Opening remarks. Thank yous. President of the Snelling Center, president of Champlain... lots of presidents in the room.  Pres. Champlain: "more than our fair share of nerds."  Contemplating keeping a running tally of the number of times the words "community" and "technology" are used.  Me: Building in "community" to the e-state initiative: isn't it baked in already in web 2.0?  Isn't web 2.0 inherently community-building?

Moderator introduced: Bill Romond. VT Dept. of Education.  "Building community" is the focus.  Digital natives define community as common interest - older people define it geographically.  Good point - not about tech as isolation-inducing tech - it's about bringing us together.  Opportunity to model for the entire country.  Ongoing working groups will come out of today plus a wiki.  Remote sites around the state.  Asking us to sign off from the net during keynotes for bandwidth considerations -- streaming to remote sites, etc.  Do they mean us live-bloggers too?

I'm realizing I'm going to need the electricity teat before long.  It's along day for the old Macbook.

Keynote: Lewis Feldstein, author: Better Together - Another president - NH Charitable Foundation.  New running tally: "digital natives."  Funny story about working for John Wayne.  "social capital" used as focus and proxy for "community."  The people we know -- the network -- has real value.  Economists can tell you the $ value of your rolodex.  best predicter of who got off welfare was if they knew somebody -- weak connections.  Being alone is deadly -- literally.  join an organization (where you weren't in one before) and your chances of dying that year go down 50%.

note: There's a spam adware window on the projected screen.

Feldstein: Examples of social capital: shared fridge at work, 4-way stop signs, paying taxes -- social capital of trust. compare any two communities for income and education level: community w/ greater social capital -- health is better, people are happier, safer, schools work better, local govt. is better, local economy is stronger and healthier.  In an unsafe neighborhood, increase police presence by 10% or social capital by 10%, latter is vastly better.  Same with schools. 

Data points!  VT rocks w/r/t social capital, natch.  Very few measures of a healthy community aren't tied to good social capital.

Good talk.  Feldstein is great.

Please note: I'm live-blogging today (5/29/08) from the Snelling Center for Government's day-long symposium: Fulfilling Vermont's E-state Potential: Building Community in a Connected Age.  Please excuse any typos or poorly-worded posts -- I'll fix them later. You can also follow my shenanigans on Twitter.