The Federal Communications Commission had begun work on a National Broadband Plan, which will benefit citizens and businesses. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act called upon the FCC to submit a national broadband plan to Congress by February 17, 2010 that discusses broadband deployment, adoption, affordability and the use of broadband in relation to education, energy, efficiency, and public safety.

Julius Genachowski, Federal Communications Commission chairman explained at the recent opening broadband workshop that broadband “is to us what railroads, electricity, highways and telephones were to previous generations—a platform for commerce, for democratic engagement, and for helping address major national challenges.”

The plan is to reduce the Digital Divide and bring broadband to nearly 40 percent of Americans not yet served by broadband to the home. In some areas, this figure is as high as 60 percent. The National Broadband Plan will also create jobs, spur innovation and promote competition. 

Technology vendors and service providers have the opportunity to unite the country in this initiative; one which is easily understandable by citizens, the press and legislators and bring the benefits of technology to underserved and un-served areas.  Who knows? Perhaps broadband can be for the early 21st century what putting a man on the moon was in the 1960s—a point of patriotism and progress for the country.

Earth Day has come and gone, but at Vantage we definitely made the most of the special day. In fact, we started celebrating a week early and how else, but with a party! Actually, 2 parties in 2 cities. On Thursday, April 16 we brought together about 200 business, government and media folks for the Vantage Communications Bi-coastal Earth Day event. Offices in both San Francisco and Orlando celebrated Earth Day with networking, food and giveaways – with all proceeds benefiting the United States Green Building Council.

In San Francisco, at a special one night opening of the Autodesk Gallery, Vantage gathered with influential green individuals to network and share insights. The evening also featured a panel with speakers from the USGBC-NCC, San Francisco’s Green Building, Forbes Magazine, Autodesk, and Serious Materials who discussed “Sustainable Innovation in a Recession.” In case you missed the live streaming of the event, you can watch it here:

Vantage Communications Earth Day Panel

The Orlando green community gathered at the local Taste Restaurant, where a good time was had by all with drinks, savory appetizers and giveaways from local businesses and green companies. An evening of networking included guests from the local USGBC, Green Cities and CoLab Orlando.

For all who joined us, we hope the evening was as fun and meaningful for you as it was for us in making it happen. You also can see photos from the evening here.

Update: Thanks to everyone who participated and viewed our speaker panel discussing “Sustainable Innovation in a Recession” via our Live Stream and at our San Francisco Earth Day event on April 16, 2009 .  We will be posting videos of the panel discussion here on Vantage Points. So please bookmark and check back.

More details can be found here: Celebrating Earth Day – Vantage Style

Live streaming video by Ustream

Why should the media and bloggers have a monopoly in recapping last year’s events? Though most Vantge Points posts are about thought leadership, we want to get in on the action too. So here is the very first Vantage Communications Year in Review.

Despite a very challenging economic environment, it was a year of continued success for our clients as well as for our agency. Some of the 2008 highlights are recapped below: 

1. We re-launched the company as Vantage Communications with a new website and our Vantage Points Blog. 

2. 10 new clients joined our client family. This reflected strong growth in green building PR and social media.  We are also proud that 10 of our clients have been with us for over 2 years.

3. Multiple clients received recognition as recipients of elite awards including Wall Street Journal’s 2008 Technology Innovation Award,Aspen Institute for Innovation in Energy Conservation, Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 50, Light Reading’s Leading Lights Award, eWeek Top 10 Products of 2008 and Popular Science Best of What’s New.
4. Vantage Communications also cleaned up on awards with the Stevie Award for Best PR Campaign and finalists for Platinum PR Award, Sabre Award and Stevie Award for Best Company.
5. Our clients were consistently featured in top tier publications. Please check out our best of coverage which includes Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, NY Times, Fast Company, Forbes, CBS, ABC, FORTUNE, WIRED, and USA Today.
6. As an innovative communications company, we’ve truly embraced social media. Our staff is active on Facebook and Twitter and 18 people contributed to Vantage Points.
7. Vantage expanded its client services to include more new media capabilities such as video production & editing and audio podcast support, completing several client projects during the year.
8. Company-wide Vantage has added new green initiatives across its offices. It is important to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

We are very proud of our 2008 accomplishments. We could not have achieved what we did without the support of our clients and the members of the Vantage ecosystem. For this, we are truly thankful. We have more innovations in store for 2009. But for now, here’s a toast to our clients, our team, our partners, and the new companies we’ll partner with in 2009!

There’s no question video is infiltrating every last inch of both the tech industry and our online worlds. Here at Vantage we have been filming, editing and posting videos for our clients for almost two years- discussing a product, defining tech terms, or talking about a successful case study. One example of an effective client video we produced is below.

How Does RFID Work?

In the first month of this video’s posting on YouTube it was watched over 80 times. That is a lot when you consider that all 80 of those people had to specifically search out the tags we included.

So, what’s the next step? Where will online video take us next? I predict that more and more of your standard news found on the web will take the form of short informational videos. Why, you ask? Here’s the rundown:

We attend many tradeshows throughout the year for our clients. Standard PR to gain coverage at these shows includes getting a hold of the press list as soon as it’s available and pitching for meetings via email and phone. If they’re lucky, companies get a few feature articles out of the deal, but more often than not the reporters are so overwhelmed with the amount of news coming out at the shows that they end up frantically throwing together ‘news roundups’ of all the announcements and exhibitors get somewhat lost in the mix.

This year, things have taken quite a turn. We arranged over 20 video shoots for our clients at Interop and NXTcomm, which is significant considering the number was ZERO in 2007. Some reporters are now doing nothing but filming executives all day, every day of the conference. This has resulted in fantastic coverage for our clients with minimal work involved on the reporter’s end. As media continues to evolve to meet changing demands of online consumers, new opportunities correspondingly emerge; video is just the beginning.

In 2004, the Athens Olympic Games broke global viewing records. According to an article posted on the Beijing 2008 website, the 2004 games were broadcasted on over “300 channels to 220 countries and territories…an increased number of 3.9 billion people accessing the images of the Games.” It was the strongest Olympic broadcast ever.

And this August – four years later – viewers all over the world will again tune in to watch the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. But, where else will viewers be tuning in to watch the games?

Take four years of growth and development in technology, and one can only begin to imagine the impact technology will have on this year’s Olympic Games.

Created in 2005, YouTube was not around during the Athens Olympic Games. But this time around, it’s already making an impact during the preliminary games. More people have access to the events through YouTube, as well as several other video sharing websites, and can watch their favorite events from anywhere, at their convenience. Chris Pirillo, recently posted an entry asking readers to view a video and see how one Olympic qualifier was “robbed” in her qualifying event, and asked fellow readers/viewers to take action. This is just one example of the impact these websites may have on the Olympics.

Another positive impact technology will have on the Games?

Just this week, Verizon and NBC Universal announced their agreement to deliver NBC Universal’s coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games across all three of three Verizon platforms – TV, broadband and wireless. Verizon will offer video-on-demand programming via its FIOS TV service and live web streaming of more than 20 different sports. Verizon’s Wireless VCast mobile video services will offer daily Olympics highlights, breaking news, results and medal standings and related content.

And AT&T also announced several music acts, including Sheryl Crow and Nelly, who are recording exclusive tracks for the Games. AT&T will offer these songs for download only during the Olympics, and all proceeds will benefit Team USA.

The opportunities are endless. Technology is sure to make an impact on this year’s Olympic Games. So no matter where you are, you can join in the fun and get pumped up for the competition! Now… where will you be keeping in tune with this year’s Olympics?!