WATERTOWN, SD – Farmers and ranchers sit on the boards of most of South Dakota’s remaining telephone cooperatives. For more than a century, they have been surprisingly innovative when it comes to providing telephone service to their members. I had a chance to present an overview of The New Pioneers to the members of the South Dakota Association of Telephone Cooperatives in Watertown this week. While most of the attendees were over 50, one young man from a telecom company in Mitchell asked why I was only focusing on people moving to or moving back to the state. It was a good question. The story of out-migration has been the talk of the region for several generations now. In-migration offers the most dramatic evidence of the change that the Internet Age is bringing. But it’s also true that with new employment and entrepreneurial options available to them, young people in South Dakota can think twice about leaving the state.