After Freedom . . .Then What?!?!

After Freedom . . . Then What?!?!

David [1] Isenberg's [2] Freedom To Connect [3]
conference, aka F2C, took place last week in Silver Spring, MD, just
outside of Washington, DC. This year the focus of the meeting was
Net Neutrality. Another way of describing the focus would be freedom
to connect to the web without being held hostage by the telcos and
cable companies at rates too high and throughput too low. At least that's my take on it.

Here's how it was described on the F2C website prior to the meeting:

F2C:Freedom to Connect begins
with two assumptions. First, if some connectivity is good, then more
connectivity is better. Second, if a connection that does one thing is
good, then a connection that can do many things is better.

F2C:Freedom to Connect
belongs with Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Assembly. Each of
these freedoms is related to the others and depends on the others, but
stands distinct. Freedom to Connect, too, depends on the other four but
carries its own meaning. Unlike the others, it does not yet have a body
of law and practice surrounding it. There is no Digital Bill of Rights.
Freedom to Connect is the place to start.

F2C --the meeting-- is the telecom/internet/connectivity meeting of the year.
It doesn't get any better than this. David pulls together an excellent
program of speakers, topics, panel discussions, keynoters and
experts. The two days are jam packed with sessions offering
incredible insight, opinion, attitude and facts.

Kudos to David for all sorts of choices and manner of running a
conference. There were no competing tracks with concurrent
sessions -- all the attendees had access to each and every
session. The speakers were all accessible and interactive, both
when on the stage, as well as during other times such as the breaks
between sessions, lunch, or at the informal evening get-togethers
following both days.

Even the meals were top notch: healthy breakfasts with fresh fruits,
and box lunches from the nearby Whole Foods, with various dietetic
restrictions and needs duly considered.

Couldn't attend F2C? Well, yeah, you could have: the conference
was carried live via a streaming audio channel on the web, and a
Campfire [4] IM session ran throughout the entire meeting. In
addition to those of us in attendance who posted to the very
interactive IRC (oops, force of habit, not IRC, I meant Campfire!)
channel, loads of off-site participants were able to listen in, and
offer comments on the back channel.

At times the snarky, outright
funny, or occasional stunning back channel comment would cause an
audible response from the attendees. Speakers would look back at
the screen, to see what was going on over at the Campfire [5] channel.

This was a truly interactive meetng. Freedom to connect.
Freedom to interact. Freedom, neutrality. Great ideas, all in
full effect at F2C.

Excellent live blogging was going on. See Frank Paynter's Listics [6] and David Weinberger's JOHO [7]
for two excellent sources of what one might call F2C
play-by-play. Note: in both cases (Frank's and David's blogs) the
link is to the last of their F2C posts --click over, and read down from
there. You'll get a sense of F2C from two of the best
"live-action bloggers" in the game.

I'll have some more posts about F2C in days to come. Sessions are
still replaying around my mind, off-conference meetings and
post-conference interactions still reverberating, with
strength. In fact, I've been so busy with follow-up and other
things to do since F2C, I haven't had a chance to blog, much less do
most anything else.

Here's the bottom line: David Isenberg puts on the very best
connectivity meeting, bar none. Last year's F2C set the bar
incredibly high. And this year it was raised yet again

Congratulations and thank you to David for another excellent conference. F2C is the best.