Good Morning, and Welcome to today's installment of This Old Neighborhood, and my continuing journey to rebuild suburbia, the Internet Way.
For those of you just tuning in, My Name is Miles Fidelman, and I'm Coming to you from my Home in Acton Massachusetts, where I'm preparing for some much-overdue home renovation.
Unfortunately, we live in a Condominium Complex. We need a major update to all of our buildings, grounds, and facilities, and to get there, we need to work together, as co-owners & neighbors, and in cooperation with neighboring residences & businesses with whom we share facilities… not something condo owners are known for, or organized for. We don’t have a planning department or an engineering department; all we have is a long-range capital planning committee - all volunteers, no engineering support - nobody has the big picture, and nobody is really in charge. It’s a challenge - a venture into the unknown for condominium owners, our boards, and all concerned, with little support from vendors, or government. We’re on our own on the bleeding edge.
Fortunately, I'm an Engineer by trade… I’ve spent a lot of time on that bleeding edge, and I enjoy the challenge. I spent a lot of my career building big pieces of the Internet, and I've specialized in getting projects started - a process often likened to herding cats. A lot of my work was at the local level, helping cities & towns launch broadband projects - building their own cable companies. I wrote the book on managing construction in municipal rights-of-way & building local telecom infrastructure. I seem to be the right place, at the right time, with the right skills & experience, to push the process forward.
It's a simple process, if a bit painful & political: Get people together, start some conversations, develop a sense of common need & purpose, and the rest takes care of itself - it’s amazing what a group of people can accomplish, once we decide to work together. The hard part is getting started.
So I’m setting out again, to herd some cats, to organize a comprehensive overhaul & makeover for This Old Neighborhood. I'm doing it on camera, logging the journey, for your entertainment, and in the hopes that some of you may learn from our missteps, and apply lessons we learn the hard way, in your own communities.
This program is a starting point. In coming days, I'll be inviting friends & neighbors to come together - online & in person - to socialize, to share stories of who we are, how we got here, and where we'd like to be a few years down the road.
We'll be bringing in experts and vendors to talk about new technologies & construction techniques - like neighborhood geothermal heating & cooling, we'll visit project sites. We'll be talking with bankers about ways to fund a large project, as an investment that pays for itself, rather than one big maintenance expense.
We'll start the hard work of engineering design, organizing, and contracting for large scale redevelopment.
I invite you to follow along. Subscribe to this channel, for ongoing updates. Paying subscribers will receive invitations to campfires, TED-like talks, workshops, study groups & working groups, design exercises, scenario games, and other events. We'll be offering support for those of you who'd like to form a working group in your own community, and follow in our footsteps, perhaps collaborate in some way.
If you feel so inclined, please introduce yourself in the comments, tell us where you’re coming from - are you here in Nagog Woods, a neighbor, a professional or vendor who can help, a homeowner elsewhere looking for a map to follow for redeveloping your neighborhood, something else entirely? Are there particular topics you’d like me to address, people you’d like me to interview (perhaps you?), case studies you’d like us to explore in depth, … ? Let me know if you’d like to organize a watch party, or study group in your own community - maybe we can provide your own “channel” for local discussion, lead a startup workshop, or otherwise help you get started.
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