From Tech-Driven Infrastructure to Innovation Exchange - ETI
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August 29, 2023

From Tech-Driven Infrastructure to Innovation Exchange

The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.

Joe Coldebella:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I’m your host, Joe Coldebella, and we are in historic downtown Wilson, North Carolina at the 2023 Gig East Event. Gig East is an annual event that exists to bring together local entrepreneurs, business owners, community partners, and industry thought leaders. Joining us today is Will Aycock, the general manager for Greenlight Community Broadband, and Rebecca Agner, Communications and Marketing Director for the City of Wilson. Both have been heavily involved with Gig East since its inception. Will, Rebecca, welcome to the Broadband Bunch.

Rebecca Agner:

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Will Aycock:

Yes, thank you.

Introducing the Innovators Driving Wilson’s Technological Evolution

Joe Coldebella:

Hey, it’s been a great event. I would definitely love to dig into that. But before we begin, I would love it if you could just share with our audience just a little bit of background about yourself.

Will Aycock:

My name’s Will Aycock. I’m the Greenlight General Manager here in Wilson, North Carolina. Greenlight is our community’s fiber-to-the-home network that is owned and operated by the city of Wilson. We’ve been in operation since 2008. And really, you know, our purpose is to support the economic health of Wilson to help improve the quality of life of our citizens and really enhance the way we are delivering all our city services. So, in a nutshell, that’s sort of my role here in the community.

Joe Coldebella:

Awesome. Rebecca.

Rebecca Agner:

And I’m Rebecca Agner. I’m the communications and marketing director for the City of Wilson. I have the pleasure of supporting all aspects of city government here, working with the Mayor and city council, with the city leadership, and also supporting all of the departments, including Greenlight, as well as Wilson Energy, which has both electric and natural gas. I work with all public works, police, and fire in the city of 50,000 plus and growing every day. I’m helping to support economic development and our downtown development as well. I am a North Carolina native, but relatively new to Wilson in the grand scheme of things. I have been here for about seven and a half years.

Tracing Wilson’s Legacy of Community Investment and Foresight

Joe Coldebella:

Awesome. I would love it if we could unpack the story of the City of Wilson. Obviously, someone had some foresight in the early 2000s to realize that there’s this train coming down the tracks. And we need to get on it.

Will Aycock:

Sure. So to unpack that, we’ve got to go back a good bit further than the early 2000s. I’m going to take you to the 1800s. Wilson is a community that has always believed in self-reliance and has believed in investing in itself to facilitate growth to make sure our community is not left behind. And that’s a real theme that ties together all that we do, making sure that we don’t get left behind as a community. So, way back in the late 1800s, there was the realization that this is a great agricultural market. There was a lot of tobacco being bought and sold or being grown at that time, but not necessarily bought and sold here in Wilson. So the leaders at the time said, “What do we need to do to develop the market so we can have more pounds bought and sold here in Wilson?”

And that was several things. One was an investment in public infrastructure to power the downtown central business district. Part of that was actually creating a tax incentive district there to encourage the development of warehouses and then also going out and recruiting from another community an auctioneer, a marketperson who was an expert in tobacco markets to help grow Wilson.

Wilson’s Pursuit of Technological Excellence and Economic Inclusion

And from that effort, we became known as the world’s greatest tobacco market and had more pounds of bright-leaf tobacco sold here in Wilson, North Carolina than anywhere else in the world for many, many years and perhaps even today. It is certainly still a major part of our economy. So when you get forward to the early 200s, the story is very similar. We are looking ahead. What is the infrastructure that’s going to be required to make sure that we continue to grow and prosper and that our citizens and our businesses are not left behind?

And our mayor and council, city manager, and other leaders, really realized that broadband is the next big thing from an infrastructure perspective. If you’re going to be talking about broadband, they realized that we need to put in the best infrastructure that is the most futureproof that we can put in place today. And so they quickly realized that we needed to build a fiber-to-the-home network. So really this was about not being first, although we were in North Carolina’s first-gigabit city, it was very much about making sure that we weren’t left behind. And what you can see in the marketplace today is that there are many communities that still, these 15-, 20 years later, don’t have the level of infrastructure we have here in Wilson. So through our efforts to not be left behind, we did find ourselves somewhat on the front edge of technology infrastructure.

Wilson’s Community Spirit Fuels Fiber-to-the-Home Success

Joe Coldebella:

You know, that’s great. You’re a city of 50,000 folks, and I look at the city of Wilson and the city of Chattanooga as sort of great North stars to use as sort of like a pilot fish for other communities. But just out of curiosity, when you first started down this journey, was everybody on board? Or were people like, “What are you doing? You’re wasting money.”

Will Aycock:

There were certainly some naysayers and doubters certainly. You know, building a fiber-to-the-home network is a complex and expensive task. So there was a lot that had to go into the planning, the preparation, the business plans, and securing the staffing. But by and large, what we find in Wilson is that our citizens, our community, believe in itself. And so there’s a lot of support for these efforts within the community.

There were some businesses who were afraid that somehow this might undermine some of their operations, and some of their business opportunity. Those few businesses are now probably our biggest cheerleaders. In fact, their business is growing more because they were able to migrate from legacy wireless ISP services to being cloud service providers, and managed services, really expanding the market opportunity. In fact, they are the ones that are really championing our continued expansion because the more we expand, the more we’re really helping their market opportunity.

How Gigabit Service Fuels Wilson’s Business Landscape

Joe Coldebella:

That’s an interesting point as well because you know, everyone’s talking about fiber-to-the-home, but I think in terms of gigabit service, high-speed internet, it’s really the business case that really drives things forward. Is that what you’re finding out?

Will Aycock:

Absolutely. As you move from an entertainment service that is the consumption of content to a utility service that is really the transmission of information bidirectional, you know, that high speed, low latency, symmetrical service is what really makes the difference for a lot of the business community. These days the business community is working from home very much too. So being able to have that same quality of infrastructure and service at a home in Wilson as compared to maybe only being in the corporate parks and things in some other areas, and in the past here, has really, I think, given us a leg up in this community.

Bridging Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Wilson’s Visionary Path

Joe Coldebella:

Awesome. So you guys are doing these great things in terms of creating infrastructure, and then in 2016, you started Gig East.

Rebecca, I was hoping that you could sort of unpack that for our listeners in terms of what it is and the inspiration behind it.

Rebecca Agner:

Sure. This idea of self-reliance in this community as Will described is centuries old. It started out by becoming this tobacco market that was the world’s greatest tobacco market, and it moved forward to us creating our own electric system in the 1890s, which was one of the first systems in North Carolina. Then fast forward to the natural gas system that came online, I believe, in the ‘50s or ‘60s to support our growing industrial base that we have here.

We actually have one of the largest industrial bases in eastern North Carolina. I believe it’s the largest outside of one of the other, much larger community. And so then fast forward a few decades from there, and then we ended up creating a 75-year water supply with Buckhorn Reservoir. And so this is very much a tradition. Then fast forward to Green Light, and then fast forward to Gig East, which was our kind of stake in the ground towards technology and innovation, entrepreneurship, and what we saw as a vision for downtown Wilson that could be a bridge between the rapidly growing Research Triangle Park region with Eastern North Carolina.

Connecting Wilson’s Innovation Ecosystem with the World

We like to say that we see Wilson as the easternmost point of the RTP region and then this westernmost point of pushing into Eastern North Carolina where we can be a true exchange as we sit in the Gig East Exchange. We can be a place for the exchange of information and help people meet them where they are, and then pull that technology component of the RTP region, which really connects us to the whole world economy. So pull that in right here in Wilson. I joined the city of Wilson at the end of 2015. And when Will told me the story of Greenlight, I had heard it before, but never quite in the words of someone who had been here since the very beginning. It’s a very compelling story. And at that point, we were looking at approaching a decade of service.

They were serving much of the community and had built out the network. Now we’re growing it and kind of trying to figure out what the next step would be. When I joined the city, we were fortunate to have just been brought into an initiative called Innovate NC that was part of the Institute for Emerging Issues with NC State. As part of that, we were traveling across the state and learning from cities that were much larger than us, and really, frankly farther along on their journey toward this innovation ecosystem. And we thought, what do we need to do here in Wilson? We were just entering a period of rapid downtown development. We have a large arts park, the Vila Simpson Whirligig Park. That was kind of a hole in the ground at that, at that point with I think one whirligig on it.

Pioneering Gig East Summit

And we knew all this was coming. We had one of the tobacco warehouses being renovated, but again, it was in the very early stages. And we were trying to figure out what exactly we should do. And so we talked with the other communities. Wilmington was one of the communities that was part of this group with us, this cohort.

And we spoke with, you know, he stays connected sometimes, but he kind of was the inspiration for all of Gig East. They were just much farther along on their journey in Wilmington. We asked for some advice because they have a film festival there called Cucalorus, and then they have a business component that wraps around that festival called Cucalorus Connect. So we found out about that, and we were like, what can we do to try to have some kind of initiative like this? And the advice that we got back was, “Do something, start somewhere.”

And so then we started planning our first Gig East Summit. We had no name for what any of this would be called. We came up with Gig East; we came up with the logo; and we just kind of, I say stake in the ground because that’s very much what it was.

From Humble Beginnings to Phenomenal Growth

Joe Coldebella:

One of the things that I think I really important that you said there was, “We did something.”

And I think that that’s what’s happening right now in some communities is that there’s sort of paralysis by analysis. It’s like, there’s all this money coming forward, and there are all these different things that we can do, but then what do we do? And then they are sort of a deer in headlights. But that’s great that you guys said, “Listen, we need to do something.”

So in 2016, right? That was the first event. And so now it’s sort of evolved into what it was yesterday, which was just a phenomenal event. Has it been growing and you’re getting speakers? How has it evolved?

Rebecca Agner:

Yeah, so the first one was November 4th, 2016. And we were able to partner with Barton College and with the Wilson Economic Development Commission to put that first event on. They had been holding an event for years at the campus of Barton that was a business event, and they were looking for the next evolution of that. And then we came on the scene, and we met with them. And we were able to do that in partnership. So it was the city of Wilson with Gig East and those other two entities the first year. We were able to bring in a national speaker who had his own following and was able to attract an audience. So we put the invitations out; we put a great program together. I believe it was a half-day, a 9:00 to 12:00 kind of event.

Growing Pains and Resilience

Joe Coldebella:

You know, one of the things that I took away from yesterday, and just talking to both of you right now, is how good your community is at collaboration. It’s not just one person doing it, but it’s like, “Hey, let’s bring in this person. Let’s bring in this group here.”

And then you sort of get like everyone rowing in the same direction. So kudos to you guys for that.

Rebecca Agner:

That’s very much how Wilson is. And yesterday we had tables of folks that are there just cheering us on and have been part of this since the beginning. And even in 2016 when we really couldn’t even explain what exactly we were going for, there were so many organizations, whether it was Wilson County, Wilson Forward, or even the leaders of the YMCA and the United Way and Wilson Arts and all of those groups that are always just ready to be supportive. It’s a great community.

Empowering Community Through Tech

Joe Coldebella:

It really is. And I thought you did a phenomenal job in terms of the speakers. Your keynote speaker was Stefan Youngblood. I got a chance to speak with him yesterday and have him on the podcast. And it was interesting. When he asked the folks about AI in terms of like, here’s Tech Forward people. And you could tell that people were taking notes and learning. It truly is an exchange. It must be super gratifying for you guys when you bring someone on like that and it’s just such a positive experience.

Will Aycock:

Very much so. You know, one of the things that I think I’m proudest of about the Summit is exactly what you’ve said. We’re able to bring really tech-forward emerging and evolving topics to the community. And when you get that feedback, and the thing I heard yesterday and in years past, I can’t believe we’re having this discussion in Wilson, North Carolina. Yeah, I can’t believe that we are here today seeing these things. But, again, when you think about what our purpose is, it all lines up. We don’t want to be left behind. So if we don’t want our community and our citizens to be left behind, then we have an obligation to have these emerging issues brought forward in the community to begin the conversation and to get people thinking about it. And yesterday was just such a great example of exactly that occurring.

Bridging the Gap for All Community Members

Joe Coldebella:

The great thing I really liked about it is that it sort of was a, as a visual, a barbell where you had the Riot folks, the tech-forward people. But then also you made sure that you’re not going to leave folks behind. And then you had the different panels in terms of just bringing community digital literacy to folks as well. So that is just awesome and something that I think needs to be highlighted. The worst thing is for people to feel as though they got left behind, so you guys are doing awesome.

Rebecca Agner:

That’s one of our goals. And back in 2016, that was the first thing we said. We wanted to bring new technology to Wilson so they could hear it here first. And then also you could hear it along with your friends and your colleagues and your coworkers so that you could go back and talk about it and learn as things evolve.

We have a stellar history of keynote speakers, and we invite them back every year. We really have great alumni of our keynote speakers, so Will and I never stop thinking about next year’s summit and the year after that summit. And so I think it was right around the holidays, you know, chat GTP came on the scene in December of 2022. And I remember there was either a text or an email about the time that we should have been taking a break that was like, this is what we need to talk about. We need to talk about blah, blah.

From Emergence to Ongoing Dialogue

And whichever one of us started that, the other one was like, yes, you know, immediately. And how that has evolved over the last six months is amazing. So we were fortunate to find Stefan and then to have him not only be well-versed in it from the beginning when this hit us just a few months ago but that ongoing conversation as that, as you know, Chat GPT hit, and now there are so many different options with AI and so many different considerations, the ethics, the concerns. And he was able to hit all of that.

So we always want to bring an idea. We couldn’t get the summit here fast enough because things were changing so much in the field of AI. But that’s what we want to do is to start the conversation here. And then we do have other events throughout the year, smaller events to continue those conversations.

Shifting Perspectives from Fear to Dialogue

Joe Coldebella:

Yeah. It’s amazing how it was released in November, and, I think, it was the fastest to a hundred million users ever. And yesterday we were talking about how it really was, we think, a seminal moment. There’s a tectonic shift that’s going to be occurring. And people need to get educated. If nothing else, explore it; understand it. You know, you can’t think that everything is getting sent to servers in China. You’ve got to make sure that you’re educated because this actually might help you.

Rebecca Agner:

Absolutely. One of my coworkers said yesterday, as we were debriefing, “This is the first time I felt optimistic about using AI.”

And we had our coffee conversation this morning talking about, I mean, we’ve already been using it in the communications department because it’s really just smart and efficient. It’s a tool. Everything needs to be refined; everything needs that kind of human touch to it. But it’s a really great way to start. But the national conversation lately has been more like doomsday or more negative around that, I think Stefan brought a perspective that it’s not necessarily something that we should fear. It’s something that we should just be talking about. And that’s the whole goal of the summit.

Navigating the AI Landscape

Joe Coldebella:

Right. There’s a great cartoon of a guy on a bus. One is a dark cloud, and the other is sunshine. And one is like, “Oh my God, AI is going to take my job.” Then the other one says, “AI is going to help me with my job.”

It’s all about perspective. It’s how you frame it. I’m super excited about it. I think that it’s a great tool. But I think you made a fantastic point, Rebecca. The idea is that there needs to be an end user at the end. It needs to help you. And that way you become an editor or as you know, what he was saying was a prompter, which is a word I’d never heard before. And so we talked about that as well.

Will Aycock:

Yeah. I don’t think any of us know exactly what the future holds, but we do know if we’re not engaged if we’re not paying attention if we don’t educate ourselves if we don’t develop some degree of comfort with these emerging technologies, that that’s not going to be good for us as individuals and good for us as a community. You know, awareness, so we could be part of that conversation as the future unfolds, is what’s so very important.

Creating a Hub for Innovation and Collaboration

Joe Coldebella:

That’s a super great point. I think it’s interesting because when you hear about it and think about it, you’re intimidated by it. And then you experience it and you’re like, “Oh, this is great.” So take that step, move forward and if by chance you’re a little intimidated, there are sometimes places that are created that allow you to go there and learn about that.

So I’d love to segue into what happened in 2020 with the Gig East Exchange. We’re at the event, or we’re in the space right now. And it’s awesome. I live in New York City, and this is very reminiscent of some of the places that I’ve gone to or worked. The vibe is great.

Rebecca Agner:

Yeah. So the beginning of Gig East was the summit. And then after a series of events, we had no home, so we were just going around. At the time, we had one meeting space that was a brewery that we could meet at. And that has now grown to where we would have many different options for places that we could meet downtown. But at the time, that’s where we were.

And so that’s what we did for several years, and we had a dream of having a coworking space. But it did seem like a distant dream. So we were just kind of content to be like this effort to bring people together and to talk about technology, innovation, entrepreneurship. That all was catapulted just a couple of years later, when we had a team that was part of Innovate NC that included our city manager, Grant Goings, along with Paula Benson with Wilson Ford and Gary Daynes with Barton.

A Home for Innovation

I’m not sure what sparked it, but they had an opportunity to write a grant to Golden Leaf. We were funded to be able to renovate a space or to be able to have a space for our coworking for Gig East to have a home. And we are eternally grateful for them. It was a lot of work, and we’re eternally grateful to the board and to the director of Golden Leaf for taking a chance on us.

They have come back and looked at the space, and I think they’re proud of their investment in it now. But that came through in 2018 after some starts and stops. We knew we wanted to be downtown, but there were lots of buildings to choose from at the time. Again, now it’d be a much harder proposition and much more expensive. But we moved into the building that we are in right now, which I believe was a former furniture store.

Will Aycock:

It had been many things over the years, but originally, I believe, it was a furniture store.

Rebecca Agner:

At the time, it was a storefront church and had pews, and I’m not sure what the last time that they had actually had a service here. It smelled like my grandmother’s basement, and we could only be there for a few minutes at a time. You could smell the mold. But now, we love for everybody to come to see it. You can see the inside and the outside at gigeast.com. So it was maybe a six-month renovation project. We would’ve been ready to open in April of 2020, which was a great time to open a co-working space. Right?

Joe Coldebella:

You guys just have been like, why?

Fostering Innovation and Growth at Gig East Exchange

Will Aycock:

And that reminds me that we launched Greenlight in March of 2008. There was a little event happening then too. So our timing is impeccable in Wilson, but we manage to make it work somehow.

Joe Coldebella:

Right. But you know what it is though? When you start at the bottom, there’s no place else to go but up. So it’s great. Just walking around the space, it is vibrant. There are great areas for collaboration. And you know, I sound like a broken record, but it’s like, this is what communities that are smaller should be doing that want to be tech-forward just creating these little areas like this.

Will Aycock:

Yeah. And you know, the best thing about this space is that we’ve graduated people out. There are three buildings that are now renovated in downtown Wilson that were renovated by folks who graduated from this space and grew out of there. And I know it’s well over a hundred jobs that have been created in the community by our graduates out of the space.

We’ve had something north of $12 million in funding that has been secured by people who have gone through the various programs. We have supported, at this point, more than 40 entrepreneurs through the accelerator that we put on here that Riot puts on here for us. And the best part about that is that what you’re seeing is sort of the influx from other regions of true technology startups.

Then we’re seeing some local businesses who are kind of coming the other way, coming from a more traditional business model and pivoting into a more technological focus. And, you know, all of that is why we have this building to create that opportunity for people to grow up and grow out and create opportunity here in Wilson.

Accelerating Innovation Through Collaboration

Joe Coldebella:

That awesome. That answers the critical but simple question of “why”. Why do we do any of this stuff? Those examples are phenomenal. This is why we do it. So just in terms of the big picture, you want both ways. You want to bring in business from other parts of either North Carolina or other parts of the world, and then you also want to do it homegrown, which I think is a phenomenal way to move forward.

Will Aycock:

Yeah. And that’s the exchange, right? Bring people together and have them exchange knowledge and ideas.

Rebecca Agner:

And the accelerator program does that as well. Riot attracts companies from all over the world with its stellar program. What they’re able to offer to startups attracts talent from all over the world. But they, for the Wilson Rap, which is a riot accelerator program, have a bit of a bias towards local companies. So local companies must meet the criteria. They must be a good fit for the program, but they have more of a chance to get into the program.

It is competitive. It’s not just sign up and go. And we’ve had several Wilson area companies. We have one just a couple of streets over, Samora Naturals. She started making natural hair care products out of her kitchen and was ready for a bigger venture. She was accepted as part of the first Wilson Rap, which again, started right before the pandemic. Originally, she was planning to just have a store where she sold locally. That was really what she expected her market to be. She had to pivot as part of the pandemic, and Riot helped her scale up and create — I’m sure she had a website —  the whole e-commerce site to get comfortable with that. And then figuring out how all of that worked. And now I believe 80- to 90% of her bill business is online now.

Balancing Growth and Community Character

Joe Coldebella:

Embracing the digital economy. It’s so important, right? Especially for the smaller cities, smaller towns, and smaller communities, because of the internet, you can be a global business, which is just absolutely phenomenal. So you offer infrastructure and quality of life. It’s a super compelling story. I mean, just look at New York City post-pandemic. They’ve lost 5% of their population. You look at San Francisco folks that want to leave in droves. They’ve got a commercial real estate crisis. I mean, do you want all to come to Wilson?

Will Aycock:

I can’t say that we want them all to come to Wilson. But, you know, we want Wilson to be healthy, and we want to welcome new residents. You know, it is very important to maintain the character of the community, to develop responsibly, and not lose the things that have made us so successful to date. But certainly, we are seeing growth. You can’t walk in any direction from this facility and not see construction and renovation underway. But I think it’s important to realize that there are many communities that have these opportunities. And there’s an opportunity for everyone. This is not a zero-sum game or a competitive thing. This is about each community figuring out what their niche is and working to make themselves sustainable.

Empowering Communities with Connectivity

Joe Coldebella:

Yeah. I talked briefly with someone yesterday. She was from a neighboring county, and she sort of whispered to me, “I’m so jealous of Wilson. We have Internet.” But then she gave a kind of stinky look. Like, we have internet, but we don’t really have internet.

People need to have that champion to take up the gauntlet, so to speak, and say, “Hey, listen, we can do this. We can use Wilson as our guide, but we can do this.”

Will Aycock:

Yeah. And what we would encourage everyone to do is to figure out the path that works best within their community. You don’t have to do exactly what we’ve done and the way we’ve done it, but you have to do something. You know, you have to be intentional and proactive in making sure that you’re meeting the needs of your citizenry and creating that opportunity for growth, especially in smaller communities.

From Uncertainty to Success Stories

Rebecca Agner:

Yeah. I think you have to do something. I credit Shawn in Wilmington for telling us to do that many years ago. He probably doesn’t even remember that he said that. We decided it was okay to take that first step, and we didn’t know where the path was. I mean, if 10 people had showed up to that first summit — we worked it so hard, there was no way that was going to happen. But if that would’ve happened, we would’ve stayed on the journey. And my favorite moment yesterday was when Brandon who was the winner of the pitch competition last year with Trakid, it’s T-R-A-K-I-D. He was part of the 2020 Rap Wilson Cohort, and he told his story about their solution for lost children in parks, amusement parks, zoos, and large spaces.

That’s what their solution was. And he, I think, had a really great business idea and was ready to scale. Every person, every organization that was in his target market all of a sudden was closed down after the pandemic hit. And he thought he was done. He didn’t know what to do next. But again, Riot was able to help him as part of being part Rap, was able to help him pivot and move into some different business models. And he was back on the stage yesterday as a presenter as part of our breakout sessions.

Building Lifelong Connections and Transforming Lives

Now, I think he said that he had just gotten another $1.5 million worth of funding in their latest funding round. They got the biggest contract they’ve ever had with the City of Raleigh with Poland Park. They’re doing great. I’m not sure how many employees they have. But he said, “I will never forget Wilson, because this is the place. Whenever I felt like my business was over, and I thought that my idea was gone and all my money was gone, and here I was able to reinvent myself.”

And he’ll never lose his connection to Wilson. And it’s about more. I think as you talk to us, you realize it’s about this is our passion. And we have so many people around us and standing behind us who feel the same way. And we’re not just looking at, okay, $1.5 million. We can add that to the list of funding that people have received. No, this is about Brandon. And this is the fact that Brandon’s life was changed when he was here. He’ll never lose his connection to Wilson because he knows we support him, and he’ll always be part of the Gig East family. He’ll always be part of the Wilson family.

Community Partnerships

Joe Coldebella:

Yeah, it’s great. The sponsor of the podcast is ETI Software. And as I was prepping for this, I was talking to some of the guys. I don’t remember if it was Brad Hine or Jeff Boozer, but they were like, “Wilson, man, that is a city of all-stars. Everyone is just so nice. Everyone is so accommodating. You’re going to have a great time.”

And I really have, and it’s a great event.

Will Aycock:

Well, thank you so much. We’re just so thankful for all the sponsors. ETI sponsored the event yesterday along with Calix, Momentum Telecom, and Lightspeed, all of them. And it shows the partnerships are so important, you know, bringing together not just people within the community, but across our whole network to help support the growth and continued development of this community.

Connecting with Wilson’s Innovations

Joe Coldebella:

Awesome. So as we wind down here if folks want to learn more about either Greenlight or Gig East Exchange, where can they go?

Rebecca Agner:

So, Gig East has its own website. Sometimes with my Southern accent, my Wilson accent, you can’t hear, or understand what I’m saying. It’s G-i-g-E-a-s-t.com. That will tell you everything about the exchange. That’s where you can stay in touch with events. We do have the summit every year. We had lots of out-of-town folks. So we invite everyone to come back in for our 2024 summit. We’ll have that information out probably in about six months or so. Then the City of Wilson, any of the stories that we talked about, or this whole culture of self-reliance, you can read more about all of that on our website at wilsonnc.org. Or we’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can find us anywhere.

Will Aycock:

And if you’re thinking about moving to Wilson or coming to visit us you can also check Discover Wilson to learn more about many stories of good things happening here in our community.

Joe Coldebella:

Awesome. Thank you very much for your time and for all you guys do. We really do appreciate it.

Will Aycock:

Thank you.

Rebecca Agner:

Thank you.

Joe Coldebella:

All right, well that’s going to wrap up this episode of The Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.