FiberFete Brainstorming About How To Use Fiber

As a special treat, I've compiled the results of a raffle we held at FiberFete to win an iPad. To enter into the raffle participants had to write down an idea of what they'd do with 100Mbps.

We were able to generate a list of dozens of ideas, and while there's some duplicates and some that are less serious and well thought out, there's a ton of interesting thoughts in here. And I find the fact that there's duplication as interesting in and of itself as it suggests that perhaps those were the ideas that matter most.

I'm going to do some analysis of these ideas in posts next week, but for now here's the complete list of all the ideas that were submitted, in no particular order:

(Please excuse the question marks. They indicate words that weren't legible. If you're the one who wrote the idea, ping me with what the word should have been.)

Doc Searls
Turn the video business inside out. Put up backend video production servers for sharing, collaborating, CGI rendering, storage and distribution of creations by local citizens, especially schoolkids. Then start an annual festival to show off (and sell) the results. Create, demonstrate, and establish The New Hollywood right here in Lafayette.

Tim Pozar
Buy two pipes and become an ISP by back feeding the network

Beverly Blake
Secure a $1 million grant and launch a contest "Neighborhood Fiber Challenge." Ask through the web for ideas and award grants to implement. Our local challenge contest is a hit! www.cfcga.org/knc

Carol Skarlat
We are installing two fiber lines into the Stuller facility. WE plan to use this to digitize the jewelry industry by providing custom design over the Internet.

Eliza Evans
Host a worldwide fiber application competition. Bring/attract the best/brightest innovators from across the globe -- including and especially Asia -- to show/test their projects on Lafayette's fiber network. Doing this will spur local ideas, create opportunities for Lafayette office of competitive companies, create opportunity for investment, will make it clear that Lafayette is a global player, and create opportunities for global market access

Bryan Fuselier
Distributed Content Caching - Premise: Deploy BitTorrent-style software to voluntary end users that caches pieces of content as it is accessed and allows quick access to it to peers. Result: Content will be displayed in a fraction of the time necessary to download from a single source. Increasing the size of content that can be easily viewed in real time.

Larry Keyes
Telemedicine - Touchpad applications for patient surveys, ie "How much pain are you in today 1-10?"

John St. Julien
Provide ubiquity: a 50Mbps connection via WiFi - every other radio connected directly to the backbone.

Mary Beth Henry
3D visualization for education and training as well as scientific exploration. Do pilot with FiberKids demonstrating education using 3D. Cloud based computing is a good platform for this. Use FiberKids and Abacus.

Barret Conrad
Create an online space where people can experience, and especially consume, art and entertainment created and managed by local artists. Ex: Direct live feed of a band at a local club.

Anonymous
Create the first 100% peer-to-peer video networks!

Aymerial Hoang
With 100Mbps connectivity, that would give me the pot where to cook all the ingredients to build a tech community and a ?? tech ??. Side use = A ?? HD chatroulette for tech folks in the community to network!

Minnie Ingersoll
I'd back up my music/data to the cloud every night... then I'd rock out on the go all day long.

Larry Keyes
Multipoint video aggregation with DCSB, the "data center in my spare bedroom." So we have our own services in our own data center.

Beth McConnell
I live in a low income neighborhood where people can't afford monthly Internet services, so I'd use the extra capacity to create a wireless mesh network that is open and free to anyone on my block that needs it.

Grant Holcomb
I would implement a public safety infrastructure that integrates first responders, law enforcement, emergency rooms, healthcare facilities into a real-time crisis response system that can support any sized emergency.

Timothy Treuil
With an iPad I would research new ways to better the community that I live in. I would like to find ways to make it more child-friendly, eco-friendly and just a better place all around. On my spare time I would look up different parts for the truck I am devoted to rebuild for my dad. He had a 1981 Chevy pickup, and I would like to rebuild him one for when he retires.

Logan McDaniel
Develop personally customized dashboard to be used on set-top box and displayed on TV. Dashboard standard interface which will allow a multitude of display formats and types of information to be monitored easily.

Adam Melancon
Use the network for distributed storage for customers. Build storage systems into the cable boxes that would give customers a few gigs of storage that would be encrypted and distributed out in a mesh 100Mbps internal network. Data would be secure and redundant.

Michael Max Knobbe
Collaborate on a global interactive opera/hip hopera with artists participating from all over the world in an original multicast series.

David Russell
Multi-point video conferencing and chat for seniors and other people unable to leave their homes. These could be built around common interest groups - book clubs, etc.

Tim Pozar
I want to start seeing shut-ins be Tier 1 support providers for support companies. A laptop with SIP/VOIP software supporting video. A new worker pool!

Richard MacKinnon
Use the fiber to preserve, protect, and enhance your wonderful local culture by enabling HD video language lessons/stories, dance and music -- both creation and consumption -- connecting the older Cajuns with the younger. This interactive, real-time, and archived HD video will be a mirror and a window into living Acadian culture.

Robin Chase
1. I would open up as much data as I could, collected from as many government, education, and corporate source as I could open up. Get it in a format that is useful and you'll create a platform for innovation. 2. Install community wireless at all gateways so that you can have free ubiquitous wireless. Use an OS mesh network to support any smart grid efforts and open up that wireless network to any use. 3. Tell the world what you've done. 4. Expect innovation!

Ric Trout
Develop a world-class medical claims processing center facilitating the development of electronic medical/health information exchanges.

Pete Ashdown
Neighborhood net - Sharing videos/photos/media with my friend and neighbors. Non-copyrighted of course!

Aaron Touchet
Fiber would be a great tool for interactive online education. I've heard it being talked about a few times. Think of web based educational video games. These could even be multiplayer, interacting in real time. With fiber computers with low graphics capabilities can utilize these programs by playing games while the graphics are being streamed to them from a server. I've heard something of this technology before and I think fiber would prove useful.

Dax Allen
I would use this capability and asset of Lafayette to recruit and develop business... Making Lafayette the number one city in the US in the digital media industry.

Adam Melancon
Use the 100Mbps to interconnect the cable set top boxes to create a citywide mesh computer to do projects like folding@home or seti@home. Or use the connected cable boxes as caching servers for content.

Jay Ducote
A 100Mbps internet connection would allow a new phase of Health Information Technology. Telehealth and telemedicine would allow providers and patients to connect without leaving homes or offices. Links could also be made between schools and doctors.

Annette Samec
As we face continued budget cuts that effect staffing, it would be wonderful to fully implement collaborative teaching from across the country and world for a true educational experience, especially learning different cultures and languages.

Klyne Smith
Provide applications and services to the world. Help those who cannot afford connectivity to get connectivity.

Esme Vos Yu
Start developing the "Holodeck" (like Star Trek) so when Lafayette gets 100Gbps they'll be the first to try it out!

Tom Lowenhaupt
Pick a top level domain name, apply, acquire, and develop it. Develop it by giving a domain name to every thing in Lafayette, ie the Internet of things. Every street light, fire hydrant, street, building, project, person. Possibilities: .LAF, .Lafayette, .Cajun, .Acadia

Chance Delome
1. Offsite data backup. 2. Scanned record retentions for law firms or hospitals. 3. Decentralized office and campuses. 4. Videoconferencing nationwide tech or other kinds of support. 5. Origination of webinars. 6. Gaming testbeds for video games. 7. Remote patient monitoring for doctors offices or assisted living. 8. Online classrooms for all levels/ages. 9. Super computing/cloud computing. 10. Architectural design collaboration. 11. Land surveying exchange of data. 12. Smart meter reading. 13. Real-time traffic data pushed down to clients/apps built into vehicles. 14. Crime prevention with more cameras.

Joe Savoie
Create digital village the university - a community of ideas and applications testing.

Timothy McClanahan
Interactive distance learning for families that wish to home school their children.

Jon Lebkowsky
Build a powerful electronic marketplace that allows businesses to share and discover capacities within a region, to facilitate partnerships and aggregations of teams and groups, to facilitate partnerships on larger projects via networking. This can be a core application plus other relevant apps as well as a human network, well-facilitated by high bandwidth connectivity and large data shares.

Lane Fourtenant
I would live stream for 24/7 on 5-6 different live streaming networks that the fiber could handle while uploading daily videos to the net.

Chillon Thomason
Use it to connect artists with their work to customers. I have it, LUS Fiber rocks!

Michael Max Knobbe
Share ideas and get civically engaged in an ultra-local way while interacting across this great nation and world to collaborate, create, and for commerce.

Anonymous
I would build an amateur musician social network that would allow fiber connected music lovers worldwide to jam together in real time!!!

Dewayne Hendricks
One of the major problems with public hotspots such as those at Starbucks or McDonalds are they only do 802.11 b/g and they're fed with low bandwidth pipes upstream. What I would propose would be to use the fiber infrastructure to feed lots of public WiFi hotspots. If done well, you would give the area pervasive WiFi connectivity and build momentum to the use of 802.11 n. This would give users access to more bandwidth then would be available with LTE, for instance. Also, you would need more than 100Mbps to do this as 802.11n does 300Mbps and the next version will do 600Mbps!!

Crawford Comeaux
Digital replacement (or at least partial replacement) for USPS. Kit provided to residences containing PrePeat printer, 100 sheets PrePeat "paper" (good for 1000 uses per sheet), scanner, touchscreen LCD. USPS or private service digitizes mail going to residence. Recipients can choose to print mail if desired, can use LCD to manage home mailbox as email inbox. Decouples faxes from phone #s, emails from email addresses, and recouples them to physical address. Benefits: Greener mail system, faster mail delivery, replaces recurring delivery and processing/routing costs, with flat buy-in and recurring maintenance/upkeep, location-based service (hooray for digital city!)

Crawford Comeaux
Peer to peer compute cluster co-op: P2P generic compute cluster software running on home/office machines (think SETI@home, but not geared to a single problem); compute time rentable by anybody (just like LITE); users whose computers perform processing for a project share in revenue from compute jobs (not like LITE).

Mary Beth Henry
Kids making videos in their neighborhoods and uploading to share with each other. Smart cities with live video of neighborhood hubs. High school meetings like PTA attend from home and participate actively via high definition interactive video.

Crawford Comeaux
Emergency Response Distributed Call Center and Public Knowledgebase of Locale-Specific Information. Have distributed VoIP volunteer call center that interfaces with emergency response teams to collect/distribute data between different teams, ie Red Cross, military. Have information available for public query too.

Eric Credeur
Shared sensory stimulation. You feel what another feels (television, ??, food, and marketing.)

Richard MacKinnon
Video 311 - HD video interaction with municipal services to include 2-way communication tutorials and website integration.

Susan Souralaysack
I would use it to grow my business. Demonstrate every single application you can do to my produce via web and upload for everyone to see an all sites like youtube, on my website. Hey I'll even host my own sites and servers. I would host more videoconferencing with everyone in the world that I sell to knowing that I have a fast and reliable connection. I would use more IP phone tech to eliminate phone bills. Also I can probably stream live demos all the time and offer live web chat.

Kris Bennett
1. Work with the medical industry to be able to do real time diagnosis for emergencies. 2. Back-up all my files in minutes instead of days with carbonite. 3. Real-time streaming videos

Marcia Smith
You talked about the next barrier of "human" - why not involve your university students for solving this. For example, those engaged in a medical curriculum could develop new ideas/programs that the fiber would facilitate. Those engaged in an education curriculum could develop literacy programs facilitated by the fiber. At the same time you have the opportunity to create an entirely new process for students to earn their degree and give back to society at the same time!

Jay Ducote
100Mbps could allow every home and business with fiber connections to install HD video connectors so every phone call could incorporate video. This could work for home to home, home to doctor, or for ordering a pizza!

Donny Smith
3-D dating parlor. 3-D virtual store. Online fiber network ??? studio.

Dwight Davis
Provide smart boards in all classrooms. Students can do distance learning and get info in real time. Also having laptop and blogging capability with teacher for asking homework questions.

Joanne Hovis
Enable immersive experience and therapy for children with special needs. For example, immersive music or sensory therapy could be offered from a distant location to children at home or in an institution, making such expensive cutting edge therapy accessible to the poor and the distant.

John Brown
VOD Learning from PBS, NOVA, etc.

Crawford Comeaux
Peer-to-peer analytical cluster co-op. Co-op members install P2P analysis software with distributed data store component. Entities pay for storage and compute time, upload data encrypted using fully isomorphic encryption scheme and analytical functions. Entities launch/schedule analysis runs via web services. Entities download encrypted results, decrypt into usable analytics. Users contributing storage and compute time share in revenue.

Crawford Comeaux
Peer-to-peer render farm co-op. Public installs a P2P renderer. Renderings from non-edu sources require payment. Edu renderings free. Owners of machines contributing to paid renderings share in revenue.

William Ness
Seamless, transparent backup at <30 second intervals. Never worry about your data again!

Mary Beth Henry
Cancer research - Could science students at UL partner with health research university to process large databases of genome, RNA, proteome, and clinical data? Do pilot research project with huge database.

Larry Keyes
Platform in patient homes, attached to TV (not a computer!) for videoconferencing and vital sign sensory.

Tom Cox
A virtual, multi-lingual, remote, fiber-driven customer service and support business, HD video/audio, remote culture/nationality based attendants/agents, online sales/airports/drive-through restaurants/in-store kiosks

Gary McGoffin
Telephony for non-profit board members/meetings to facilitate non-profit board participation by eliminating travel logistics.

Crawford Comeaux
Social Web Desktop. Web desktop with native support for social networking. Accessible over TV set-top boxes, web browser, or purchasable thin clients. Has "app store" for developers to push apps to. Can connect to webcams for native telepresence. Provides developers with "closed" system like iPhone/iPad.

Bice Wilson
I'd help my communities building a living model of the "phantom city" that lurks in every landscape - the synthesis of all the zoning and laws and plans and technologies expressing what we say we want our futures to be. (And which we generally abhor once we confront it.) I'd use: idmi.poly.edu/projects/betaville

Ric Trout
Develop a regional stock or commodity exchange that can direct and control information through rapid transmission of large amounts of data, illustrating world class projections.

Helen Brunner
Establish a fellowship/residency program for innovative thinkers of all kinds, including artists who work with new technologies. With a modest investment, this type of national and international collaboration could leverage to creative capital of the participants and the amazing Lafayette community.

Larry Keyes
Multi-point "telepresence" videoconferencing!

Kit Becnel
Will put our FiberKids connected to San Francisco between two public media organizations using fiber for high schools to work collaboratively in real time delivering and constructing content.

Don Means
Prototype my multi-user holodeck, remote immersive digital environment.

Mark Horinko
Look to corporate America (Fortune 1000) to use your networks. With community fiber networks providing the bandwidth, but more importantly the ability to provide quality and secure networks...let's work with Corporate America to extend and integrate corporate networks into community networks so that these businesses can source/create home-based virtual call centers, medical transcription and software development from the residents of Lafayette.

A few years ago, outsourcing these type of tasks were outsourced to India, primarily due to low labor costs. The second largest expense to these business, next to labor are facility and building costs. If you take the cost of real estate and facility costs (electric, transportation, etc) and created a secure, reliable corporate networked home, these businesses can tap a virtually an unlimited talent pool, with lower labor costs than what they would typically see in larger cities.

Historically, economic development was to attract businesses to locate in their community...why should we not look at this as a "virtual relocation". We need to walk the fiber-based economic development talk...it is a reverse way of looking at ED, but worthy of exploration. Not only does this increase job opportunities within the community but also taps the huge financial resources of corporate America that could help fund even more community fiber networks. Corporate America will no doubt pay more for a private, secure network for a work-at-home than you'll ever get for 3-play services...and a secure, high-quality broadband connection is much cheaper than turning the lights on in an office.

Maybe as part of FiberCorps, we can develop a strategy to communicate this message to corporate America and to get them involved in the process of integrating corporate networks and to continue to expand community fiber networks across America. I'd be honored to participate.