For many years I have told people that EUPConnect is the biggest network that has never put a shovel in the ground.

The statement usually gets a laugh because people naturally associate EUPConnect with broadband infrastructure. They think about fiber routes, middle-mile networks, grant programs, broadband maps, and the significant investments that have transformed connectivity across Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula. Those things matter, and they were certainly part of the motivation that brought many of us together. Yet as I have reflected on the history of the collaborative, I have come to believe that the statement captures a deeper truth about the work itself.

While EUPConnect has helped communities plan, coordinate, and advocate for telecommunications infrastructure, the most significant network we have built may not be a physical network at all. Instead, it may be the civic infrastructure that allows organizations, institutions, and communities to learn together and act together. The fiber, towers, and electronics are important assets, but they are not the whole story. The larger story is about building the relationships, governance structures, shared knowledge, and institutional capacity required to make meaningful regional progress possible.

When discussions about infrastructure occur, they often focus on physical assets because physical assets are visible. We can map a fiber route, count connected locations, measure bandwidth, and calculate dollars invested. These measures are important because physical infrastructure creates the conditions necessary for participation in a modern economy and society. However, decades of community and economic development experience suggest that infrastructure alone rarely produces lasting change. Communities also require institutions capable of coordinating action, trusted relationships that survive political cycles, mechanisms for sharing knowledge, and organizational structures that help align diverse interests around common goals. In many cases, these less visible systems determine whether physical infrastructure ultimately fulfills its intended purpose.

Looking back at the origins of EUPConnect, the collaborative emerged from the recognition that no single organization could solve the region’s connectivity challenges independently. Schools, local governments, tribal communities, healthcare organizations, utilities, higher education institutions, nonprofit organizations, and private-sector partners all possessed part of the solution, but none possessed enough authority, resources, or expertise to address the challenge alone. The collaborative became a mechanism through which these organizations could coordinate information, align priorities, and pursue shared objectives. What began as conversations about broadband infrastructure gradually evolved into conversations about governance, planning, resource sharing, and collective problem solving.

In retrospect, that evolution may be more important than any individual infrastructure project that resulted from it. Construction projects eventually conclude. Grant programs expire. Technologies change. Yet the relationships created through collaboration often become durable regional assets. As organizations learn how to work together, they develop a capacity that extends beyond any specific initiative. They become better positioned to respond to future challenges because they have established channels for communication, decision-making, and shared action. The collaborative itself becomes a form of infrastructure.

This is one reason I have become increasingly interested in cooperative and collaborative organizational models. Cooperatives are often discussed in terms of ownership and governance, but at their core they represent a recognition that some challenges are too large or too interconnected for individual actors to address alone. Whether the structure is formally cooperative, consortium-based, network-based, or collaborative, the underlying principle remains the same: long-term progress depends upon institutions that create incentives for cooperation rather than competition.

The strength of these models is not merely their ability to share costs. Their strength lies in their ability to accumulate trust, institutional memory, and collective capacity over time. They create a framework through which communities can move beyond individual projects toward enduring systems of mutual support and shared problem solving. In this sense, the organizational structure matters less than the relationships it enables. A cooperative, a consortium, or a collaborative succeeds when it creates the conditions for people and institutions to learn together, govern together, and invest in a shared future.

The history of EUPConnect demonstrates how this accumulation of capacity occurs. Throughout the region’s connectivity planning efforts, local stakeholders increasingly moved beyond relying solely on outside assessments and began generating their own evidence about local conditions. Community surveys, GIS mapping efforts, citizen science initiatives, and locally informed planning activities created a growing body of knowledge that reflected the realities of the region itself. This development may seem modest, but it represents an important shift in community capacity. Regions that can generate, interpret, and apply credible information about themselves are often better positioned to attract investment, influence policy, evaluate outcomes, and shape their own futures than regions that remain dependent upon external interpretations of local conditions.

My experience with organizations such as Merit Network and the Quello Center has reinforced this understanding. While both organizations are widely recognized for specific contributions, their enduring value comes from their ability to sustain relationships across institutional boundaries and over long periods of time.

Merit Network has spent decades connecting Michigan’s educational institutions, public agencies, researchers, and communities through both technical infrastructure and professional relationships. The network transport matters, but perhaps more important is the trusted community that has grown around it. Merit creates opportunities for organizations to learn from one another, share expertise, and pursue initiatives that would be difficult for any individual institution to undertake independently. In many respects, Merit demonstrates that the most valuable aspect of a network is not always the technology itself, but the relationships that technology supports.

Similarly, the Quello Center has provided an environment where researchers, practitioners, policymakers, educators, and community leaders can engage with difficult questions about communication, technology, and society. The most valuable outcome is not simply research production. It is the creation of intellectual and professional relationships that connect theory with practice and local challenges with broader policy conversations. Through those relationships, ideas can move between communities and institutions, and knowledge generated in one setting can inform action in another.

Over time, I have come to recognize that many of the initiatives I care about, whether broadband planning, digital opportunity, workforce development, community data infrastructure, citizen science, or the development of the Digital Opportunities Intelligence Network, depend upon exactly these kinds of long-term institutional relationships. The visible outcomes may take the form of infrastructure investments, educational programs, policy initiatives, or research collaborations, but those outcomes are possible only because trusted institutions have spent years building the relationships that make collaboration possible.

This perspective also helps explain why EUPConnect’s work has expanded beyond broadband. The conversation increasingly includes digital literacy, workforce development, community education, youth leadership, digital inclusion, and the broader concept of digital opportunity. The shift occurred because participants recognized a simple reality: connectivity alone does not automatically create opportunity. Communities also need knowledge, leadership, institutions, and support systems capable of helping people use technology effectively and productively. Broadband access is essential, but it is only one component of a larger ecosystem that enables individuals and communities to participate fully in modern economic and civic life.

Viewed through this lens, EUPConnect is not separate from organizations such as Merit Network, Michigan State University Extension, the Quello Center, tribal governments, educational service agencies, local governments, healthcare organizations, and countless community partners. Rather, it is part of a broader ecosystem of civic infrastructure that spans the region and the state. Each institution contributes different forms of expertise, resources, and social capital. Some provide technical knowledge. Others contribute research, policy insight, convening power, educational resources, or community expertise. Together they create a network capable of learning, adapting, and responding to complex challenges in ways that no single organization could accomplish on its own.

Perhaps that is the deeper meaning behind my long-standing observation that EUPConnect is the biggest network that has never put a shovel in the ground. The most important network is not the one buried beneath our roads. It is the network of relationships that connects communities to institutions, practitioners to researchers, local challenges to statewide resources, and ideas to action. The fiber routes that now traverse the region are important and worthy accomplishments. Yet they are ultimately expressions of something larger. They are evidence of what becomes possible when trusted institutions invest in one another over time, when communities choose cooperation over isolation, and when relationships are treated not as byproducts of development but as infrastructure themselves.

The longer I participate in this work, the more convinced I become that communities do not build transformative projects because they have funding. They secure funding because they have spent years building trust. They do not create regional initiatives because they possess a strategy document. They create regional initiatives because they have developed the relationships necessary to act on a shared vision. The true asset is not merely the infrastructure that gets built. It is the capacity that remains after the project is complete: the trust, the relationships, the institutional memory, and the confidence that a region can come together to solve its next challenge.

If the Eastern Upper Peninsula continues to make progress in broadband, digital opportunity, education, workforce development, and community vitality, it will not be because of any single organization, technology, or funding source. It will be because generations of institutions and leaders chose to invest in one another. The networks we bury in the ground will eventually require replacement. The grants that support them will eventually expire. But the civic infrastructure we build through enduring relationships can compound over time, creating new opportunities long after the original projects have faded from memory. In that sense, the most important infrastructure we are building cannot be measured in miles of fiber or dollars invested. It is measured in the ability of people, organizations, and communities to learn together, govern together, and create a future that none of them could achieve alone.