Lay of The Land

Joshua Edmonds, CEO of DigitalC.

The digital divide — this gap between people who have access to the internet and those who do not — is something you may have heard me bring up a few times before on this podcast — while not uniquely a Cleveland issue, Cleveland historically has been one of the most challenged connected large cities in the country with roughly 35% of Cleveland households lacking at-home internet access.

DigitalC, a non-profit based in Hough right in midtown Cleveland, was founded in 2015 to bridge this digital divide and build out a citywide network infrastructure to ensure an equitable digital future for Clevelanders. To this end, with the backing of the Ohio Department of Development’s BroadbandOhio, The City of Cleveland, and other funders — DigitalC has conditionally secured over $30mm in funding to offer affordable, fast, and reliable connectivity to the city.

Joshua came to lead DigitalC after serving as the first municipal Director of Digital Inclusion at the City of Detroit, where he established the Office of Digital Inclusion (ODI), developed Detroit’s first municipal fiber optic broadband plan, oversaw the deployment of over $70 million dollars to bolster digital equity in Detroit, testified in front of congress on the matter and established a 600+member public-private partnership to the same end.

Joshua had made his way to Detroit, originally by way of Cleveland after serving as a Digital Innovation Fellow at the Cleveland Foundation. He returned to Cleveland in 2022 to help DigitalC reorient around realizing its immediate goals of enrolling roughly 25,000 Cleveland households in Canopy, DigitalC’s $18 per month internet plan offering upload and download speeds of 100 megabits per second.

This was an awesome conversation! We cover internet connectivity as a basic human right, the history and evolution of the digital divide and digital redlining in Cleveland, the importance of digital literacy beyond mere access to the internet, how DigitalC plans to make this a reality, the opportunity for Cleveland to set an aspirational example for other cities on how to bridge the digital divide, and Joshua’s journey throughout all of this.


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LINKS:

Connect with Joshua Edmonds on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua234/en
Connect with Joshua Edmonds on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shua_dishon/

DigitalC: https://digitalc.org/
Canopy: https://digitalc.org/canopy
- Twitter: https://x.com/DigitalC_org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalc_org/

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-- AI-Generated Transcript --

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:00:00]:
What would happen if we built infrastructure that was built locally here that we can be proud of? We are the only Internet provider headquartered in Cleveland. So for us, being able to have this emphasis on local, local ownership, local operations, supporting local, What does that mean for the telecommunications market when all these decisions, usually from our competitors, are made at the shareholder national level, if not global. How does Cleveland fit into that? And we don't wait to try and figure that out. For us, we're taking a proactive stance and saying, Cleveland has this pervasive digital divide, and everybody here is affected by it. If I'm the small business owner who has a product online, and someone doesn't have Internet, they're not buying my business. So those are the things where it's like, no, we are all affected by the digital divide. Let us, Cleveland, figure out what works best for Cleveland. That's not to say that these other companies can't exist here or that we can't coexist.
I mean, I'm sure we will. But at the end of the day, our approach is, they are our competitors. And we are seeking to alter, if not totally disrupt, the way America thinks about telecommunications and that ground 0 is gonna be Cleveland, Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:11]:
Let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the lay of the land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with Joshua Edmonds, the CEO of Digital Sea. The digital divide, this gap between people who have access to the Internet and those who do not, is something you may have heard me bring up a few times before on this podcast. While not uniquely a Cleveland issue, Cleveland historically has been one of the worst connected large cities in the country, with roughly 35% of Cleveland households lacking at home Internet access. Digital Sea, a non profit which is based in Hough, right in midtown Cleveland, was founded in 2015 to bridge this very digital divide and build out a citywide network infrastructure to ensure an equitable digital future for all Clevelanders.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:18]:
To this end, with the backing of the Ohio Department of Development's Broadband Ohio, the City of Cleveland amongst other funders, Digital Sea has conditionally secured over $30,000,000 in funding to offer affordable, fast, and reliable connectivity to the city. Joshua came to lead Digital Sea after serving as the 1st municipal director of digital inclusion for the city of Detroit. Where he had established the office of digital inclusion, developed Detroit's first municipal fiber optic broadband plan, oversaw the deployment of over $70,000,000 to bolster digital equity in Detroit, testified in front of congress on that matter, and established a 600 plus member public private partnership to the same end. Joshua had made his way to Detroit originally by way of Cleveland though, after serving as a digital innovation fellow at the Cleveland Foundation, and returned to Cleveland in 2022 to help Digital Sea reorient around realizing its immediate goals of enrolling roughly 25,000 Cleveland households in Canopy. Digital sees $18 per month Internet plan, offering upload and download speeds of 100 megabits per second. This was an awesome conversation. Joshua and I cover Internet connectivity as a basic human right. The history and evolution of the digital divide and digital redlining in Cleveland, the importance of digital literacy beyond mere access to the Internet, how digital c plans to make all of this a reality, the opportunity for Cleveland to set an aspirational example for other cities on how to actually bridge the digital divide, and Joshua's journey throughout all of this.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:55]:
So please enjoy my conversation with Joshua Edmonds after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by John Carroll University's Boulder College of Business, widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the region. As we've heard time and time again from entrepreneurs here on Lay of the Land, many of whom are proud alumni of John Carroll University, success in this ever changing world of business requires a dynamic and innovative mindset, deep understanding of emerging technologies and systems, strong ethics, leadership prowess, prowess, acute business acumen, all qualities nurtured through the Bohler College of Business. With 4 different MBA programs of study spanning professional, online, hybrid, and 1 year flexible, the Bowler College of Business provides flexible timelines and various class structures for each MBA track, including online, in person, hybrid, and asynchronous, all to offer the most effective options for you including the ability to participate in an elective international study tour providing unparalleled opportunities to expand your global business knowledge by networking BOLAR MBA is formative and will help prepare you for this future of business and get more out of your career. To learn more about John Carroll University's Buller MBA programs, please go to business.jcu.edu. The Buller College of Business is fully accredited by AACSB International, the highest accreditation a college of business can have. Cool. Okay.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:31]:
So I was thinking about where to start, and it brought me back to when we had first met when I moved to Cleveland many years ago, and it was in the context of this this hackathon that you were organizing at the intersection of of civics, technology, and and housing. And so for me, as long as I have known you, well before even your time at Digital Sea, you have been interested in this intersection of those things, civic innovation, digital inclusion. And I would love to hear from you where that curiosity and passion stems from.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:06:07]:
Yeah. So the curiosity really stems from video games. You know, I grew up playing the Super Nintendo, and, obviously, a lot of the subsequent systems, you know, were part of the Halo generation. So, you know, technology was definitely a thing there. Even overlaying, like, sci fi, like, I've always just had, like, this affinity. And my dad also had brought us a, Windows 95 computer. And so I remember going to the library, getting computer games from there, bringing them back home, but also just exploring and playing around, like, the control panel, the terminal settings, like, just any and everything. It it just allowed us to foster a tap into this sense of ingenuity.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:06:48]:
And I would say, like, that love and that appreciation there is something that I want to share with others. I think that it really unlocked so many elements of me. The strategic thinking, the, you know, try, try again attitudes. I would say that a lot of those games, and you know this too, early on, they didn't have save points. If you if you died in that level, you'd go all the way back to the beginning. That's just that's how those games were. And so it taught you patience, it taught you mastery. And I would say that, you know, a lot of the skills that are fundamental for having success, even in technology, I credit that to video games.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:07:23]:
And, you know, I I want others to be able to experience that foundational, that creative ingenuity that I got to experience. I believe that's where the intersection between the appreciation for technology and broader civic understanding comes from.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:37]:
Yeah. I love I love that as the origin of a lot of your interest in this because I share the the sentiment that that video games are are quite underrated as, you know, not wasted time. They they you know, truly as something that opened, I think, the door to a lot of people to some really formative things and and learnings. And so they're they're quite powerful, and they they haven't I've never looked back on that time as waste of time because I I share that they've taught me a lot of things about the real world as well. So I I definitely wanna hear a bit more about your journey, but I also wanted to do a definition of of terms of sorts, specifically in the context of of Cleveland because I I think it'll just be topics that kinda permeate the the whole conversation. When most people think about human rights, I I don't think that the right to Internet access or the right to broadband or however you may phrase it is what might come to mind amidst, you know, all the fundamental human rights. But as our civilization and society has evolved, particularly, I think, highlighted by the situation many found themselves in over the pandemic, they are requisite considerations. And even organizations like the United Nations have come to recognize them now in the same elk as they do the rights to freedom of expression, education, and others.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:03]:
And so I wanted to just from your perspective, you know, understanding that even with the origins of your interest in the space stemming from video games, which, you know, maybe to many isn't a serious topic, how serious this actually is as just a a place to start from. Mhmm.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:09:23]:
Yeah. Well, you know, I I look at this, and I I go back to there's the late nineties, so we can stay in the nineties for a second.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:31]:
It'd be great, a great time.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:09:33]:
It'd be great time. Larry Irving, he's an incredible thought leader in the telecommunication digital equity space. And he was working for the Clinton administration And he saw the rollout of the Internet and he coined the term the digital divide. He said that, wow, the Internet is going to be incredible. But if we're not thoughtful about the way that we roll this out, this will exacerbate inequity. And if we look at the nineties, while we can look and see how incredible things were, the same houses that were redlined specifically in Cleveland are some of the same houses to this day that we see are digitally redlined as well. And so the implications from looking at revolutions in the past, or the lack thereof, that might have created the landscape of inequality and inequity in Cleveland are the same ones that then manifest themselves digitally. And if you look at how that works in real time, you can look at the advancements in health care and our reliance on technology.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:10:41]:
And if that same household is digitally red lined, that same household is not going to realize the full potential of healthcare. The same thing works or goes for workforce, it goes for education. The implications are numerous. And I think that for us, if we don't take the digital divide seriously, I mean, we already saw what happened in the nineties. Now we're seeing things like artificial intelligence take over, and that's that's not all bad. I'm not one of those AI dooms, you know, day type people. But I do think that what ends up happening, if we don't have a concentrated play to get people on the right side of the digital divide, Every advancement we make in technology, it's more work we're going to have to do on the back end. So the faster technology goes, if we're not connecting people at that same pace to said technology and empowering them to use it, we are now widening the disparity in these healthcare disparities, these workforce disparities, and become ever more present.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:37]:
So I I I I appreciate that you've called out, I think, this clear overlap in what would be the causal relationship between connectivity and all these other kind of fundamentally important things. I think even like education and poverty. And when you think about those in the context of Cleveland, while you could, you know, have a virtuous feedback loop, which I I think is is really at the heart of the work you're doing at at Digital Sea, and and we'll talk about that. But in Cleveland, that feedback loop has long been, I think, somewhat perniciously operating in reverse

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:12:14]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:14]:
Leaving us, you know, with the the fallout of the digital divide and digital redlining and kind of the the realities of Cleveland as a place where literacy really suffers, where poverty is is is at its worst.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:12:29]:
That's right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:29]:
And so I I yeah. I would love to, you know, continue to to set the stage here of, you know, what that problem space looks like here in Cleveland, the severity of of all these issues and how they relate to each other. How did we get to a position that we find ourselves in here in Cleveland and maybe as a backdrop to, you know, the origins of of Digital Sea and the work that they all are doing there?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:12:53]:
Yeah. So we look at, and it it's funny how people will define this because the people in the telecommunications space, when we say the term digital redlining, they don't like it. Naturally. They'll bring it up and they'll say, well, we made business decisions. And the business decisions that were made was someone looked at the city of Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs. And they said population A is more likely to pay their bills than population B. So therefore, we are going to outline population A with the latest and greatest. We're going to give them the technology advancements.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:13:35]:
They're going to pay it off over time. And then we'll reinvest in population B. The problem with population, that strategy though, is it doesn't have accountability publicly. So most people don't really even understand how telecommunications infrastructure works, how it's built, how essentially people are overpaying for obsolete infrastructure. I mean, you have cable and copper that was paid off years ago. I mean, some of this stuff is 100 year old infrastructure. And yet, in people's bill, they're still paying for infrastructure and service delivery. And see, those are the type of things that when you then look at housing insecurity, you then look at poverty and how perpetual billing can disenfranchise people, it starts to very clearly point to the need for an affordable and reliable solution.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:14:29]:
100 year old infrastructure and trying to compete with someone in a suburb who might have the infrastructure from 5 years ago, how that's not even comparable. At some point, we had to look at this and say, like, someone has to correct the telecommunications market. Cleveland is right for that opportunity, And that's where Digital Sea comes in. So we looked at the history of digital redlining. And in Digital Sea's origins, you know, we're a 501c3 non profit. More of a technology social enterprise. And that we are a full fledged internet service provider. When Digital Seed was first starting, we were prioritizing the areas that we deemed Digital Equity high need areas.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:15:12]:
And us deeming those areas, we looked at where the pervasive digital redlining occurred, and a number of other social economic factors. We said, we're going to prioritize those areas first. Typically in the business world, they would do the inverse. Right. They're gonna go where, again, all the other demographic factors look great to them, and that's gonna satisfy their shareholders. We are not a shareholder company. We have a non profit board. But we were committed to bridging the digital divide and we set out the mission to connect the unconnected.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:15:42]:
So our existence is in direct counter to what the business community has historically done through several iterations of redlining and digital redlining being the latest.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:54]:
So take us through your journey to to Digital Sea. How is it that you have found yourself as as the leader of this organization, and what, you know, kinda drew you specifically to to this cause?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:16:07]:
Yeah. So it's interesting how life works because when you retell it, it seems really linear. But when you're in it, it just seems like, I don't know, I'm just taking jobs. So, so it's funny, during college, I actually did work at Best Buy And I I worked alongside the Geek Squad at times. So I would take customer calls, and it was interesting at that time. I didn't really know much to do with it. You know, people would call and they would sometimes there'll be residents saying, hey. I gave you all my bank information, and you all said I was gonna get this $50 gift card.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:16:41]:
I didn't I never got my gift card. And I'm like, oh my gosh. No. We never asked for your gift your your bank account information. You got scammed. The amount of calls I would get from that was startling. I'm like, man, it was almost like one out of every 5 calls, it was a customer calling because they got scammed. And I didn't know what to do with that at that time.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:17:00]:
I just kinda said, okay. Go off to grad school, the term technology starts coming up more. And I'm like, that sounds interesting. So, again, it was just interesting. And, you know, did a little bit of work in grad school studying a few things. I actually studied Amazon's drone delivery program, so it's cool to see Walmart's doing that right now. But, separate from there, after graduation, you know, I was still figuring things out, did a fellowship in Denver that I really enjoyed. I actually studied aquaponics.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:17:28]:
So, like, I got to understand, like, oh, how technology can influence food security in underserved neighborhoods. So like, that was interesting. Again, interesting. It wasn't until I got back to Cleveland, I moved back for the Cleveland Foundation Public Service Fellowship, that I got to work on President Obama's Connect Home initiative within the Chicago Metropolitan Housing Authority. And that's where the housing hackathon happened. That's where, I would say, the stars align and I got it. I'm like, okay, I've been running away from this for so long, now I see the beginnings of purpose start to form, where all the things that I found interesting were aligned with the other things that naturally I was just more privy to or just I could excel in. So connecting with people, being able to be a spokesperson for an initiative, doing community and collaborative building, like, that started all through my time at the Housing Authority.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:18:20]:
And after that, I went to the Cleveland Foundation, got to work with Leon Wilson on some digital innovation initiatives and scaling Cleveland's digital equity ecosystem. Detroit plucked me. I spent 4 years working for the mayor. That's where I would say I really got my skills honed in this space. Even got up to the level where I was doing some Capitol Hill advocacy. And that's when I started seeing the full spectrum of opportunity. And during that time, raised a lot of money, was able to kinda keep the pulse on Detroit's digital equity scene as related to the pandemic. And it got a lot of visibility, and that's when Digital Sea reached out.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:18:59]:
They were doing a transition and said, hey, we want someone who can think big, who can think bold, audacious, but collaborative, and, you know, public sector leader. And at that time, that's exactly what I was, working in the public sector. So, Digital Sea called me and, I took the job November 1, 2022.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:19]:
Very exciting. We're obviously, you know, glad to have you back in Cleveland. I think perhaps one of the most interesting things about Digital Sea, and and we'll talk, I think, all about the initiatives you're working on today, But is is just kind of from the onset, the the framing of Internet as a utility. And with that, the relationship between public center and private sector offerings for this as a utility. And again, in contrast to, I think, what it used to be, which was not considered a utility and how it's become so ingrained and I think upstream even of a lot of the other fundamental rights that we think about. Because without Internet today, you don't even have opportunity to improve literacy or

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:20:11]:
Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:11]:
Hurting potential or a lot of the things that we hold to be, you know, these these kind of fundamental rights.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:20:17]:
That's right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:18]:
So how do you compete, you know, with the private sector? And if that's not the right framing of that question, like, how do you think about it and just the services offered?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:20:29]:
No. That no. That that's, like, absolutely right. So this is actually gonna be a unique call callback. And some people from my old days in Cleveland, my first stint, they're gonna laugh at this, but everyone knows that I was, like, infatuated with BlackBerry. And I actually had a BlackBerry up until the pandemic. And then I had a girlfriend at the time who just wore me down. I finally went team iPhone, but still a BlackBerry loyalist.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:20:52]:
And I'm bringing up BlackBerry because, one, the movie was incredible. So people haven't watched the BlackBerry movie. It it is a great movie. But they were able to be this perceivably inferior company at one point. And then they actually owned majority of the smartphone marketplace worldwide. But what's even more interesting is the way that Apple was able to then just take everything from them with an actual inferior product. The iPhone was not superior to the Blackberry from a technology standpoint. It was superior from a branded storytelling standpoint.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:21:32]:
And that's the thing that for us, yes, we are competing with all of the large companies on the Internet front. No. They don't look at us as a canoe next to a battleship. They look at us as a competitor in that field. And for us, it's a unique opportunity to disrupt the telecommunications landscape by investing differently, by thinking differently, by giving people a product that they legitimately deserve. There's so many people who can move to Cleveland who will choose provider 1 or provider 2. I'm not gonna name them because if I do, they're they're just gonna get visibility and I refuse to do that. But provider 1 and provider 2, they're gonna get named.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:22:11]:
They're just gonna select them. And it's not because they did a phenomenal job, they just got selected because people know them. And so at our point, it's like, okay, what happens if 1, people locally can get to know us, but 2, we can actually do a phenomenal job, we can stand behind our product. Or we can say, hey, we know perpetual billing is already something that that people struggle with, especially in a market where a third of Clevelanders are under banked. But what would happen if we actually locked in our prices and we didn't change them? That every 6 months your price didn't change? Or that we didn't have to lie to get someone a promotion, to get in on a promotional rate, and then we're going to double the cost of the service. Like, what happens if we just treated people transparently and fairly? How will they respond to that? In addition to that, what would happen if we built infrastructure that was built locally here that we can be proud of? We are the only Internet provider headquartered in Cleveland. So for us, being able to have this emphasis on local, local ownership, local operations, supporting local, what does that mean for the telecommunications market when all these decisions, usually from our competitors, are made at the shareholder national level, if not global? How does Cleveland fit into that? And we don't wait to try and figure that out. For us, we're taking a proactive stance and saying, Cleveland has this pervasive digital divide and everybody here is affected by it.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:23:32]:
If I'm the small business owner who has their product online, and someone doesn't have Internet, they're not buying my business. So those are the things where it's like, no, we are all affected by this digital divide. Let us, Cleveland, figure out what works best for Cleveland. That's not to say that these other companies can't exist here or that we can't coexist. I mean, I'm sure we will. But at the end of the day, our approaches, they are our competitors. And we are seeking to alter, if not totally disrupt, the way America thinks about telecommunications. And that ground 0 is gonna be Cleveland, Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:05]:
And what what have you learned? What what have you seen is at least, you know, the approaches you've taken so far, the learnings from them, and how you've positioned yourself to, I think, fundamentally, at least, alter the way people think about how this could work.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:24:23]:
Well, what we've learned at the onset is people here are incredibly skeptical. And that's not a bad thing. I mean, that's just the reality of the situation. I know I know where we are. And they're skeptical for a number of reasons, but I think that their skepticism is something that we had to explore. And what that looks like in real time is if we're connecting someone, and we tell them that the service is $18 a month and no qualifications, there's no way. No way. That's too good to be true.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:24:49]:
No. No. No. This this is what it is. No. No. No. You guys are just going to.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:24:53]:
So they they they oftentimes, people judge us from the experiences that they've had with others. Mhmm. And I I mean, I get it. Fair point. I I understand human nature. But at the same time, you know, we are now starting to see there's a block in Cleveland that we cover in Glenville. And we went door knocking there. It's a point of pride.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:25:13]:
Every home on that block has our service. And it looks great to see that. I mean, it's like 20 to 25 homes in a row that all of them are just green dots. And seeing those, like, that's beautiful to us. That there were that we're seeing we're we're able to overcome the skepticism, but it's loud. And I also would say that from a startup standpoint, because, you know, yeah, we're a 501c, we're a social enterprise, but we're also a startup. And from a start up standpoint, I would see that, you know, I think that we as a city, we have room for growth in the way that we support start ups here. I think that there's great visibility that we're able to achieve, there's great storytelling and support, but I would say that, as a community, we as a city need to figure out a way to encourage greater growth and greater startup support than what's out there right now.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:26:05]:
I think the skepticism can be very loud, and the support can be somewhat silent. That's not going to deter you from doing what you're doing, because this is purpose driven work, but it's a very astute observation that makes us reframe and ask the question, is Cleveland startup friendly?

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:23]:
Well, I've a few threads to pull on there, but I'll I'll start, you know, maybe with the the Stockholm Syndrome that I think most of us feel about Internet service providers and how we literally have become accustomed psychologically to coping with how poorly we are treated, that the the prospect of a good offering in the space puts people on guard. It's like, it sounds too good to be true. So how how do you actually offer such a a compelling service at such a good price?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:26:55]:
The beautiful thing is we won a, a pretty big contract with the city of Cleveland last year. It's a $20,000,000 contract. We received $10,000,000 from the state of Ohio, 20,000,000 from the Mandel Myers Foundation, and a $3,000,000 congressional earmark. So those big numbers, that that's how we can do it. But separately from there, we can do it because we're making a an estimate on market share and the total addressable market that we can disrupt. If we're able to get 15% market penetration in Cleveland, and that's 15% of people taking our service, Well, that actually, we're able to be sustainable as a company. So all we had to do was get 15%. And that's the part where it's interesting when you have a non profit doing this versus a for profit.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:27:39]:
Because a for profit, obviously, in the name, they're going to work and their metrics are going to make sense for a profit. A nonprofit, we have whatever profit we make, that goes back into the business who are sustainable. So to be a sustainable nonprofit, that is one of our goals. And so, if we wanted to make a profit, yeah, we'd offer greater, you know, packages. We wouldn't do $18. We'd do 50 or $60, or we would just lie en masse to people and then secretly over 6 month increments, just keep changing their bills. But since we're not motivated to do that, we don't need to do those tactics. And so, our whole thing is building out this model, making it sustainable, developing a product that people deserve, and then sticking with that.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:28:22]:
I'll be honest, the $18 a month product, that was developed before the pandemic. We're we are committed to that product for the next 5 years with the city of Cleveland, and then we'll adjust it for inflation after that. So in reality, for the almost a decade, our Internet will be roughly $20 or less. And I think that that's phenomenal to be able to say, because that's then gonna force everybody else to then acquiesce to Cleveland's rules. And so our whole thing is about getting the take rate that can sustain it, and making sure we're staying on the the the leading and bleeding edge as relates to our marketing, our advertising, and advancements in technology. The advancements in technology today on the wireless front allow us to think about this in a much more efficient way. And now that's not coming from me. I have one of the best chief operating officers in the game, Jose Valdez, brings more than 30 years of telecom experience and his mind is incredible.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:29:19]:
He used to work at these large cable companies, so he sees the way that they operate. And, you know, without him, you know, I there's no way we'd be in the position that we're in. So, I mean, I think when you say, well, how are we able to offer it? It's partly, 1, because we're not in it for a profit, and partly, 2, because we just have a phenomenal team and their expertise is unrivaled.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:40]:
How does this actually work from the the infrastructure and and technology side? You know, walk us through how the service is actually offered. You know, you mentioned, I think, in contrast to historically, you know, laying the pipes, laying the fiber. What does this look like today for Digital Sea? And, you know, when you think about where maybe some of this is going in the future with satellite offerings, How are you thinking about, you know, the the actual offering of of Internet access?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:30:11]:
So Internet is broken down number of ways. So we are a hybrid network. And we used to even have our own technology that we coined called Hybrid X6. I can explain that more later. It sounds really cool though. But the hybrid nature speaks to both wireless and wireline services. And what we mean by that in real time, our network runs on fiber. So there's existing fiber optic assets that run throughout the city of Cleveland and the greater Cleveland area.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:30:41]:
And those are primarily run by commercial Internet providers. So the big ones that we're typically used to subscribing at home, sometimes, but not all the time, are different from the commercial providers. So we're a residential provider, but Everstream, for example, and Crown Castle, those are 2 commercial fiber providers where they serve businesses but not homes. So what we'll do, is we negotiate an agreement where we will lease their fiber, and their fiber might run to a building. Very tall building. Let's say a building that has a 150 feet up. We will then put a tower on top of those. Not like a full radio tower.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:31:18]:
It could just be like a 8 foot pole, And we will then put a radio on top of that. So the fiber runs through the building to that rooftop. And then to our equipment. And then we beam that fiber and we create what's called a fiber ring in the sky. And so, what that fiber ring in the sky allows us to do is build this wireless ring throughout the city. And then, on the customer's home, we'll install what's called a customer promise equipment. It's not large at all. It's a small box.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:31:45]:
And then that box runs we wire inside the house to a modem, and then they have WiFi from our fiber ring in the sky. And so, that goes all the way back down to the fiber underneath the ground, but again, it a lot it requires us to have rooftops or what we call vertical assets throughout the city, And then our radios then communicate from those buildings directly to the homes. So we're able to build this wirelessly and we're allowed to do this a lot faster than what a traditional Internet provider would do, where they had to dig up everyone's yard, and they had to run to the house. No. With wireless, thankfully, there are fiber optic assets already there. We're just tapping and beaming.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:26]:
Mhmm.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:32:26]:
So we can go much faster with a fraction of the cost. Our customer acquisition cost is relatively low, and our speed in reaching the customer and deploying a network is absolutely high, which is how we're able to outpace our competitors, who are, in many cases, burdened by obsolete infrastructure that's very costly to deploy. Whereas we can just we can build an entire city like Cleveland in 18 months or less, whereas if we were to do the same thing for fiber, you're talking about almost a decade.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:58]:
So, I mean, you genuinely see a path to to bridge the the digital divide?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:33:06]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. And this is where we are finally finally seeing wins here. What I mean by wins, I'm not saying that we never had wins on the digital divide front, because there have been several. The discipline has evolved significantly. At one point, you know, getting a resident a laptop, a hotspot, and, you know, some training, that was the Holy Grail for digital inclusion, at one point. Now, we're so sophisticated where we say, no, not good enough.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:33:34]:
And the pandemic really exposed the, I would say, the reliability of hotspots. Where now, as I said, we need more. And so our service baseline for the $18 service is 100 upload and 100 download. What that means in real time is if you were to wanna do any type of video calling, or you're uploading content, you're a content creator, or even even you with this podcast, in order to upload it, you're gonna need upload speeds. So the higher the upload speed, you know, the faster it's going to go. Simultaneously, download speeds, that's the content that we take in whether we're watching Netflix, or we're downloading large documents, whatever that is. The download speeds matter too. Now there's other things that matter, you know, like ping and stuff like that.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:34:21]:
But, however, for the sake of just brevity, the upload the download and upload speeds mean a lot. Currently, the federal standard for high speed Internet is 100 download and 20 upload. We do 100 download and 100 upload. And what that means is we are now empowering entrepreneurs to not only be content consumers, but also content creators. Because if I'm creating content, the upload speed matters. And so we're going above and beyond because we believe that's what people deserve. And so us being able to look at what the standard is and exceeding that standard in Cleveland, and informing the federal government of how to best optimally allocate scarce resources to supporting the growth of these networks, that matters. And so I couldn't be prouder of the team that we have, the decisions that we've made.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:35:11]:
And I know that the seeds that we're planting, they are fast growing because people can see the results already. And at some point, the digital seed case study will be used to save American telecommunication policy.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:26]:
Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped 100 of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you 2 are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:36:07]:
that helps teams build great companies. If you

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:07]:
are interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects or by leveraging 90 to power power your own business, please go to ia.layoftheland.fm. The link will also be in our show notes. Well, I I think you've made this point that access itself is is necessary but not sufficient. And the pandemic, I think, exacerbated the degree to which, you know, not only do you need connectivity, but you actually need a quality of it. And at the same time, I think there's this whole corollary, very related piece that speaks to the importance of of digital literacy and what you can do with the Internet and connectivity Mhmm. In addition to just access itself. And so I I'd love to hear how you and Digital Sea are thinking about, you know, what it is to empower people not only with access, but but literacy in in this digital sense and and what that piece of of the equation looks like.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:37:15]:
Well, you know, this this is something where let's go back to the nineties again. The information superhighway, that's what we used to call the Internet. The Internet, at one point, was information superhighway, And we looked at libraries as almost like driving centers. Like a department of motor vehicle, so to speak, where like, hey, they are going to teach you how to drive on the information superhighway. So during the nineties, a lot of these libraries had computer labs. You could go in there and you could just browse for like 30 to 60 minute sessions. And, you know, they had a proctor in there just teaching you, like, what to click on and what not to click on, stuff like that. And it's funny because that model has has been one that has scaled and significance.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:38:00]:
And even during the pandemic, we saw it the most. But today, we still hold that true. Like, we are building one of the fastest freeways that many people have seen as it relates to their information. And in order to effectively build this, it requires us to be able to maximize safety. There are a lot of people who are not protected online. I mean, you can call 911 when something's going, you know, wrong or even on the real freeway, you can call 911 if you see something. Does that equivalent exist for people navigating the information superhighway? No. It does not.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:38:39]:
Which is why people are getting their identity stolen, why they're getting preyed upon, why during a political election year they can't spot deep fakes and the implications there are massive, or why when the census goes exclusively online in the future and people not counting the implications there. And so, now more than ever, as we're looking at building this incredible infrastructure, we had to have the complementary digital literacy and skilling piece. Thankfully, Digital C, we do that part well through our click initiative. So click one of our brands, that's how we branded the digital literacy and skilling. We have a group of community partners ranging from Metro Health, the Calgary Metropolitan Housing Authority, Asbury Senior Community Center, Benjamin Rose, Famicos Foundation, Britt and Belcar, Cleveland Public Library. I, oh, I did the Carlson of naming people, and now whoever didn't get names is gonna be mad at me. But, like, the point is, we're taking this serious. You know, we're on the ground.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:39:31]:
We understand the need. And all the intentionality we put on developing the network, we're putting, if not greater intentionality, on teaching people how to navigate the web safely and also to be able to do things that they've always wanted to do. You'd be surprised what some people have always just wanted to do, but were held back by their fears of technology. There are some people who are just like, you know what, I've always wanted to create one of those nice presentations, but I don't know how to do any of that stuff. And I I don't really and say, no, we'll teach you how to do a PowerPoint. And so those are the things where, like, thankfully, we're at the point where the community is incredibly receptive to that. And that is a great starting point for us to then get into how someone can then navigate online banking, or how someone then can apply for social service benefits that they've qualified for for so long, but the barrier was online access. And they didn't take full advantage of that, effectively, you know, wasting taxpayer money that's allocated that never gets spent.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:40:29]:
And so the digital divide is such a force multiplier. And I would say that the digital literacy and skilling undergirds, even more than the infrastructure at times, the need for that training at scale.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:42]:
Well, and then on on the flip side of it, I I'd love to hear in the instances where you've been able to roll out access to folks who historically have not had it, what the downstream implications to those people have been. You know, the outcomes, the impact in their lives, the the community stories. I I think you've mentioned already some at a high level of what those might be from digital banking, education, you know, commerce, all these components, but make this real for us. What does this look like when people get access to Internet who historically have not had it?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:41:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. And this is this is one of those beautiful things where it's either they might not have had it, or if they did have it, they weren't really taught how to fully use it. Mhmm. And I think that's the thing that we're also seeing too. No different than on the literacy front, We see people who know how to read maybe a Facebook post, but don't necessarily know how to read, you know, something that could help better their lives from with advanced literacy and what we call those people they're functionally literate, that same functional equivalent, it exists in the digital literacy side too, where people are functionally digitally literate. Where they know how to create an Instagram, but they absolutely do not know how to, you know, convert a Word file to a PDF or a resume submission. And those are the type of things where we see such great opportunity, but it also lies in our branding and how we, you know, discuss our service, discuss our partnership, and discuss our offerings.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:42:12]:
Because no one wants to be told that they're stupid. And there's a fine line in how we deliver information to people where we don't we can't afford to come off as paternalistic. Because the minute we do that, we lose people. And so it's a it's a very fine line that we have to we can't get lost in the sauce, can't get too caught up in, well, we're doing a good thing. Yes. We might be doing a good thing, but we need to do the good thing the best way possible. Otherwise, we've now limited people in their growth and their learning. Because they'll just say, oh, yeah.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:42:41]:
Yeah. I understand. And then they'll never come back. And they didn't fully understand either. Well,

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:46]:
I I would imagine this is, you know, partially the power of the local component of of the whole digital c initiative, you know, that you guys are building out of Hough and focused on the neighborhoods that you are as a starting point. I'm curious, you know, what you learned and saw, you know, in Detroit, in kind of kindred cities with similar histories that you feel is, like, extensible in the DigitalC narrative. You know, when you think ultimately about the kind of impact that you're having, you know, with with maybe DigitalC as a a beacon, an example of of the playbook of how to do this at at a larger scale. How do you see, you know, the the path forward from there?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:43:32]:
Well, I I would say, 1, I should say it's great. But knowing that every city has a digital divide, every city is also different, but the digital divide seems to be eerily similar. And so the thing is, our lessons that are learned in Cleveland, all the way from navigating the lobbying that was going against us. I mean, that's something that I don't talk about a lot, but we've been lobbied and we will continue to be lobbied heavily by people with massive advertising budgets against us. So that is a reality that anyone who seeks to do this work, you know, we're gonna show people how to do it. In addition to that, even being able to navigate with political stakeholders. Messaging matters a lot. You know, we are in an election year right now.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:44:21]:
In addition to that, there's a lot of people who are hearing a whole bunch of different things. How do we take our experiences in Cleveland and inform stakeholders beyond? I mean, a digital divide in Appalachia is still a digital divide that will affect Clevelanders. That digital divide anywhere is bad for all of us everywhere. And so knowing that, I think that our approach has just been collecting as much information as possible on the ground, and then seeing how that can inform our efforts while at the same time, you know, being very well aware of what are what's happening in other cities and where we differ. I'll say that, for example, in Detroit, you know, Detroit has a very pro active community organizing scene around technology, and that made it a lot easier to do the work there. I would say that the funders were much more willing to work together, and that's not a shot at Cleveland's funders, but it's just one that Detroit rallies a bit differently. They use that negative narrative that was around Detroit for so long, all the way from National Geographic's terrible coverage of Detroit at times, and even national other national media outlets, how they covered Detroit. They even had to apologize to it.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:45:33]:
Detroit leaned into that and built community through that struggle. So doing community building around the digital divide in Detroit would be different from Cleveland. And that's not to say Cleveland didn't have some of that, but not nearly to the degree that Detroit did. And so I think that there's a secret recipe for whatever city you go to, unlocking that thing. See, the thing about Cleveland that we get to unlock here is Cleveland is a is a city of underdogs. We, at Digital Sea, understand that. We overstand that point. We know we're underdogs as it relates to this Internet game or this fight.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:46:03]:
And we are committed to playing that role because that's a value that Cleveland plays. And so, by aligning ourselves and knowing what these values that are intrinsic to those cities, I think that's a recipe for us having success, not even just in the digital divide, really anywhere, but especially on the digital divide as access to information is, you know, the more information you can get to people, the more you're able to get them to rally behind whatever cause you're putting in front of them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:30]:
When you think about these measures of success across access literacy, maybe it's that 15% penetration such that you get to a level of sustainability for the organization. What does success actually look like? You know? Because I I would imagine that, again, when we kinda ground this in the the reality of of the world today where the Internet is now considered a fundamental right, How is it that we get to just broad scale utility access to the Internet? And and what is what do you hope to be Digital Sea's role in that overall?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:47:07]:
Well, to to your point, I mean, we we had to start somewhere. And I think that Digital Sea, we're more than a proof of concept. And as we grow in scale, people are gonna see that. You know, even I'm I'm I'm going to be doing a trip to DC soon to be meeting with a few of our senators and other people in the house to discuss the Digital C model. And so this is planting seeds. We're moving at an incremental pace. No. We're on the backdrop right now of the Federal Communications Commission having to discontinue the Affordable Connectivity Program.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:47:37]:
And that was a Federal subsidy that was a pandemic subsidy. I mean, it was $30 a month off of people's internet bills, and Cleveland per capita is one of the highest enrolled cities in the country. And so with that subsidy going away, that leaves more questions than answers. And thankfully, Digital Sea is one of these answers that people should look to and say, well, instead of us investing money in perpetuity to subsidies, which doesn't actually correct the market, why not look at something that does disrupt the market? Why not look at something that says, man, if you build out this network, put affordability, just build it into the model, then all of a sudden we don't have to worry about every 5 to 10 years or so, whenever there's, God forbid, some type of tragedy, we now have to raise 1,000,000,000 more dollars to then subsidizing something that, quite frankly, just needs to be disrupted. And so what we are doing right now at Digital Sea, success to us looks like 1, 1st and foremost, bridging the current iteration of the digital divide. Getting the people who have historically been on the wrong side, I. E. Not being able to sustain a connection, not have a connection.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:48:43]:
And if they did have a connection, not having one that meets the standard for what is high speed Internet in America. So we're solving that right now. That's the current digital divide. As well as with the digital literacy and skilling part. The digital divide is a paradigm of inequity though. What I mean by this paradigm, is what I just described as like the first side of the paradigm. There will be a paradigm shift. We see AI to be something that's phenomenal, no different than the internet, phenomenal, but it will also lead to another digital divide.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:49:13]:
And so our role in this is to, one, grow out of our current one and fight every subsequent digital divide that exists beyond our current one. And so, I would say, locally, you know, I think that we're going to be in the driver's Ct a lot of this stuff. And our goal would be to illuminate Cleveland as this model that can scale with additional investment. Now, we what we're highlighting is a very successful foundation for a public private partnership that absolutely can be replicated from your public stakeholders, your private stakeholders, philanthropic, and everybody essentially working together and, you know, doing so in such a collaborative fashion that nothing could stand in our way. This same model, if we did it for water equity, we would have it. Racial equity, we would have it. Digital equity is a first of its kind style that we're doing here. And my goal, and the team's goal too, is to scale this beyond and to identify any other digital divide and see if we could be the right solution for bridging that and other communities beyond CLEAP.

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:16]:
If you could, you know, wave a hypothetical magical wand and kind of institute some change in the way things work today as it relates to Internet. What do you feel would be the highest impact thing that you would wanna change about the way that it works? And with that, you know, what do you actually wish more people understood about access and connectivity that that may that maybe we don't understand generally?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:50:46]:
My answer to this question in your reverse or maybe it's 1 and the same. But, like, look, I wish that people understood that we can demand and we deserve better. The American telecommunications system and structure is inherently non competitive, and the consumer is getting screwed every day. That is the best way I can put it. All the promotional stuff that people are signing up for is garbage. It's it's just bad. And it's bad from a standpoint that you can't take such a life saving asset that we have, and then we just accept whatever is given to us. I believe that Americans, Clevelanders, Ohioans, Midwesterners, whatever, we deserve better.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:51:30]:
And it's okay to articulate that. It's okay to organize for that. And it's okay to request that. And you don't have to align yourselves with the usual suspects to get better either. There's this this thinking, and it was repeated throughout some of the hearings that we went through last year, well, Digital Sea, you guys didn't have the greatest past. And as we were scaling our company, we were figuring things out. And sometimes we were not successful with our deployments. And it was like, you know, you all don't you guys have a challenge pass.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:52:04]:
That's what, you know, people kept bringing up. Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to be like, okay. We have a challenge pass. You do realize that we're in one of the most digitally redlined cities. So where's that same animosity or investigative reporting for the people who justified our existence? Now, that doesn't make Cleveland special, because, again, there's a digital divide in arguably every major American city, and especially on the rural side. So it's like, clearly what we've been doing hasn't worked either.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:52:31]:
And we can think bigger, we can think bolder, we can think much more disruptive. The same country that created the Internet isn't even in top 10 in the usage of the Internet. How does that make sense? And I think those are the things that we need to that have serious questions, and so I would probably save a magic wand. If I could just wave it to get everybody legitimately focused on infrastructure and not shrinking to the size of a budget and being much more creative, exercising much more ingenuity of thinking around the way that telecommunication system is set up in America.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:05]:
Well said.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:53:07]:
Well, what what do you

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:08]:
feel is left unsaid about the work that you are doing, your personal journey, digital c? You know, what what would you wanna highlight as we we kind of bookend the the conversation here?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:53:20]:
Yeah. So I I I would say one of the big things that I like to highlight, there's a few parts of growth for us that, again, like, from the nonprofit community, like, I I believe that, you know, we would like to model what, you know, an enterprise could look like. But from a startup community, we'd also like to model our journey. I mean, this was an an organization that in the past, we we inbounded all of our customer service calls. And like, that just made it a, a very interesting process to manage. We now outsource that to the Cleveland Sight Center. That is a local nonprofit that employs people with visual impairments. And what a great story to be able to tell there.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:54:03]:
That even in our outsourcing, we're doing responsible outsourcing. We're doing local outsourcing. You know, we just brought on, new customer relationship management tool that allows us to Cmlessly and use automation to contact and enroll customers in our service. We are growing in our, not only just in the size of our company, but in the way that we operate. That overnight, people are judging us from what we were in the past of this non profit trying to figure things out. We're still tripping over our own feet. And now, we might stumble every now and then, but the progress that we've been able to make with such an incredible team. I mean, I keep highlighting Jose Valdez, but there's others.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:54:42]:
There's Valerie Jerome, who's my chief of marketing communications. I've known her for a very long time. There's just people throughout this organization who care. And the way that they care is unrivaled. And that's why I believe that we're having a lot of success.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:56]:
What what else do you feel in this kind of nonprofit as a start up thinking that you've, you know, learned along the way that it was surprising to you, you know, that that you didn't expect, that you see see in reflection?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:55:11]:
I would say that there's nothing impossible. I think that's what we were struggling with in the past. In the past, man, I mean, you'll you'll identify a task. Like, we had to actually change our entire payment architecture. That is not easy to do for any industry. And, absolutely, for ours, I mean, you're trying to, 1, enroll customers in a service while you're changing your payment architecture. And, you know, we have this approach, and I learned this from one of my old bosses in Detroit. Her name is Beth Nibloc.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:55:39]:
She's the current chief information officer for the US Housing Urban Development Department. But Beth was incredible because she used an acronym, JFDI. Just do it and you can guess what the f meant. And her, that attitude is one that, you know, I've taken with me, and alongside my my counterpart Jose, we even still that attitude within the team where it's like, look, whatever mountain is in front of us, just climb it. Whatever problem is, just deal with it. Just just do it and do it again and again and again. And what I've been surprised by is, like, when you adopt that mentality, the pace that you can move at, I mean, it took us years on our legacy network. Digital Sea started building a network in the beginning of 2018.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:56:27]:
And by 2022, we covered 22,500 households or approximately 23,000, whatever. Within 1 quarter, within 1 quarter of this year, we now cover approximately 18,000 households. And so it's like, wow, what it took us to do in years, we've done in 1 quarter. Like that is unheard of, the pace that we're moving at, and the way that we've been able to evolve. But a lot of that rests in the mentality. So the biggest thing I can say for any, you know, start up, non profit, whomever, it's like, just do it. Whatever goal you think it is, whatever thing that's challenging you, it doesn't matter. Just do it.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:57:02]:
Just get it done. You will figure it out. And you have to trust that you will. And you have to trust that the people around you will support you in doing so.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:10]:
Yeah. Again, well well said. I think that that resonates quite deeply in, and it's something that that we need here. You know, just just raise the bar for ambition and what I think collectively we we could accomplish. So that's awesome. Well, I'll, turn to our our traditional closing question, which is for a hidden gem in Cleveland for something that other people may not know about in the city, but perhaps they should.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:57:41]:
I knew you were gonna ask this question. And I I I've been struggling a lot I've been struggling with this one, to be honest, because I I I have I have a few. One, I love the Marina area off of East 55th, the pier. I think I mean, obviously, Edgewater gets loved. But, like, sitting on those rocks over there when there's, like, a a sunset, oh my gosh. That is that is beautiful. I know people love them, and it's I I feel cliche by saying them, but the cultural gardens, I just think, like, that whole area just speaks to me. I love the University Circle area.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:58:13]:
Then in Tremont, you have, like, those swings that are overlooking, like, the flats that are right on the edge. Like, there's, like, these wooden swings that you can sit on. And I think it's magical to, again, a sunset over there is is beautiful. And this is so awful for me to mention this one because it's not even in Cleveland. But, like, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Happy Days, is my favorite park by far. The story allows. It's incredible, but, like, the Octagon area with the overlook, that area has always spoke to me. I love the I love, like, the fact that the glaciers shaped that entire area.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:58:49]:
It speaks to me. And so I did had to cheat by going outside of Cleveland on that one, but it's still Cuyahoga, and I think that anyone in Cleveland should honor William Stinchcombe, the founder of the the Metro Parks tradition in preserving our emerald necklace. And I do believe that we should, explore more nature. So yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:09]:
Absolutely. All great call outs. Well, Joshua, I just wanna thank you again for coming on, sharing your story. I think the really impactful and important work that you're you're doing at Digital Sea is awesome to to follow along on.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:59:24]:
Oh, no. I I I appreciate it. I'm thankful for, you know, obviously, any and any and all opportunities to share our story and, obviously, reconnecting with you. That's been a while, but, you know, it was really great being able to do this interview, and I appreciate the work that you're doing in amplifying just better storytelling in Cleveland and beyond.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:41]:
It's it's truly my pleasure. If people had anything that they wanted to follow-up with you about, learn more about Kanopy, learn more about Click, learn more about Digital Sea, what direction would you point them?

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [00:59:53]:
Well, first, I'd point them to our new website, www.digitalc.org. That is a new one. We take great pride in that. Valerie, on our IRN team internally did a phenomenal job. They can also follow us on Instagram. You can just Crch Digital Sea. I hope we pop up. And then, in addition to that, if they wanna inquire about our service, or even just hear about our professionalism, they can call our hotline at 216-777-3859.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [01:00:20]:
It's one of the luckiest phone numbers in Cleveland, so give it a call.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:24]:
Awesome. Well, thank you again, John.

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [01:00:27]:
I'm perfect. That's 777.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:32]:
It is it is a memorable number. It's

Joshua Edmonds (DigitalC) [01:00:34]:
It's good. It sounds like my mind went 0. I'm like, no. That's not right.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:43]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.