The San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce shared some tips with nearly 300 local business people today on how to bring Google's just-announced ultra high-speed broadband initiative to San Luis Obispo. 

Dubbed "Mr. Connectivity," former Chamber Board of Directors chairperson Jeff Buckingham helped organize the Chamber's ad hoc group that will examine the feasibility of making San Luis Obispo one of the locations for the fiber optic trial. 

"[Google] is giving an opportunity for communities to demonstrate that they're worthy of this kind of an opportunity," Buckingham said at Thursday's Good Morning San Luis Obispo breakfast, a monthly Chamber event that draws hundreds of local business people.

Individuals can do their part by visiting the Google Fiber for Communities Web site and filing their own application form, becoming a fan of the "Bring Google Fiber to San Luis Obispo, CA!" Facebook fan page and suggesting the Facebook page to their San Luis Obispo Facebook friends, and by visiting the Softec Web site and joining the community discussions.

Buckingham suggested using the following reasons to have San Luis Obispo become the host city for the initiative:

• The city is establishing a stronger collaboration with Cal Poly as the university is moving to become more of a research-based institution, and much of the recruiting for Google actually comes out of Cal Poly 
• There are many home-based businesses here that could benefit from this opportunity
• Many San Luis Obispo residents are "high-tech friendly"

The San Luis Obispo City Council last week agreed with the Chamber on the importance of the initiative and the Chamber's ad hoc group will meet today to discuss the issue.

The experiment may make Internet access better and faster for everyone, and Google plans to install its broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Google networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today.

"Imagine if we had Internet speeds in every home and office in San Luis Obispo that were a gigabit of throughput. That's maybe 100 to 1,000 times faster than what we have today," Buckingham said. "What kind of collaboration could happen inside this community and from this community to the outside world with that kind of connectivity? That's what Google wants to try and figure out."

If San Luis Obispo were successful in its application, the community would become known as of the most wired and interconnected in the nation. This would be a powerful economic development branding element and could attract entrepreneurs, which is essential to our vision of growing more meaningful, head-of-household jobs.

The City agrees that this initiative could be a great potential opportunity and is also exploring the possibility of making San Luis Obispo a site for this fiber optic trial. Already, the idea to bring the initiative to SLO has spread online.