Freedom to Connect

I recently had a chance to sit down with David Isenberg and discuss his Freedom to Connect (F2C) conference which takes place March 30 & 31, 2009 in Washington DC. He reminded me the price for the conference goes up $100 on February 28 so you need to act quickly.

Update: David kindly offered readers of this blog $100 off if they register at this URL. So until 2/28 it’ll only cost you $395, then after that, when the list price goes up to $595, your discount will still be $100.

There are a number of new speakers announced who join already-announced speakers such as the CIO of San Francisco, the CTO of Seattle, the Chief Technologist of the FCC, and the visionaries of Lafayette LA and Burlington VT municipal networks.

Here are some of them:

1) Kevin Werbach was co-leader of President Obama’s FCC Transition Team. He also produces the high-powered, well-respected SuperNova tech conference, and he authored the 1999 FCC report entitled, “Digital Tornado.”

Kevin will discuss his experiences on the Obama FCC Transition and the prospects for the new FCC.

2) Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He’s also Kauffman Professor of digital media entrepreneurship. The Knight Center is working to help create a culture of innovation and risk-taking in journalism education, and in the wider media world. Dan will interview Kevin Werbach.

3) Billy Ray, CEO, Glasgow (KY) Electric Power Board, In the mid-80s, Billy was spurred by energy crisis #2 and an unresponsive cableco to create a broadband network for the citizens of Glasgow KY. By 2001 it was serving 75% of Glasgow’s households at less than 60% of the U.S. average price. Today Ray is building FTTH and thinking about how fiber can asuage the need for new electric power plants. More.

4) Andrew C. Revkin is the New York Times science reporter on the “beat” of global climate disruption. He travels the world, witnessing first-hand changes that may indicate bigger changes to come. He’s surfing the edge of Internet reporting on his blog dotEarth.

5) L. Aaron Kaplan will discuss how Vienna Austria’s community-built, community-owned, 500-device, 30-km diameter, Wi-Fi mesh network, free-of-charge to its users has achieved financial sustainability. More.

It seems like a great event. Here are more details:

F2C 2009:The Emerging Internet Economy

All eyes are on the economy. The Obama Administration has declared the Internet a keystone.

F2C 2009 presents the people of the Internet who:
  • enable economic growth,
  • strengthen democracy,
  • facilitate creativity and innovation
  • make the Earth greener, and
  • lower the barriers that divide people.
F2C 2009 will tell the story of:
  • on-line, network-enabled industry and culture, new jobs and sustainable growth
  • Burlington VT, where muni fiber enables business, artistic endeavor, and new telemedicine
  • how Lafayette LA’s community came together as it built its muni fiber network
  • the twin cities of Cedar Falls and Waterloo, Iowa, where one twin has a muni net, and the other doesn’t
  • how municipal CIOs are planning for Seattle, Portland and San Francisco municipal fiber networks
  • city nets, wired and wireless, that didn’t work — what went wrong and what that teaches
  • what Obama’s infrastructure and economic recovery plans mean for tomorrow’s network
  • and more …
F2C: Who, What, When, Where, Why

WHO: F2C is a meeting of people engaged with Internet connectivity and all that it enables, including

  • vendors,
  • customers,
  • regulators,
  • legislators,
  • analysts,
  • financiers,
  • citizens and
  • co-creators.

F2C is shaped by universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production, which, in turn, are changing many of our fundamental economic and social assumptions.

WHAT: A two-day meeting inside the beltway where the creators of the future of the Internet meet to engage in mutual learning and exploration.

WHEN: 8:00 AM on March 30 through 5:00 PM on March 31, 2009. List of confirmed speakers and bare-bones program here.

WHERE: AFI Silver Theatre, Silver Spring MD. More travel, lodging and venue details here.

WHY: It is written that Freedom of the Press is only for those with presses. The Internet now makes Freedom of the Press available to about 3,000,000,000 people, almost half of Earth’s humans. At F2C: Freedom to Connect, we explore how this changes the fundamental operating assumptions of society, and ask, “What next?”

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