found at www.intelligentcommunity.org.
The Intelligent Community framework can be seen here.
In 2008, Dakota Future conducted a countywide telecommunications inventory and assessment. In summary, we found the following:
- Each community has it own unique situation with provider mix, service offerings, availability of fiber networks, competitive situation, etc.
- The urbanized areas of the county has both DSL and cable modems generally available to residential users though some selected properties lack both DSL and cable modem service.
- The corporate office area in Eagan has significant competitive fiber networks that make this an extremely attractive area for large bandwidth users.
- Comcast offers it DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem service throughout its service territory enabling 50/5 Mb service.
- Qwest exchanges have multiple CLEC providers offering services to commercial customers.
- Frontier Communications is offering Wi-Fi services in some locations.
This report is available for download here.
In December 2008, Dakota Future launched its IT Workforce Initiative in collaboration with the MN IT Workforce Collaborative. This initiative is made possible by a MN Department of Employment and Economic Development FIRST Grant.
Dakota Future is focusing on two strategy areas: High School Outreach and IT Transitional Workers.
High School Outreach Opportunity:
In order to attract more prospective workers into the IT field, efforts must be made to educate students about the range of occupations and opportunities in the IT field.
Dakota Future Response:
Facilitate a discussion that included high school IT instructors, business instructors and guidance staff, community and technical college IT program directors and area corporations. This meeting provided excellent two-way learning about opportunities for education – business collaboration.
Survey all Dakota County high school IT instructors about their current curriculum and extracurricular IT programs, existing partnerships with businesses around IT, and a “wish list” for business – school collaboration.
Transitional Worker Opportunity:
In order to help both IT and non-IT workers transition to more future-oriented IT careers, establish information, resources, and training to create the appropriate skill set that will enable these workers to find quality IT employment in area companies.
Provide a menu of programs/pathways for repositioning dislocated IT workers for new jobs and/or entrepreneurial activity.
Key Program Areas:
- Technical Skills
- Project management
- Java
- Web applications
- E-commerce applications
- Security applications
- Mobility applications
- People Skills
- Project management
- Customer requirements definition
- Presentation
- Writing
- Interpersonal
- Networking
- Entrepreneurial Skills
- Understanding contracting
- Business planning
- Marketing
- Business recordkeeping
- Legal requirements
- Creating a project team
