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All righty! Let's get down to it. I've come to the conclusion that preparing our communities is the most productive avenue available to Those of Us Who Aren't Fixing Y2K Problems.
I´ve met with pretty good success here in St Paul, MN. Our mayor, Norm Coleman, has really taken this issue on and made it a top priority for the City in 1999. Here´s a link to their Y2k page (I know, I think the little cartoon is weird too -- I´ll take this disclaimer out if it ever goes away). There´s a lot of stuff going on "behind the scenes" right now. In a nutshell, there are 5 major projects under way;
- Y2k repair (the classic Y2k remediation project)
- Contingency planning
- Emergency management planning
- Y2k communication (all the internal and external messages)
- Community preparation
As the projects develop materials that can be accessed from the web, I´ll post them in various places on this site. If you would like to talk to people at the City about their efforts, contact Kit Borgman at 651-266-8534. Want to see me raving about our Y2k efforts here in St Paul? I appeared on KTCA a while back. Here´s a link to the RealVideo clip.
Steve Davis is a key voice in the community preparations discussion. He's built a site that does a great job of putting things in perspective -- and in it he has a great risk assessment page. He's also got a great page that lays out proposed leadership roles that should be picked up by different levels of government. More recently, he´s become the force behind Coalition 2000 -- a nifty clearing house for information about community preparations for Y2k.
Doug Carmichael is an inspiration, and a good thinker. This very dense page lays out the choices we're up against when we think about community preparedness -- an important piece to read. Here's the link Doug is a panelist on the Y2K Community Preparedness Forum sponsored by the company I work for (gofast.net, a business oriented high-speed ISP)
The good folks at the Co-Intelligence Institute say "Let's use the Year 2000 problem (Y2K) to make a better world, moving beyond business-as-usual to resilient, sustainable communities; social change; and personal and cultural transformation." I agree with ‘em. They have a great site. Here's the link
There was a gathering of community minded Y2K folks in Boulder, CO in the late summer of 1998. They've got a site up that offers several summaries of what happened there. Here's the link
FEMA has a community disaster preparedness project already underway. It's not a Y2K project. Rather, it came out of the realization that advance planning could drastically reduce the cost of a disaster. This was a Eureka! site for me -- I'm basing much of my action planning on this guidebook. Here's the link They have come out with a policy statement encouraging communitys to prepare for Y2k disruptions. Here´s the link.
Harlan Smith has an "austere infrastructure" proposal. The proposal is good reading, but even better is the "context setting" portion of the page. A great source for the awareness-raising sessions. Here's the link
"Local currency exchange" is a concept that's been quietly gaining attention over the last 10 years or so. In a nutshell a locality issues its own paper money, which is used to pay for goods and services in that locality. Ithaca, New York has a local currency exchange that's been successful for several years now. Here's the link to their page. They've woven Y2K community preparedness and the money exchange notion together on a page which makes pretty eye-popping reading. I disagree with the specifics of their approach (a little over ambitious) and the tone of the page (it presumes complete collapse). But I'm intrigued with the notion of including local currency exchange in Y2K community preparedness planning. And I love the graphic! Here's the link to their Y2K preparedness page.
Community preparedness pages from other towns.
Napa Valley has a pretty good site, and links to other community sites (down one level from this page).
Lowell Mass. has a darn good set of goals on their site. |
