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Why Frank Ohrtman was not seen at CTIA
…and internet access for all
One of the earlier indications the Soviets had that the US was building a nuke bomb occurred when a leading Russian physicist, drafted into the Red Army and serving at the front as an infantryman, got a pass to visit a library in a near by Russian city. There he dug through past issues of physics publications and noticed the majority of his American peers were not publishing new papers. Given his expertise in bomb-related fields, he deduced that the missing Yanks were on to something big, very big.
Dedicated readers of the blog may have noticed a prolonged absence on my part. My excuse is simple: I've been working on something big, very big. I'm working on a project with a very large school district in Florida with the goal of bringing internet access to all 100,000+ students. The WiMAX technology has been the easy part. I can design a gold plated network, but if it isn't fully utilized by faculty, staff and students, I will have failed in the project.
Digital divide (or "digital inclusion") experts talk about "the a's": accessibility, affordability, etc. I add another "a": applications or what will users do with it? This brought me to the school district's annual technology fair where I learned a lot of where teachers were at (Power Point-based lectures, some video applications, interactive educational gaming, etc). Following that I flew to San Jose, CA for the Voice on the Net trade show (a community I have participated in since 1998) where my mission was to "get smart" on video on the net applications that would apply to education. I was not disappointed. There is no reason we can't have our own version of YouTube, American Idol, etc for students of all ages.
My apologies to my vendor pals for missing CTIA, glad to hear it's on the WiMAX circuit now.
More later…
Frank Ohrtman
WMX Systems
