F2C was an intense and fascinating multi-disciplinary dive into issues affecting last/first mile access. A big part of the value came from the hallway and bar conversations with some great people.
If you’re looking for info and links, I refer you to David’s post here, and that of Heath Row who transcribed almost the full text of the entire conference.
In my opinion, the top three talks were:
1. Vint Cerf gave a short, coherent, and exceptionally clear talk about why unfettered access is critical to the development of more and better value in the net. Unfortunately it was at an after dinner keynote, and I can’t yet find a transcript, I’ll circle back and do so.
2. John Perry Barlow, of Grateful Dead and Cyberspace / EFF fame, rechristened David’s stupid network as the “ignorant network”, and seconded Vint’s themes. He winds up suggesting that peer-to-peer plus encryption seems to be the only reasonable answer. Partial transcript here.
3. David Weinberger was in charge of summing it up, and he reached the farthest into the social drivers behind connection and innovation at the edge.
David’s kickoff rap poem, and Dewayne Hendrick’s overview of wireless mesh and “smart dust” (grain-of-sand-size wireless network nodes) deserve honorable mention.
The conference used a backchannel IRC chat session, displayed on the giant screen behind the speakers. I found the backchannel conversation distracting at times and interesting at times. I did lose track of the speakers at numerous points, which I regret. But, some of the backchannel conversations were incredibly interesting given the pedigree and combined knowledge base of the attendees. “ampersmith” says thank you to Bob_Frankston, TonyA, Iz, agoldman_jupc, SteveStroh, scrawford, …
If I had a criticism of the conference, it is that we all seemed to be in violent agreement with each other, and we spent all of our time agreeing (that unfettered net access was important), without reaching any concrete action plan to achieve it. Or, maybe I went into information and caffeine overload and I missed it …
Along this line, Jonathan Askin invited me to the Peripheral Visionaries conference, which will have a number of key policymakers so that we can present our views. The Pulver crew is also organizing a Net Freedom Rally at the capitol in late June.