Blake Jennelle has blog

I spent most of last night awake and working frantically on this big announcement by Philly Startup Leaders. We felt we had to act immediately if Philly’s effort to bring gigabit broadband here was going to succeed. We also thought that whether or not Google chooses Philadelphia, this is an opportunity to shine a worldwide light on our grassroots tech and creative communities.

Here’s a summary of the announcement with a link to the full version:

Philly Startup Leaders needs your help to do something big for Philly. Really big.

We’re pledging $5,000 toward a prize for the best gigabit idea submitted on Gigabit Philly. This is all the money we have available as an organization — it’s our savings for the last two and half years. We need you and the city to match it.

The Google gigabit competition is a golden opportunity to prove that we have the best grassroots tech and creative community in the world. Our grassroots communities have already started the campaign with Gigabit Philly, a website that collects your big ideas for how to harness gigabit connectivity to change the world.

Yet we will fail in this campaign unless we do something dramatic. We have to show Google what’s special about Philly. And we haven’t done that so far.

So Philly Startup Leaders is taking a gamble on Gigabit Philly, and we need your help. Our $5,000 pledge is just the beginning. We need our donation to spark a wave of pledges large and small that will draw worldwide attention to Philly. This prize will help us generate hundreds if not thousands of big ideas on Gigabit Philly from all over the world.

Make a pledge now and send the full announcement to everyone you know. We need help from every one of you!

Here’s the link to share: http://phillystartupleaders.org/news/philly-startup-leaders-goes-all-in-for-gigabit-philly/

We literally went from idea to launch in about 12 hours. At 9pm last night, a group of us were sitting at the Philly Startup Leaders fishbowl event with an idea, and by 9am this morning our announcement was live.

The idea started when the City of Philadelphia’s Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank and City Councilman Bill Green presented their vision for Gigabit Philly at the Philly Startup Leaders fishbowl. These guys are working hard to bring gigabit here, but they aren’t getting much support from the city.

We asked, why would Google invest in a city that’s not going to lend a tremendous amount of support? And the answer is simple: They wouldn’t.

We had lots of ideas for what the City of Philadelphia could do to show its support in a big way. In the dream scenario, the city would commit to doing a gigabit broadband experiment regardless of whether Google participates. Fat chance, right? Then we had ideas for more modest support, such as pledging financing to venture capital firms who would setup a gigabit investment fund.

Then there was this simple, no brainer idea. The city could sponsor a big prize, say $50,000, for the best idea submitted to Gigabit Philly. This would send a strong (and relatively inexpensive) message to Google and to Philadelphians that gigabit is a priority for the city, and that the grassroots community has the city’s full support.

Bill and Allan said that the city can’t write a check for anything in 8 days, but we didn’t buy that. We thought that if it was important enough, the city could move mountains.

Someone just had to push them. So we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Please support this campaign in any way you can. Make a donation, however small, and spread the word.

Here’s the link: http://phillystartupleaders.org/news/philly-startup-leaders-goes-all-in-for-gigabit-philly/