Thank you. Great. Thank you for reminding me. So let's go ahead and get started. I want to devote a good portion of this meeting to a report from Dr. Bryan Carter here today. He and I had a great conversation earlier. And he's got lots of stuff to talk about, as well as probably some great opportunities for sharing and so forth. So I want to make sure we have plenty of time for that. But before we do that, I wanted to see if we have Les Smith I know you're new to us. You want to introduce yourself a little bit, please. Sure. I'm
Les Smith with G SW Telecom, I guess I'd been in Arizona about 28 years, worked for various carriers. And we built 1000s of miles of fiber with whether it was MCI sprint, Time Warner Telecom, I was a VP. So just quite a background in this industry, and excited to be on the call and see if there might be some opportunities for us to get engaged and help.
So Les I don't know if you remember this or not, but I think you gave me my first email. And my first internet connection.
I do remember that, and it's money well spent. We both had more hair, but we're still here.
And I don't know if you if you ever knew this les, but I think you gave me a wireless connection at the time. And I was living in a townhome. And they came over to me and said, I'm sorry, but you have to take the antenna down. And I said no, I'm sorry. But the federal law requires that I can keep it up there. They didn't like that. But that was life as it was.
reality that brought him around.
Yep. Yeah. So we have anybody else new today that I've missed. Okay, so Shawn, you want to give us a quickie update on NTTA? And the conference please?
Yeah, absolutely. So, NTTA is the tribal broadband Summit. It is that the Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino, Gila River Indian Community. It's August 28 - 30. And basically, it's just a summit focused on helping tribes identify funding sources, build, maintain, monetize and network and plan for the future broadband. Calix is the main sponsor along with you know, some additional sponsors, but I've done it personally for a few years now. And we've had a lot of success and
we're seeing the communities grow obviously. Good. Thank you, Sean. So Eric Martinez, do we know you? Hello, so
I am actually one of the new part of the new team here at Chicanos Por La Causa. I am a digital coordinator, part of the team of three here and Nubia is on the call with us. She is our ACP administrator, and then Betty, who had a half day today. She is also one of our coordinators with CPLC.
Great,welcome. Glad you're gonna join us today. Thank you. You guys are great partners. We really appreciate it. So is there anybody else new that I've missed? If not, let's go ahead and get started with some updates. Cindy, you want to give us an update on what's happening with the broadband office?
Sure, I think that things are really moving along. Be this coming along? Well, they've just hired a
new excuse me, Cindy, can you just tell people who you are quickly?
Geez. Yeah, I'm Cindy Hogan. I work with the Arizona commerce authority. That's where the broadband office in Arizona is housed. And I'm the digital equity program manager. We they just hired a broadband program manager as well. She was promoted from within the ACA, her name is Perla Lopez. So the team is really rounding out with some really dynamic people and and things things are going well. I don't have a whole lot more detail than that.
Okay, yeah. Is that it? Yeah, that's it. Okay. Any questions for Cindy? Hearing none, Oh, certainly,
Steve. I just posted a link. I think people have asked before where they can see States plans. And the answer has been, it's anecdotal. You follow some policy news sources. They're individually announced. But now there is a consolidated NTIA site. I just discovered it. So all the submitted plans for both been in digital equity are made available as soon as they open for their comment periods. And you can site you can sign up to get updates. So nothing from Arizona there yet, but that question has been asked before.
Thank you. Anything else about that before we move on? So Karen is not here today. So Cindy, you have anything more about any of the roundtables or anything that you
could say we are we are wrapping up the the listening tour of across state listening tour we're going to be out in the western part of the state and La Paz County, Mojave County in Yuma county. Next week that there'll be three more three more pairs of events. And I'll also put the link to the survey page in the chat, we are trying to do trying to get a digital equity survey out across the state to be sure that we have the data that we need to really understand what's going on throughout the state. And so I'll find that and put that in the link. You can give it give it to anybody. There's there's links to there's there's two surveys, one is for community members, and one is for community organizations. So we can kind of hear what's going on in both of those, both of those realms. And, and they're in multiple languages, at least the community member one is in multiple languages. So there's a drop down and you can take it in in Spanish and Navajo and a bunch of other languages. So that's that's pretty good. Now get that link in the chat.
Okay. And it's also in the emails that I've sent out Cindy.
Excellent, excellent. Yep. Appreciate.
I'll Send the update again.
Excellent. It's due on August 15.
Okay. Any other announcements before we get into the main part of the program, we'll do the we'll do some updates a little bit later Mala, and, and so forth. But I would like to get into the highlight of the of the day. So anything else that we need to know about before we move on? Okay, well, with that, I want to again, reintroduce Dr. Bryan Carter, who is the Principal Investigator? Is that the correct term? Bryan? Yes, it is. That's great. For the University of Arizona had received a $3 million grant for internet and digital inclusion in in southern Arizona, as I was talking with Bryan today, that he's one of the few places in the state where they actually developed a grant that included both internet and digital inclusion as a part of their overall program. And I think it's a great model for consideration throughout the state. And, and in part of our conversation, and he can certainly speak to this more. But in our conversations, there's things like the telemedicine Mahwah, the telemedicine project that you guys are working on. And Robert, the, all the ACP and other initiatives that you're working on, particularly in southern Arizona, and a lot of the other things that are going on, Connect Pima, all of those things, have some relevance for the work that Bryan's doing. So with that, Bryan, I'm going to shut up and let you kind of take over and share whatever you'd like to share. Thank you very much, Steve,
for that great introduction. Do you mind if I share my screen? I have one slide. I'd like to show. Great. Thank you so much. Let's see. And this is the one. Great. All right. So first of all, thank you all very much for the time again today for those of you that that were here when we first introduced this project back in was that February or so Steve or March or something like that? Something like that. This is sort of an update to that and and to give you further introduction. I'm Brian Carter. I'm a professor in the Africana Studies Department, also the director of the Center for Digital Humanities here at the University of Arizona. And I and a number of colleagues, a very, very talented team of folks put together this grant I for for the NTIA and the the the grant area that we that we were awarded had several stipulations to it that were rather unique. First of all, in order for a university to apply we had to be within any organizations had to be within a 10 mile radius of the university or any of our satellite campuses. So we were very fortunately able to include Natcher, Douglas, and Yuma as part of our satellite, unpossible yaki as our satellite organizations, and then our community partnership is with the Dunbar pavilion here in in Tucson, the Dunbar pavilion being the historically sacred the formerly historically segregated school that has now turned into a community anchor or Community Center here in the historically African American neighborhood. And so we have a lot of very interesting and exciting plans with all of these sites, that that encompass exactly what Steve said both broadband connectivity, which allows for each of these sites to have expanded network access, which will then allow the individuals at those locations to receive STEM programming that previously they were not able to receive as effectively. So we're very fortunate to be able to expand our our programming there, we also hope to be able to expand some of the social sciences and humanities oriented courses to those locations as well. Now that the network and the plant for MDM, the the infrastructure will be available to them. We also are working with our library, which is another rather unique aspect of this, which incorporates the digital inclusion aspect of this grant. We found that we had of course, everyone learned a lot of lessons during the COVID a pandemic. And we found that of course, our students in addition to having lack of access to broadband had lack of access to the computing devices that would allow them to access the you know, the the materials on that broadband network. very fortunately, the our library partner, Travis teeter was able to put together a very, very compelling package that included a technology kit that we're going to be able to distribute to students and in various socio economic income brackets to include, I believe, Pell Grant recipients in they'll be able to keep these kids for their entire academic career as long as they remain in good standing, I believe it is that that kit includes a laptop computer, a router, a webcam, headphones, and other aspects that would allow them to access the other broadband network, both wired and wirelessly, which will allow them for those students to access all of the content that we hope to be able to deliver at the possible yaki site I believe they're working with, with both our network as well as Cox. And then at the Dunbar pavilion, we'll be working with Cox to to expand the broadband access there. Now, the Dunbar pavilion is where we're really excited about the the level and the type of programming that we'll be incorporating because there is where we expand on the digital inclusion aspect of this particular grant. That programming includes workforce development, financial literacy, as well as healthcare oriented courses, but also productivity development, creativity development, as well as being able to have those courses developed and made available to not only the Dunbar community but also the rest of our network in in perpetuity. But using advanced technologies in addition to traditional means of delivery. And when I say advanced technologies, I mean immersive technologies, as well as things like volumetric or holographic technologies, and augmented and virtual reality. So when I think about the ways that maybe a younger demographic might be attracted to those kinds of workforce development oriented courses, we wanted to make them available in in a manner that may be suitable for for a demographic that is more future leaning perhaps or that would at least incorporate the option of taking a course either in a traditional means using perhaps on some sort of learning management system and video, or immersively, if it's suited for that particular course and we'll be using various assessment means to figure out which technologies are most applicable to or most appropriate for the various courses that will be developing within the Workforce Development and financial literacy etc. Here's we're also we're very excited to be working with El Rio health in order to look at some telemedicine options for the community as well. Looking at robots, we have access to a couple of very interesting things. Mobile assistants that are HIPAA certified, so that we'll be able to maybe incorporate some of the telemedicine aspects there, as well as doing things with augmented or holographic technologies. And we're very excited to be working with, with El Rio to, to research some of the more effective ways to to reach communities that that may not necessarily have regular access to health care oriented programming. So being very excited about about stabilizing those sets of courses that we'll make available at Dunbar, which will then distribute to the rest of our network. And keeping in mind that when we first developed this, we weren't just thinking about the, this this particular project in in in sort of a, a capsule so to speak. There's another grant that that the National Science Foundation offers called smart and connected communities. And I understand that there are several other NTIA grants available that have been already awarded here in our state, as well as other initiatives that of course, we have all been made familiar with and and that are emerging that that I think are proving to, to lay a very, very interesting Foundation. And now to connect all these different communities might be a very interesting additional path. We've applied for the smart and connected communities grant in the past and thinking more broadly about how we might now connect these communities with one another, through our broadband networks is really, really exciting for for our team. And hopefully, we'll be able to get some of you involved. I've already met with several of you. And we're very excited for the for the emerging partnerships, to help develop some of the program or be a part of some of the programming that we're developing at Dunbar and for the rest of our network. And I'm definitely open to talking with even more of you about how we can get you involved, if possible in in some of our programming initiatives. So that's the overview of our of our grant, we did run into as he was telling me earlier that other awardees have also experienced the little bit of a delay. And in being able to actually start spending the money we received this grant in January. We were notified of it a few days later. And then it took all the way until maybe, perhaps, April, or May, before we can actually start spending some of the money or before we got permission to spend some of the monies, because of the various paperwork, trails that had to be done and all the things that deal with a large government grant like this, that, that we're that we're learning as we go. We do it under we do understand that, that NTI is also relatively is also relatively new at this. And so they were also learning as as they were going, I think we had a change in program managers. And so I think all of that, now hopefully is is a bit more stable. And we'll be able to go into the new semester with with it with full speed ahead and be able to really do some, some good in the community. So that's our grant. That's an overview of it. And I'd love to entertain any questions that you may have, we were able to get a program manager hired as well as we're looking for site coordinators for these various locations. And we were able to at least get some of the allocations on, expended so that the library could begin purchasing their materials, as well as some of those materials in the in the digital classrooms at our five partner sites. So I'm open for questions. And thank you, Steve for the for the opportunity today.
You bet Bryan. What awesome. Questions,
Steve. Yeah, but a short one. You, Bryan, thank you very much for this information. I am really excited about that. I was looking at the website, as you were reporting so I can see it all of it. I'm at the Fred Acosta Job Corps Center. So when you say workforce, you caught my attention immediately. What is the workforce development part that would put young people or adults into the workforce?
Yes. So that's the programming that we're looking at partnering with. We've already spoken with a gentleman that was at, or that's at Pima in their new area there. And so we're hoping to be able to partner with them for some of their immersive Workforce Development dealing with auto mechanics or auto repair. We're also looking at some of the creative oriented workforce development that would deal with creative tools, the Adobe suite and some of the other creative tools that young people may want or need in order to perhaps start a small business or something like that. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know. We'd look and we'd love to talk with you about any of that which you're doing, which perhaps we may be able to partner with you on.
Yeah, we might explore that a little bit. Thank you, Bryan.
Thank you Other questions or comments for Bryan?
Hi, Dr. Carter, this is Erin Lorandos from the State Library we spoke way long ago. Thank you so much for the update, I really appreciate it. And I believe that the telemedicine side of things might be more advanced than it was the last time we talked and I wanted to check I missed the name of the person you said you were working with in the libraries was that, uh, you have a UA library person or a PCPL person.
That's, uh, we have a UA library person, his name, his name is Travis Teeter I believe it is.
Okay. Um, and the reason I specifically bring that up is if I don't think I shared this with you, because again, that part seems to have grown. But a number of the locations of the Pima County Public Libraries do have telehealth kits that were funded through the state library through LSTA grant funds. And so maybe we can reconnect about that and how that could help expand the project as well into the public library world. And that's a project that we're hoping to continue to expand across the state and are working on doing as well. So I'll email you about that.
That's very exciting. Thank you so much. Good talking to you. Yes,
I will do and then I'm kind of piggybacking off of what Vaughn mentioned as well, are you working with the Office of Economic Opportunity on their Arizona career readiness, certification at all. So real quick, give you this because I'm just recently trained as a person who can like teach people how to proctor it. So I don't have all of the script in my mind yet. But basically, it is a self guided and then proctored exam around workforce development skills, and it was actually built in conjunction with Arizona at work and a number of employers in the state that were kind of highlighting some of the skills that they were seeing missing in their applicants. And there's a whole digital literacy certification as part of it. And then it also goes into, you know, general use of computers and technology and workforce situations. And so, if you haven't yet, I can either connect you with Andy Ridley from OIO, or we can talk about that when we talk about telehealth to
do yes. Okay. Thank you very much. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. So Mala, you're gonna have your hand up?
Yes. Dr. Carter, we spoke on the State Library. Just this morning, while I was on a SHLB call, I heard about Chattanooga. You know, they have they are doing something very innovative with telehealth. And I wonder if you have heard about their program, where they're actually giving Apple watches to people that, you know, that they that the doctors recommend need monitoring, so that they do have a very interesting model. And I'll put you in touch with the person who's working on it, and maybe get out of your way. So you can talk.
I would love to Apple watches. That's really interesting, because I know those those gathers are really, really detailed analytics. And I'd be curious to see how they are secured. I would assume that they are and transfer to doctors, that's going to be Oh, that's great.
Yeah, really, they're taking care of all the legal aspects of it as well.
Yes, please. Let's talk about
I'm so excited. Yes.
So before we go on, Robert, to you, my like one of the other areas that Bryan and I spoke about this morning is cybersecurity. Right. It's a it's a challenge with his project, as it is with many other projects that we've talked about. Bryan, do you want to say anything more about that at this point?
Well, actually, that we know that, that cybersecurity is going to be implemented onto all, of course, all the devices that will be distributed to those that are a part of the the library distribution. But we are definitely interested in working with individuals who might be able to work with us for cybersecurity, short courses at the Dunbar because you can imagine that many communities and access high speed networking probably had very little information about how to secure their own wireless access or even their own personal devices, whether it's their cell phone, their tablets, or whatever. So to develop a short course that would be easily consumable by a community that we can make available I think would be really cool. So whomever we can get in touch with for that, I'd really appreciate it.
Dr. Carter, are you were you aware that FCC is working on a pilot project for security which they want for cybersecurity, which would be right now, it looks like a three year program, but they're looking for innovative suggestions of what they what you would like to do with the money. You know, there is there's not too much. I think it's about, I want to say, 3 million in competitive grants. And it's a pilot project. So if you're thinking of creating a course, and that's going to take up some money, that might be one of the places to apply for funding.
Definitely, I will look into that. Thank you very much. Well, I appreciate that, because that's going to be good for the community to help with that kind of programming. I haven't seen anything like that connected to workforce development, because this is something that often we book we overlook, when we're thinking about workforce or financial literacy, we often don't necessarily include cybersecurity in that whole thing, because it's not part of what we think will forward someone's economic progress. But in all actuality, we know it really does. Right.
Right. Absolutely. And people may, you know, apply for grants to actually do the cybersecurity but no, but I don't think anyone is looking at creating a course, for cyber security that you're looking at. I'll keep you posted on when that is. Thank you.
Thank you. Perfect. Oh, my Yeah, this might be a good test case. For it for, for Bryan, regarding cybersecurity and how it might be applicable in other places, particularly because of his relationship with the you have with the UA library. Right, right. And
Steve, you put me in touch with Paul. And I think I actually know Paul, and so maybe definitely to partner with any others here that if I know that or be experts in cybersecurity, I'd love to put something together that would be community consumable, a cybersecurity short course, for both young and old, which I think will be challenging, but once it's if it's if we do it correctly, it'll really be interesting, I think, and very important.
So Les you got your hand up. And then Robert, you've got your hand up, too. So Les, what do you got to say?
I'm interested, Bryan, you've got obviously a lot of geography to cover. But you've got a lot of resources too. And I was interested in do you need resources from the small business sector like ours, either in the consulting or subject matter expertise, particularly in the in the infrastructure, design, engineering, and implementation area, hardware and cybersecurity. Those are our areas that we work in. And so we implement, you know, Internet services, obviously, and then anything associated with that. And we have an MSSP program, specifically that we're working on. For schools. Right now, there's funding through the Universal Service Fund for a program called MIBS. And that stands for Managed Internal Broadband Services. And that can get funding and so we've got some momentum, slow momentum there, but it's picking up the real win is that the schools and the students can get this cybersecurity platform integrated with the hardware that gets implemented, as opposed to them having to become subject matter experts and learn how to put that into play, and then maintain and manage it. And so I don't think that at this particular moment, we can go into all of that. But I just wondered, Is there a space in this for a company like ours to assist? Or is it more kind of already baked in, you know, with larger firms like Cox, etc.
See, it's not clear, at least not clear initially with Cox how they will bake in or work with cybersecurity with Dunbar. And so that might be something we should definitely talk about less because when I think about how we're trying to put together a set of programming that will be available for, say, a community center, an organization that is a community hub. And then we can spread that to other community hubs. That should be an integral part of the programming cybersecurity for that organization. Because you can imagine that community centers probably don't think as much about cybersecurity as they should, with all those points of entry. Right. And so I think that we should definitely talk about maybe some possibilities. I can find out what Cox is doing, but I would imagine they are working with securing their network, not necessarily with working with the end of individuals making use of the network and all those other points of entry that they have access to, from their wireless devices to maybe even connected computers. So let's let's definitely talk I think we should.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, look forward. maybe having some conversations. We
thank you very much. Are you planning to apply for some of that funding or working with somebody that's going to apply for that? Or you're just thinking about it at the moment?
Yeah, we,actually are working with schools during the E Rate cycle right now, for those that are kind of on the educational side, right now we're going out, and educating them on MIBs, and how that can bring security layers to their infrastructure. One thing that's noteworthy, though, is that we're finding the most effective security layers are when they're integrated with the hardware vendor, and they provide the whole fabric along with the hardware integrated. So we're afforded net SME, and, and we've, we've adapted with Fortinet, we've been in all the other products and services out there over the years, whether it's Cisco or etc. But the point being is is that we pick the lane and we want to make sure it's deep and wide. And so to answer your question succinctly, yes, we are going to market specifically with the MS AFSP security fabric and the hardware provided by Fortinet and then implementing that by ultimately showing the schools how to apply for that MIPS funding, and then get that to cover the cost to implement those into single or multi locations or apps, like you're talking about. And it's a process, you know, it can take three to five years as you just start working through it, because there's limited funds. But most schools, as you know, Steve, take a three to five year strategy. And once you can get them to adopt a uniform platform, then the implementation and the consistency and predictability becomes, you know, real value add to maintaining and adding new cybersecurity threat capabilities and our hardware.
I think that's gonna be really important for Community Center like Dunbar because it's not just a community center with one mission, there are several small businesses within that facility they plan to, I believe, they still plan on doing something with sort of like an Airbnb kind of thing. For for short times. And so there's a lot of stuff going on in that community center, along with the community coming in to access the Small Business Development Center, as well as the community archive. And so thinking about how security, you know, that's going to be a challenge to implement a security across all of those different businesses that are within a community center, that I think will be a really interesting model to replicate in other locations around the state, which may have a similar setup.
Yeah, absolutely agree. Well said. Robert.
Hey, nice, nice to meet you, Dr. Carter, and look forward to having some future conversations, doing some amazing stuff there. And yeah, I love to meet with you. Maybe we exchange information, we have a great workforce development team led by turns pink and pink Denson. And he has a VR program that he's been working on and he's partnered up with like Intel and, and Boeing, and it's helping you know, kids right out of high school, get jobs and stuff like that. So I think there could definitely be some partnerships there. And, and we just have a lot of other things going on as well. So hoping we can just exchange some information and maybe get together. Or, you know,
you got my attention when you say to VR, anybody in VR, XR Inmar, whatever. I think that's, that's really the wave of the future for these kids that want to be immersed in one on one and engage with with that kind of content very differently. Because like we all know, they learn differently, right. So yes, we I can't wait to talk with you, Robert. Thank you very much. Appreciate that.
Robert, can you just take a second for Dr. Carter? I told told him a little bit about you guys. But you might want to just talk a little bit more particularly your reach in Arizona, obviously, your number of states, but particularly here in Arizona, so he's got a real sense of, you know, where your reach is here.
So yes, our CPLC we're like, like, like Steve said, we're in we're in five states, right. And so we professors, but we mainly are here and concentrated in Arizona. That's where we started. But we have a for profit and nonprofit profit type of business. So our for profit feeds into our nonprofit because there are some programs that don't have funding, but the community needs it right. And so that's where we feed that that funding back into those areas. So I myself, I'm in charge of the technology here at CPLC. And so we are also leading the digital equity side of the house to and as you can see from from our grants that we recently got from the FCC. We have our team here on the on the meeting. nuvia she's actually our Lead for ACP program, what we do, when COVID happened, we started with our, we started handing out anywhere from Chromebooks to, you know, whatever we could as far as devices, and we partnered with AZ strat on that. And then we started with the ACP, and we partner with all ISPs on helping people connect. And so we have sites all the way up in northern Arizona, all the way down to San Luis, Arizona. And so we have probably about 245 different types of contract federal contracts. And we just offer just a gamut of services, right. And we partner with a lot of different companies, right, because you can't be experts at everything. And so a lot of our success has been through partnerships. So we're really looking at those types of deals. You know, we believe in a hand up, not a handout. And so that's, that's kind of our approach to things. But yes, definitely looking forward to talking with you. And we can talk more about our company and different things that we do. You know, we're really focused, you know, throughout the state of Arizona, especially, you know, rural communities as well, because they're the ones that need right now. And so that's where we're really focusing our digital equity efforts. Is those rural communities.
Love it. Love it. How have you found that rural communities accept some of the more advanced stuff? I mean, are you are you rolling out VR in rural communities? Are you gonna be taking a more traditional approach?
Right now, a more traditional approach, our workforce development hasn't done the VR in a rural community. That's something they're working on right now. They're looking at funding. They're looking at trying to get out there to the rural communities to get that VR approach going right now. They're in conversations with with multiple companies right now. And looking at doing that possibility, especially when you talk about getting internet out to communities there isn't that workforce, right. And so they're in conversations with different ISPs to build a VR program that can train the workforce, you know, the future so that when they start getting that going, they can train people on how to support that, right? Because that's what's missing.
Exactly. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's cool. Our grant did include some VR headsets and in 3d printers and things like that for the community center, because we thought that instead of, you know, waiting in and getting that later on, we might as well funded so that we'll be able to start off with thinking more advanced with regards to our programming, as opposed to that being sort of an add on later on, which will then appear as an add on later on. Right on. Yeah,
that's the way to go. For sure. Yeah. Cool. I
can't wait to talk to you, Robert. Thanks. Definitely. Thank you.
Any other questions or comments for Dr. Carter?
This is JT. Thank you, Dr. Carter, just want to follow up with the last gentleman from CPLC
CPLC,
CPLC. Excuse me, I apologize for that. And your inquiry about the accept the acceptance of advanced technology like AR and VR in rural communities. I, at one time was the leader of broadband Operations and Technology for rural parts of the upper Midwest and Mountain West in the United States. And to my surprise, where we were offering Internet, people were using it in ways that you might not expect. So for example, one time I walked into a room where the guy, the guy had three monitors up because he played games all day, right? So he had three very widescreen monitors. And I asked him if he worked for NASA or somebody like that and says, No, I need games. But but the point is, the point is that, as you know, gamification has been a way of training people, right, turning things into games, and extending, you know, people's ability to think quickly and strategically. And so I think you'll find the acceptance pretty high, particularly on younger folks, and, and maybe some some millennials, who are still glued to their x boxes NPS. opportunity out there.
That's cool. That's good to know. Any other questions or comments for Dr. Carter? So one thing I want to say, Brian, and I think you and I kind of talked about this earlier, but this is a real opportunity. This, in my opinion, this is a really unique program that has some great potential for replication and outreach throughout the state. And it seems to me that if any of you are interested in working with with Brian, and helping to expand and make this a successful program, I think it'd be really useful not only for him, and for southern Arizona, but I I think also for the rest of the state, that's my opinion, or whatever, then
we wouldn't. We just want to do it right. And we've gotten some great advice and partnership ideas from Steve, and, and please any of you, we'd love to talk with you, because I think this can be a really good model. And we want to just replicate it. And like Steve said, really do some good for the state. So we have a good potential here.
Okay. I think, did you have a hand up?
No, I was just clapping.
Does I agree?
Well, thank you. Thank you, Bryan. Thanks for coming back again. And I look forward to your continued participation. And I understand that that you told me that you're going to have a new project manager soon. And that we,
that person started, a person started today as a matter of fact, and so yes, she hopefully will be able to start attending these meetings. And we're also working with Shreeka, who also is a member of this group. And now we're very excited to continue working with her as well.
Awesome. So a good transition, said Petra even though you weren't ready to speak, but can you give us a quick update topic, tell people who you are and about the ACP program and where you are with implementation at this point, please?
Sure. I'm Petra Falcon. I'm the Executive Director of Promise Arizona, and we've been engaged in the last 12 years in Arizona doing some significant community engagement primarily in South Phoenix. And we extend arms to other underserved communities, especially in weather, Lupe, Yuma County eight organizing, remember back 10 years, working along the border with with churches and schools for another 10 years or so. So I've been a community organizer most of my adult life. And that's almost 4050 years. But I did We did apply for a ACP rep, because we thought it was a great follow up to, to working with the City of Phoenix, with the development of a community plan for the light rail, that we're now building a half a billion dollar light rail in South Phoenix, we really thought that would really be a great wraparound effort so that we could really do some transformative organizing in South Phoenix, that would include education that would include workforce that would include legal services for immigrants, and also just just addressing the the multiple issue still facing families in in South community for 80% of the school children are on free or reduced lunch. And I can go on and on and on. But I just think that ACP is a great, great follow up to the work that's already been that being done now in South Phoenix, and we're just enjoying the engagement. I mean, that's what we do. And that means door knocking, that means going to schools, that means going to community groups, community events. And at a two hour event on Saturday, we signed up 60 families for ACP. So we're doing that follow up today. So we're learning a lot about the follow up process, because I think that's going to be very, very important across the board, we can sign people up for ACP. But if they don't talk immediately to a provider, or they don't know where to do that connection, you know, we're gonna lose them. So we've been doing lots of follow up with the people that we're talking to. But that's where we're at. And obviously, we're all in the same timeframe with with the graduates coming in mid June. So we're doing a little catch up, but that's okay. And hopefully, once the heat lessons, I think that's going to be a really, really good opportunity for us to get really doing some good engagement out there.
Great. And Bryan, are you familiar with ACP? Affordable connectivity program?
Okay, so while we're talking about ACP Nubia, you want to kind of give us an update? What's happened? It was CPLC.
Yeah, before we move on to could I could I ask Petra, one quick question, Steve Petra, you mentioned legal services. And I'm curious as to whether any of those services or if any of you know if those kinds of services can be offered online, and I'm wondering if that's part of the programming that can or is allowed to be incorporated into, into some of the programming that say we're doing and how that can be a part of the model. Does anybody have any experience with that?
Well, you're talking about a traditionally an N 400, which allows a person who is already a permanent legal resident, they have permission to be in the United States legally. And the next process after that is becoming naturalized becoming a citizen. And so yes, we can do that online. It takes it takes some navigating because we still need some documents from the applicant but that can also be scanned and sent back to us we during COVID We did a lot of that. We did a lot of online work a lot of online appointments, and scanning and just coming back in For that, making sure that we had the documents that the application needed. Yes. So the quick answer is yes, we can do that online.
Any other questions for Petra before we move on? If not newbie anyone introduce yourself and kind of give us an update what's happened with you guys? Absolutely.
I do have to apologize. I don't know what's going on with my camera trying to play around with it. So I do apologize for that. But my name is Luca Strother. I'm the ACP administrator. With Chicanos Por La casa, we are under the great leadership of Robert out of Morocco and Lupe violence, who couldn't make it today. As Eric mentioned earlier, we, he's one of our coordinators, we just hired our second coordinator last week. So we're really excited to have Betty experto. On our team, she also couldn't make it today. But we really did start kind of rolling with the ACP program. We had several events this weekend, not just in Phoenix, but also in Las Vegas. We're really excited about that we had a total overall in our events, a little bit over 1200 attendees, direct outreach of over 300 people, we have 33 enrollments, and we currently have 54 follow ups between Phoenix and less Vegas that we're going to coordinate some follow up events for them to come and, and finish their application. And just get them connected and and then partner with ISP, so they you know, it becomes a one stop shop where they are able to enroll in ACP, the affordable connectivity program, and then, you know, we can hand them over to their ISP of their choice. So we're in Maricopa County, that's where we're, where we had our event. Also, we have some events, and we have an event in Cochise County next Friday, so we're getting prepared for that. And then, like I mentioned in Clark County in Vegas, as well, and we're already planning to go back later this month as well.
Okay, any questions for nuvia? Only once, going twice.
Do you have any events? Do you have any events scheduled for Pima County by chance? I may have missed it. I'm sorry.
No, that's okay. Ah, so right now, we don't have any right. But we are. We are getting our calendar together. So we are planning to reach out to Pima like Tucson and Yuma as well. So we are our goal is to reach eight counties. So we have Maricopa Pima Yuma canal Cochise Graham, Santa Cruz and Coconino. So we're starting off slowly but surely. And our goal is to reach those counties.
Any other questions?
We just had a question. I guess we're at a point has there been any interaction with JTed, and they've got a really great program with young students. In the technology sectors, we've talked with them a little bit about possibly working with them to help deploy some ideas like this, if we needed to put broadband or routers, etc, out in the field and they get hands on, we just kind of do some, if you will, supervision of it and some preliminary training, but get them some real experience. And then they've got a cybersecurity program and just a lot there that might enter twined with what you're trying to accomplish, where they've already got a program written or a concept that could be taken to the to the marketplace.
That's a great idea.
I spoke with someone from JTED gosh, maybe back in January, before all of this got got up and running. So I'll reach out to them again. That's really a good idea. Thank you very much Les. Yeah,
I can help you with that. I know JTED people very well. I know the superintendent and and a number of the other folks over there. So Bryan, Vaughn is still online. I know he knows those people. Well, also. Great. Well, I can definitely help you with that. Leave.
Just a quick question. Which of the stakeholders here would be primarily concerned with the cybersecurity aspects of these programs? Is there a central point of contact or just an association of folks that have that general interest
or requirement So the answer, at least my answer is, and maybe others have some thoughts. We've actually been talking about wanting to create a, a team regarding cybersecurity. We have been talking with the excuse me with Homeland Security, and also the Department of Education as a relationship with them. For the schools. As Bryan mentioned, I just sent him the contact information with the U of A information Assurance Institute. And so there are a number of those folks that we've been talking about. I don't . But we do need to convene folks and kind of map out how we can best collaborate and make sure that security is included in all of the funding that's going on.
Steve, Well, I'll try to reach out to you separately to see if I can help out in that area. That'd be great. We can find somebody like you to take the lead. I'd be a happy camper. You may have found someone. Cool.
And Steve, John Haas here. I'm working with a number of groups throughout the state. ASU has spearheaded a group called the Center for the future of Arizona. And we recently in Mesa had the cybersecurity K through 12 national conference for cybersecurity. And so there was an awful lot of very interesting speakers there and other states that were looking at broadband initiatives. So I'd be glad to also help out and representing Northern Arizona instead of southern. But we have similar problems, because I'm told that this internet doesn't care about borders.
That's just a rumor. You'll believe anything. And yes. Actually, we do have one other people, although we haven't seen him recently with the Center for the Future of Arizona, who has been participating in this task force. But like I said, he's been pretty, pretty busy lately. But I didn't. I wasn't aware of that. But I know there are different groups. But John, can you tell me about that focus, we've got different groups who were focusing on different aspects of cybersecurity, some who focused on how do we educate a future workforce in cybersecurity. And then there's, at least from my perspective, the one of the key issues is now that we're connected, all these people are giving them devices, and internet and all of that stuff. And they don't even know how to turn on a computer. How are we going to help them to make sure that they're secure at various levels,
right. And that's why it should really start always with education, there should be an onboarding. And if we don't have an onboarding, you know, there's lots and lots of resources out there from places like DHS, et cetera. But just because you have a lot of information doesn't mean that people who are excited about plugging in their computer will bother to read it until something goes wrong. So I do think it's incumbent upon us as we're delivering it, to make onboarding a mandatory portion of it. Because the last thing we want to do is be seen as a vector for infection for the rest of the place, if people aren't aware, and so basic cyber hygiene is important. And and we're doing things here in Yavapai County, for I call it K through 80. Because, believe it or not, older folks are great targets, because they are oftentimes unaware, younger folks are too bold, and they think they know everything already. And so they're great targets too, because they're there to to they think too much of themselves. So both of them are great targets. It's a bimodal distribution, and we need to get educate them. All.
Right. Thanks, John. So looks like I need to get with JT together and a couple other folks and see how we can move this, this process along sooner rather than later. That'd be awesome. Okay.
I am working with Ryan at DHS.
Yep. Right, right. We don't see him very often. But Ryan has been a part of this group and we've had several conversations with him. And as you may know, he's also been working quite a bit collaboratively with the Arizona department of Education, it'd be unable to help support the needs of the schools. So he's absolutely a critical person to be involved with us. Okay, anything else? If not, let's move on to some updates quickly. Mala, you want to give us an update on what's happening?
Just a very quick update. I know we are short running short of time. I'm tracking with the USF as you know, the Universal Service funding issue. And very recently, Senator Ben Luhan. Here, the US senator for New Mexico has a USF working group where he has he's seeking comments By August 25. On some of the issues, I'll put the link in the in the chat once I'm done talking. He has some very powerful people in his working group, center tune, Klobuchar, capital, Peters, Moran, all are a part of the working group that's working on USF. As you know that there has been court cases going on about it. And circuit five, this is the second time it's come up again, even though the first time it was upheld. And there's still a lot of back and back and forth going on about how the money is being collected. The questions that they the comments that they are seeking are on based on questions like, Is the collection mechanism that they're doing currently? Fine, do we need, you know, a larger base, transparent transparency of the collection process, the legitimacy of it, supporting high cost and rural health care, and all those, of course addressing fraud and abuse? Now, this Universal Service Fund is vital for us for E Rate, because that's the base from the collection base for the Internet payment that we receive for schools and libraries. So you know, it's really vital that some of us at least answer the questions that they have posted. So I think that is something I want to share our other programs.
We have our
ALA coming up, that is our conference, our library conference coming up. And that's in October, and the when we are looking at the BT funding, you know, programming for BT funding for D, digital equity for connectivity and a lot of other things. So I'll keep you posted more about what's happening at that conference. If any of you would like to attend, that would be great. Otherwise, I don't have anything else to report. Back to you, Steve.
Okay. Thanks. Any questions from Mala? So Erin, do you have anything else do you want to record? Are you still here? Are you still here? Maybe she's gone. Yeah, looks like she may be gone. Okay, so we have Department of Education here today. Don't think so. Okay. Anybody have any other updates that they want to provide today? Mark? You want to say something about he's still here? Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So Mark, you want to say anything about the next week? We're going to talk about the working on the plan for the Arizona Technology Council. You want to say anything about that?
Sure, just put links in the chat. As usual for the last dozen years probably on writing the broadband policy sections for the tech Council's public policy guide. Big State and Federal sections for broadband about six pages each evolves over the years a lot of post onset of the pandemic and anticipation and details about the current fundings in there. Generally, you know, revisions or modest year to year been adding digital equity, all the new flows and other things so we do invite you to take a look at it. Sandeep has been engaged by As the tech counsel did partner with me, I hope to meet with him this week. And I'm not sure how much we'll have next Monday, but I'll be rolling up my thoughts. Hopefully he is and things I get from some of you perhaps. So Steve was kind enough to put the word doc, the breakout for the policy, broadband sections online. So there's an online link in the chat. Or for the whole Guide, which is quite a thing. It's really there's probably 40 People that work on that they get the lead assignments for as teams or individually for section. So it's really quite a quite a process. So this is just the broadband part. And I guess we'll take some time next Monday to walk through what seemed to be the new new areas or possibilities for it. So thanks.
So we're going to next Monday, we're going to review that document, which is actually just the old document plus any other changes the marks already made. And then
I'll have I'll have a markup for next Monday.
Okay. Well, if obviously, we get it sooner, that's great. So when I send out the update, that we have the version that does
not like not likely don't.
Okay. But anyway, I think we're going to take a good deal of time at the next meeting, to focus on that of that document, so that you all have an opportunity to provide your thoughts.
For updates, I did want to ask Heather, who I saw attended a meeting with Kirsten cinema, Senator cinema. I saw Janet major and Sandeep, were there some big broadband meeting? Heather, would you tell us a bit about how that came about? And what may have happened?
Hold on a second. Oh,
okay. I chased her away.
No, no, no, I had my door open. And I'm sure my co workers don't let me hear everything. The ACA reached out and they held industry roundtable with Senator cinema, and basically was an update from both sides where errors ACA was with the grants who were they were with the bead process. And Senator cinema did reach out to us and ask us what hurdles at the federal level that we might be incurring as we implement building out these grants and how she could be of assistance to help alleviate those. So it was a short, quick one hour meeting, but I think some great connections were made, and it was very productive. And it was encouraging to hear. So she wrote that bill, the Arizona capital grants. Getting the name except anyway, she helped write that though. And besides writing it, she wants to follow up and make sure it's implemented correctly. So she didn't just take that victory. She wants the boots on the ground and making sure obstacles are cleared for us. And that was that was fantastic to hear. She also had Joy Whiting there from Apache County. As you all know, Joy used to be on these calls quite often and she's the champion up there. So that was great to see. And she had Janet major talking about telemedicine. So she brought some great players to the table for us to just have a great discussion and see how we can cover all of Arizona.
Good. Thanks, Heather.
I glad you were able to on the spot. Give us that.
Appreciate that. Absolutely. Okay, yeah. Any other announcements, updates that anybody needs to share with us today before we're done? So those of you who have been with us know that if we, if you choose to hang around for a little bit, that we do our kibitzing with colleagues will stop, stop the recording and anybody who wants to stay online for a while to talk about anything or share anything. And if there isn't, we will be done for today. So with that, hey, Kurt, is there anything you want to say about upcoming conference? There's
Arizona rural STEM conference up in Flagstaff. coming up in August. I'm getting ready to put the link and I'll give you I'll send you the link to so you can add that to the stuff but other than that, it's all I can think of right now and nice update Heather been dying to hear that from you. And it's awesome. Thank you so much and thanks for representing.
You're very welcome to represent well. That's my go to And then
Kirk's involved in the program for it. This tech Council has their seventh annual IoT and smart city conference. Sandip is a speaker. I'm not sure whether he a panelist or a keynote. But that'll be an interesting event where
we'll have a dedicated Well, yeah, we'll have a dedicated broadband and all right. And hopefully Sandip is the moderator with a whole bunch of other
you know, stakeholders.
What's the date on that Kirk? In September? What
September 19 19. That's gonna be ASU SkySong guide I'll get I'll get us a special AZ BSN code.
I just want to say I finally met Sandip in person outside of the Zoom square. Yeah, he's younger in person. And then amazing. Intelligent and he looks younger in person. Yeah.
We're here at person.
Like a doctor was what was that show? Dr. Doogie Howser of what was that show? Yeah, where he's like a 12 year old genius. I mean, Sandeep is amazing. He's really really amazing.
UI Hauser. Do my contribution to the call. Do
Hi, Lucy. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Awesome.
Okay, I'm going to stop recording and then if you want to hang around
