F2C: Recommended

The 2nd Freedom To Connect Conference (F2C) is being held tomorrow. And you should feel free to connect via the wonders of your broadband connection to a live videocast. And even play on the chat box during the sessions. If you’ve got the time tomorrow and Tuesday check in. I went last year and learned a lot. You’ll miss the hall discussions–always the best part of any real conference–but Isenberg gets speakers who are actually interesting and lets them talk about what interests them. Good Stuff.

F2C is the brainchild of David Isenberg, a funny, fiesty fellow of just the gadfly sort we approve of here at LPF. The idea is to get a bunch of smart committed people interested in sustaining our “Freedom To Connect” over modern networks together and let them go to it. (Isenberg has a more reasonable-sounding description, I think he’s being politic.) This year the theme is “The Wealth of Networks” and that ought to be a good framework to bounce ideas off of. Isenberg is no naif at this game; he is the fellow who coined the approving phrase “the stupid network” to describe the architecture of the internet, which places processing “intelligence” at the edges of the network (i.e. at Google and at your ‘puter) and to contrast it with the old telephone network (where all the intelligence is in the switches and your phone is as dumb as a rock). Much of the intellectual ammo being used by the new Network Neutrality warriors traces back through Isenberg.

Here’s the agenda; reserve some time for what might interest you. Times are all Eastern. [Red notes are mine.]

March 5, 2007 (***subject to change***)

• 8:00 AM — Registration, breakfast
• 8:45 – 10:00 AM — Jim Douglas, Governor of Vermont, intro Tom Evslin, welcome David Isenberg [Vermont is planning to wire the whole state; Douglas actually seems to understand why that would be a good thing.]
• 10:00 – 10:30 AM — Break
• 10:30 – 11:15 AM — Yochai Benkler on The Wealth of Networks [Amazon 5 star, #9,281]
• 11:15 – Noon — Panel: Benkler, kc claffy, Mark Cooper, Elliot Maxwell, Gigi Sohn
• Noon – 1:00 PM — Lunch, box lunch on premises
• 1:00 – 2:00 PM — Demos: David Smith (Qwaq), Cory Ondrejka (2nd Life)
• 2:00 – 2:45 PM — Enabling Technologies — James Salter, [A sleeper speaker see him if you can. A fiber proponent. (DO NOT be fooled by the aw shucks Southernisms)] John Waclawsky, [smart] Sanjit Biswas [Meraki, you’ve read about Meraki]
• 2:45 – 3:15 PM — Break
• 3:15 – 4:00 PM — Network Enabled Government, Rep. Steve Urquhart (Politicopia), Fred Hassani (Intellipedia), Micah Sifry (Sunlight Foundation), Allison Fine (Moderator)
• 4:00 – 4:30 PM — Sean Moss-Pultz (OpenMoko)
• 4:30 – 4:45 PM — Jeff Chester on Digital Destiny [the kind of guy who is right about everything–before anyone else]
  
• 4:45 – 5:00 PM — Book signing preview, Allison Fine (Momentum), Yochai Benkler (Wealth of Networks) & Reed Hundt (In China’s Shadow)
• 5:30 – 8:30 PM — Reception/book signing in nearby restaurant, reception keynote by David Weinberger

March 6, 2007 (***subject to change***)

8:00 AM — Registration, breakfast
8:45 – 9:00 AM — Welcome to Day 2, David Isenberg
9:00 – 9:45 AM — Peer Production News Panel, Dan Gillmor, Mark Tapscott, Bill Allison, Jonathan Krim (moderator)
9:45 – 10:30 AM — Community Networks Panel, Sascha Meinrath, Michael Calabrese, Becca Vargo Daggett, Drew Clark (Moderator) [Admirable bunch, should be very interesting.]
10:30 – 11:00 AM — Break
11:00 – Noon — FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Ron Sege (intro).
Noon – 1:00 PM — Lunch, box lunch on premises
1:00 – 1:20 PM — Demos: Yuval Klein (Plymedia), Nora Abousteit (Burda Style)
1:20 – 2:30 — Adam Thierer, Peter Swire, Jim Baller [Baller is very own attorney, might even mention Lafayette.]
2: 30 – 3:00 PM — Break
3:00 – 4:00 PM — Susan Crawford, Reed Hundt
4:00 – 5:00 PM — Bruce Sterling sums up (with Jasmina Tesanovic). [Sterling is a favorite SF writer of mine, wrote a novel, Distraction, set in a world that had to deal with global warming back in 2000 that takes place partly in Louisinana.]
5:00 PM — Adjourn

Worth the click.