If you live in Boulder, it’s time to help bring the Google Fiber experiment to our awesome city. A bunch of folks from all over Boulder are working on the Boulder Fiber project to help us become one of the cities for the Google Fiber for Communities project.
Boulder is a perfect city for this. When I moved here in 1995 I didn’t expect to engage in much business as I was spending most of my time in Boston, NY, and San Francisco. However, I discovered an incredibly smart community that was extremely computer and Internet savvy. As the commercial Internet started to take off in the mid-1990’s, Boulder was a hotbed for Internet usage and innovation as we rapidly became an incredibly wired city. I attributed this to the convergence of (a) a smart, well-educated population, (b) a university at the core of the city, (c) a bunch of national labs, (d) a solid legacy of tech startups, especially around storage, cable, and telecom, and (e) a strong culture of independence which was well suited to all things Internet.
What I didn’t realize at the time were two important metrics that underscore both the technology and the entrepreneurial energy in Boulder. The two metrics are that on a per-capita basis, Boulder has the highest percentage of computer scientists and the highest percentage of Ph.D.’s in the US. When combined with a vibrant entrepreneurial community that has deep software and Internet expertise, magic things happen.
We’ve seen a lot of this magic in Boulder in the past five years. I’m proud of how the city I call home has arisen as one of the most important entrepreneurial communities in the US with much more activity, visibility, and influence than a city with a population of 150,000 typically has. More importantly, the amount of innovation coming out of Boulder is extraordinary.
Google has put out a challenge to find communities that are willing to be a test bed for an experimental ultra-high speed broadband network to see what kind of innovation will emerge. If you are a member of the Boulder community, even if you aren’t in the high tech or entrepreneurial sector, help us tell Google why Boulder is the best city in the US for this experiment.
If you are game to help, do the following things: