(Editor’s Note: Due to my position as the ConnectLakeland Task Force Chair, I asked Shannon Lanier, Executive Director of Lakeland Vision, if she would mind writing how ConnectLakeland has joined with Lakeland Vision to help “connect Lakeland.”)
by Shannon Lannier
Back in 2008 when Lakeland Vision reached out to the public to ask what they want for Lakeland’s future, a seemingly simple request was repeated – one place to get information about what’s happening in Lakeland. Of the 135 strategies laid out in the 
community’s vision of its own future (pdf) are a number of calls for a central website for finding out what’s going on in our community. Now it’s time to deliver.
Back in March of this year, a bunch of locals quickly came together to support Lakeland’s application for Google to install their ultra high speed internet in our neck of the woods. (For the record, we still don’t know the status of that application. If Google doesn’t anoint us with their crazy fast internet, perhaps someone else will. We’d be tickled pink by whoever delivers the goods. Verizon? Brighthouse? Anybody?) After the application was submitted, the volunteers looked around the table and decided to harness the enthusiasm to “connect Lakeland.” The ConnectLakeland Task Force came up with the following Vision and Mission:
Vision: Establish Lakeland, Florida as the most connected city on the planet.
Mission: Enable residents, visitors, businesses, government and organizations to come together.
It was determined that the mission could be executed by reaching these four goals…
1) Installing high speed wireless and wired infrastructure
2) Create a community “portal”
3) Interconnecting people, business, government, services/organizations, healthcare, and education
4) Connecting local to global to differentiate and become an advantaged community
Since there’s no money…we’re doing this on the cheap, folks…and this is strictly a volunteer effort, the Task Force decided to focus on 2) Create a community “portal” with the expectation that the other goals will have a better chance of surviving with that in place. Going back to the Vision, it was also easy to determine that ConnectLakeland.com should become that portal.
Ok, that’s some of the history. Now for the game plan…
ConnectLakeland.com will be designed to allow locals to feed their website content into ConnectLakeland.com. There will also be a social aspect, similar to Facebook wall posts or Yelp, but with local flava, of course. We are going to use WordPress as the platform since version 3.0 will have the functionality that ConnectLakeland.com will require. Additionally, we are interested in developing a community calendar but will need to tackle that once the site gets off the ground.
…and here’s what we’ll need in order to make that leap. We need volunteers — both with and without IT experience. Here’s the breakdown:
- Programming experience with WordPress and/or PHP
- Designer(s) comfortable working with WordPress and/or PHP
- CSS experience
- Photographer
- Content development and editing interest
A big thank you to our buddies at DSM for providing hosting space. Another big thank you to our pals at Madden for hooking us up with a sweet logo that will define the ConnectLakeland brand. That’s two items on our list of needs we have checked off — thanks to local partners who want to see this site succeed. While we’re at it, another set of thank you’s to the Task Force for keeping the momentum — Aaron Bates, USF Poly; Amy Wiggins, Lakeland Area Chamber of Commerce; Chuck Welch, Lakeland Local; David Robinson, DSM; Tony Delgado, City of Lakeland.
Now we’re reaching out to the community to help us fill the other gaps. If you’re interested in being a part of connecting our community in any of the above capacities, or perhaps in a way we have not yet considered, please contact me at Lakeland Vision to become a part of the conversation. (Call 682.9660 or slanier@lakelandvision.org or @LakelandVision)
Our next meeting is scheduled for July 22 at 8:30am. Save the date and time. We’ll determine the location once we get an idea of how many people will be joining us on this adventure. Even if you don’t know what role you want to take and want to simply be in on the conversation, we’d love to have you. We’re starting from scratch so ideas are welcome.
photo credit: Tom Hagerty for Lakeland Local
