Aftermath: News, blog posts, comments, logs, pictures, videos and other archives from F2C: Freedom to Connect 2007 last update 26Mar07

Too New (and Hot!) to Classify:

Just Added: A/V webcast files from Day 1 (these are downloads, not streams, for now)

Alex Goldman's is out with a new ISP-Planet piece today (3/23) entitled, Our National Broadband Strategy is Hope Without Action. In it, he writes, "ISP-Planet would like to recommend one simple idea: enforce the law. Crack down on false advertising, fraudulent billing, slamming, and other monopoly practices."

Michael Cervieri of Scribe Media has posted very nicely done videos of Yochai Benkler's F2C keynote, Cory Ondrejka's F2C presentation on Second Life, and several other videos of the Wealth of Networks panel (look for these on the page with Yochai's video). There may be more soon. Nice work Michael!!!

Dean Landsman's way-too-flattering blog post about F2C. (Read it if you want to know how superfractaculorenious it was this year, or if you're searching for details of musician Howard Levy's formative years.)

News:

ISP Planet: Meinrath Says Everything Else is Stupid

National Journal: Adelstein Blasts White House on Broadband at F2C

ISP Planet: The Vermont Way Forward

Rutland (VT) Herald: Douglas Promotes e-State

Public CIO: VT Gov on Economic & Social Value of Broadband

Meraki Announcement of San Francisco Mesh Experiment at F2C

Wireless Week: Meraki's SF Mesh Experiment

Communications Daily: Calabrese and Snider at F2C

National Journal Tech Daily Dose: F2C Overview, Meraki announcement, James Salter, Day 2 Preview, Swire & Benkler, Adam Thierer

Blog Posts:

Doug Galbi on Vermont's e-State initiative (with video) [link]

Joho the Blog (by David Weinberger) on Intro, Governor Douglas, Benkler & Panel, Infrastructure Panel, OpenMoko, Press Panel, FCC Commissioner Adelstein, Swire & Benkler, Susan Crawford . . .

Susan Crawford's blog on Adelstein Q&A, Benkler & Swire, Adam Thierer . . .

Brough Turner on F2C Day One, Community Networks, Ron Sege's Intro of Adelstein, Day 2 Demos, Swire & Benkler, Thierer and Crawford.

Tom Evslin on his session with Gov. Douglas [link].

My own opening remarks, more or less as delivered.

John Quarterman on 700 MHz for Public Safety and Wireless Broadband [link]

David Gammel on Adelstein-Levy harmonica duet [link].

Adam Thierer on his talk.

Jonny Goldstein's brief review. (Expecting videos shortly!)

John Quarterman on Peer Press Panel.

Steve Smith on Vermont Gov. Douglas [link].

Aldon Hynes' view of Day 1 via remote participation, also Day 2 here and here.

Steve Stroh on Meraki.

Jon Husband on Weinberger on Benkler [link].

Peter Freyne's tech criticism of F2C video, etc. [link].

Frank Paynter explains why he's not at F2C, he's drafting the City of Madison, Wisconsin's NN resolution.

Photos:

Jerry Michalski's pix (this one's good), Ben Sheldon's pix (this one is funny), . . .

Videos:

2 min clip from Yochai Benkler's talk.

8 min of excerpts from Governor Douglas' talk

Jonny Goldstein's lobby interview with Bruce Sterling!

Archive of Video Webcast (work in progress)

March 5, 2007

Video 1.0
(436 MB)
  • 8:00 AM -- Registration, breakfast
  • 8:45 - 10:00 AM -- Jim Douglas, Governor of Vermont, Tom Evslin (intro), David Isenberg (welcome)
  • 10:00 - 10:30 AM -- Break
  • 10:30 - 11:15 AM -- Yochai Benkler on The Wealth of Networks
  • 11:15 - Noon -- Panel: Benkler, kc claffy, Mark Cooper, Elliot Maxwell, Gigi Sohn
Video 1.1
(48 MB)
  • David Smith (Qwaq demo),
Video 1.2
(120 MB)
  • Cory Ondrejka (2nd Life demo), James Salter, John Waclawsky (first 10 mins)*
Video 1.3
(140 MB)
  • Waclawsky (last 5 mins), Sanjit Biswas, Network Enabled Government Panel (first 25 mins)
Video 1.4
(97 MB)
  • Network Enabled Government (last 28 mins), Sean Moss-Pultz (first 14 mins)
Video 1.5
(75 MB)
  • Sean Moss Pultz (last 14 mins), Jeff Chester, Allison Fine, Reed Hundt

*audio glitch, unrecoverable, sorry :-(

March 6, 2007

Work
in
progress
  • Peer Production News, Dan Gillmor, Mark Tapscott, Bill Allison, Jonathan Krim (moderator)
  • Community Nets, Sascha Meinrath, Michael Calabrese, Becca Vargo Daggett, Drew Clark (moderator)
  • Adelstein-Levy Harmonica Duet
  • FCC Commissioner Adelstein, Ron Sege (Intro)
  • Another Adelstein-Levy Harmonica Duet
Work
in
progress
  • David Curry, Yuval Klein (Plymedia Demo)
  • Adam Thierer, Peter Swire, Jim Baller
  • Susan Crawford, Reed Hundt
  • Bruce Sterling (with Jasmina Tesanovic)

Music:

Amazing Grace [.mp3] by F2C Musician in Residence Howard Levy
(this particular performance is not from F2C2007, but it is in the Public Domain)

Stay tuned, more soon . . .

-------------------- below this line last updated 6Mar07 --------------------

"F2C is the absolutely unbuttoned-down deep thought conference of telecommunications. You'll find movers and shakers here (some ducked down in hiding); you'll find thinkers; and you'll find those who have been and those who will be the guiding forces in telecommunications. There's no way you'll agree with everything that's said and plenty of ways to make your opinion known whether you're on the formal program or not."

Tom Evslin, speaker at F2C 2007, in Fractals of Change.

"Don't miss F2C . . . F2C aims not to lobby or position or spin or score political brownie points. It aims to illuminate and educate. . . admittedly quirky . . . and free-spirited . . . if folks really want to know where broadband policy is headed, they should start with F2C."

Cynthia Brumfield, F2C 2006 participant, in IP Democracy.

". . . although I and [F2C producer David Isenberg] probably have quite divergent political beliefs, we're on common ground when it comes to "What is 'the network' for?" . . . [F2C] is unique in that it's not beholden to anyone's commercial interest, and comes nearest to being the forum for discussing the public interest."

Martin Geddes, F2C 2006 speaker in Telepocalypse

"The press was surprised by the net neutrality storm that struck Congress last Spring . . . F2C 2006 was a catalyst . . . there's no better venue to explore the issues."

Steve Crandall, F2C2006 participant, in Tingilinde

"David is a world-class human networker . . . If you're in the telecom business or you're an active telecom investor, you'll get a lot out of this meeting."

Porter Stansberry, F2C2006 participant, in Stansberry & Associates Digest, 2/13/07

"I had never before experienced a conversation taking place on this level or at this pace . . . most participants were actively contributing. It was exciting; it was overwhelming; it was nearly pure energy. I loved it!"

Mary Godwin, F2C 2006 participant, in her Body Electric blog

More participant observations here and here.

The Big Idea of F2C: Freedom to Connect updated 1Feb07

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. This year, the theme of F2C is how universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production are changing our fundamental economic and social assumptions. (F2C is produced by David S. Isenberg of isen.com, LLC.)

WHAT: F2C is 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 5 through 5:00 PM on March 6, 2007. Program here.

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

WHY: updated 4Jan07

It is written that Freedom of the Press is only for those with presses. Internet technology now makes Freedom of the Press available to about 1,000,000,000 people, one sixth of Earth's inhabitants. How does this change the fundamental operating assumptions of society?

Yochai Benkler, setting the theme for F2C 2007, advances a powerful hypothesis, that lowering the capital requirements of information production

  1. reduces the value of proprietary strategies and makes public, shared information more important,
  2. encourages a wider range of motivations to produce, thus demoting supply-and-demand from prime motivator to one-of-many, and
  3. allows large-scale, cooperative information production efforts that were not possible before, from open-source software, to search engines and encyclopedias, to massively multi-player online games.

Benkler writes,

It is easy to miss these changes. They run against the grain of some of our most basic Economics 101 intuitions, intuitions honed in the industrial economy . . . In the industrial economy in general, and the industrial information economy as well, most opportunities to make things [used to be] constrained by the physical capital requirements of making them . . . In the networked information economy, the physical capital required for production is broadly distributed throughout society . . . The result is a flourishing nonmarket sector of information, knowledge, and cultural production, based in the networked environment, and applied to anything that the many individuals connected to it can imagine.

At F2C: Freedom to Connect we will explore Benkler's hypothesis. What's the evidence? How strong is it? What's the contravening evidence? What are the early indicators, and are they as strong as Benkler would have us believe?

At F2C: Freedom to Connect we will pursue the implications of the scenario that Benkler sketches. Where does this scenario take us? What does it imply? What are the foreseeable consequences? And what are some alternate scenarios?

At F2C: Freedom to Connect we will hear from technologists about new recipes for continued capital improvements. We will also hear from regulators, legislators and other shapers of telecom policy about the prognosis for policy that responds to (or defends against!) the lowered capital requirements of information production.

At F2C: Freedom to Connect we will connect with our fellow co-creators of the future to plan even more collaboration.

Join us!

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What folks say about F2C (lots more here)

Freedom to Connect [is] based on a critical worldchanging concept: The need to communicate is primary, like the need to breathe, eat, sleep, reproduce, socialize and learn.

Jon Lebkowsky in Worldchanging

Every event David runs that I've been to is a bit like taking a red pill and seeing the world rather differently. Unmissable. See you there.

Martin Geddes in Telepocalypse

The Latest: F2C 2007 announces . . . updated 4Mar07

  • Sean Moss-Pultz, founder of OpenMoko added to program.
  • Door Prize: A new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet will be given away to a randomly selected F2C attendee sometime on Tuesday, March 6. You must be present to win.
  • Monday evening reception: We're concluding details with a delightful Silver Spring restaurant for our Monday evening reception, 5:30 to 8:30. David Weinberger will be the Reception Keynote Speaker. Get the details at F2C on Monday, March 5 at F2C.
  • There will be four F2C demos of peer production platforms. Two of these, Second Life and Qwaq, an enterprise version of the powerful Croquet project, provide platforms for virtual worlds, where participants can create value with each other. The Plymedia demo shows technology that lets people add value (commentary, overlay images, links) to objects, even copyright objects, without changing the underlying object. The Burda Style demo [see Make Magazine link] shows how an age-old form of social production, the sewing circle, Internet enabled, can make the circle global.
  • Late-confirmed F2C speakers include FCC Commissioner Adelstein, Bill Allison, Sanjit Biswas, Michael Calabrese, Becca Vargo Daggett, Kimberly "kc" Claffy, Allison Fine, Peter Swire, Mark Tapscott, Adam Thierer, Utah Rep. and blogger Steve Urquhart, and John Waclawsky. [details]

In addition,

  • Sponsorship opportunities still available.
  • Tags: please use F2C and F2C2007.

For fast notification of the latest changes, get the RSS Feed of isen.blog

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Agenda (under construction, subject to change, falling into shape) 4Mar07

To date, committed speakers include Nora Abousteit, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Bill Allison, Jim Baller, Yochai Benkler, Sanjit Biswas, Michael Calabrese, Jeff Chester, Kimberly "kc" Claffy, Drew Clark, Mark Cooper, Susan Crawford, Becca Vargo Daggett, Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, Tom Evslin, Allison Fine, Dan Gillmor, Reed Hundt, Benedikta von Karaisl, Yuval Klein, Jonathan Krim, Blair Levin, Elliot Maxwell, Sascha Meinrath, Sean Moss-Pultz, Cory Ondrejka, James Salter, Ron Sege, Micah Sifry, David A. Smith, Gigi Sohn, Bruce Sterling, Peter Swire, Mark Tapscott, Jasmina Tesanovic, Adam Thierer, Utah Rep. Steve Urquhart, John Waclawsky, and David Weinberger.

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
  • 10:00 - 10:30 AM -- Break
  • 10:30 - 11:15 AM -- Yochai Benkler on The Wealth of Networks
  • 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, John Waclawsky, Sanjit Biswas
  • 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
  • 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)
  • 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
  • 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).
  • 5:00 PM -- Adjourn

Registration updated 20Feb07

Register now, only $650.00. (This goes up to $1199 at on 2/28/07. Register early. And often.)

  • No cancellation refunds after Feb 15, 2007. (Substitutions OK until March 1 by written notice.)
  • If you work for government in telecom or Internet policy, write to isen@isen.com for special government rate.
  • If you're a full-time reporter for the working press, write to isen@isen.com for press attendance info.
  • If you'd really like to come but the price of admission is the biggest barrier to your attendance, write to isen@isen.com and make your case.
  • If you'd like to keep your name or email address off this Web site, please inform isen@isen.com after you register. (no listing this year, too many objections re: spam, privacy, etc.)
  • On 22Feb07 there were 137 people registered. It will be an awesome audience.

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Venue, Travel & Lodging updated 1Feb07

VENUE & LOCAL: F2C will convene at AFI Silver, a short walk from the Silver Spring Metro station. The Silver Spring Metro is six stops from Washington, D.C., Union Station on the Red Line. Interactive Map of Washington Metro here. See driving and parking directions here. AFI Silver is the newly restored theater complex of the American Film Institute.

GETTING THERE: Washington DC has Amtrak and three major airports. National (DCA) is the most convenient, and it is right on the Metro. Dulles (IAD) and Baltimore Washington (BWI) are less expensive to fly into because they are served by discounters like Ted and Southwest. Dulles is best for international flights.

LODGING NEARBY: There are three hotels within walking distance of the F2C Conference venue, a Hilton, a Crowne Plaza. and a Marriott Courtyard. Unfortunately "conference rates" don't seem to be any better than using on-line discount services, or the hotels' own Web sites, so there is no negotiated rate at either of these. If you're after "budget," about 1.5 miles away there's a little cluster with a Day's Inn, a Ramada, and a Quality Inn. You can use hotels.com or similar to reserve a specific hotel. (I have had good luck using Priceline and Hotwire in the Washington DC area. These do not let you choose specific hotels, but in my experience the hotel is often an easy walk from a Metro stop, and so is the F2C venue.)

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Musician in Residence: Howard Levy updated 27Jan07

Music is perhaps the oldest form of communications technology. This year's F2C musician in residence, the amazing Howard Levy, is known in the trade as a genre bender; he is fluent in jazz, pop, rock, world music, Latin, classical, folk, blues, country, and other forms. His grammy-winning work with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is well known. He has also played with Dolly Parton, Paul Simon, and the Bavarian State Radio Orchestra. A Chicago resident, he has played the National Anthem for the Cubs and the Bulls. A lesser-known fact: he's given music lessons to FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.

Sponsors: updated 22Feb07

Program sponsors:

Organizational Sponsors:

Technical Support Sponsors:

makers of Campfire Group Chat

Special Thanks to . . . updated 20Feb07

Dewayne Hendricks, Judi Clark, Tiffany Graham, John Summers, Ed Fineran, Terry McGarty, Gordon Cook, Tom Collins, Gary Arlen, Pip Coburn, Frannie Wellings, Greg Elin . . .

CMA, the fine print: While all of the above is presented in good faith, please take all of it as a best effort attempt rather than a guarantee. Everything here is subject to change without notice. Of course, if things change, I'll do my very best to let all interested parties know asap. All I'm saying is let's be reasonable; if you don't demand that I do the impossible, I will, in exchange, attempt it. David Isenberg

F2C is a production of isen.com, LLC

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