Mitchell Smartest Town in South Dakota, Makes “Smart21” Worldwide Broadband List

Last updated on 2013.01.24

"What makes you think you're so smart?" 15,000-some South Dakotans can now straight-facedly answer that question by saying, "Well, we're from Mitchell."

On Sunday, the Intelligent Community Forum named Mitchell one of the "Smart21" nominees for the honor of 2013 Intelligent Community of the Year. No, ICF didn't come take a random IQ sample. And they obviously haven't been reading Steve Sibson or Joe Graves. The Intelligent Community Forum is looking for communities that are taking steps to succeed in the broadband economy. ICF looks at five main indicators of broadband intelligence:

1. broadband connectivity: infrastructure in place and policies encouraging deployment and adoption;
2. knowledge workforce: "a labor force that creates economic value through the acquisition, processing and use of information";
3. innovation: private and public sector putting information technology to work in new ways;
4. digital inclusion: making sure new technology doesn't expand the gap between haves and have-nots;
5. marketing and advocacy: selling the community at home and abroad.

ICF looks for three additional cultural success factors: collaboration, leadership, and (sure to draw a Bircher boycott of the Corn Palace) sustainability. Readers, I welcome you to bat about your impressions of how well Mitchell meets those eight criteria... and how Mitchell manages to meet those criteria better than our public university towns, including the "Technically Better" Madison.

Mitchell joins Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia as the U.S. nominees. It faces heavy techno-hitters like Tallinn, Estonia for the title of broadband-smartest city in the world. ICF whittles the nominees down to seven in January, then names the Intelligent Community of the Year in June. Mitchell is not the smallest city on the list; it outweighs Castelo de Vide, Portgual (population 3,780) and Whittlesea, Australia (pop. 4,826). Here's the full list of Smart21 nominees:

• Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
• Castelo de Vide, Portalegre District, Portugal
• Columbus, Ohio, USA
• Heraklion, Crete, Greece
• Hsinchu City, Taiwan
• Jiading New City, China
• Kingston, Ontario, Canada
• Mitchell, South Dakota, USA
• Oulu, North Ostrobothnia, Finland
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Prospect, South Australia, Australia
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Stratford, Ontario, Canada
• Taichung City, Taiwan
• Tallinn, Estonia
• Taoyuan County, Taiwan
• Tirana, Albania
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Wanganui, New Zealand
• Whittlesea, Victoria, Australia
• Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

p.s.: The Mitchell city website won't boost their chances of making the cut for the final 7; I check tonight and (1) find their right sidebar all jumbled up. On their staff directory, someone typed the (2) anti-spam version of the e-mail addresses into the active mailto links, meaning the e-mails won't send. And the (3) stretching, spinning images in that gray header just don't float my design boat. Click the image to the right to see my screen cap of things Mitchell will want to get fixed right away before the ICF committee comes to visit!

Update 2013.01.24 17:48 MST: Oh! They should have fixed that website faster. Mitchell has not made the cut for the final seven. The only American entry in the top seven is Columbus, Ohio.