While there has been a grassroots push to bring Google Fiber service to Baton Rouge, a Midwestern software designer is running circles around the local effort through innovative Web-organizing. Jared Starkey of Topeka, Kan., began a group called Think Big Topeka and started Facebook and Twitter initiatives to drum up support for the cause: to lure Silicon Valley search engine giant Google to build a broadband system in his city.
While the Bring Google Fiber to Baton Rouge Facebook group has about 2,000 members, Starkey’s group now boasts three times as many. This week they plan to stoke enthusiasm for the drive with a flash mob, in which people will gather at a downtown redevelopment meeting to unveil T-shirts endorsing the fiber-optic wiring project. The same day, a local restaurant plans to host an event where supporters can fill out an online form requesting that Google consider the city for the project; free food will be offered to the first 20 participants.
“This is really about the community as a whole that has stepped up and said, ‘This is really something we want to do,’ ” Starkey says, noting that his Facebook group has three times as many members as his Kansas hometown’s population. “I never thought it would become this big. It worked wonderfully.” Read the full story here. —Todd R. Brown
