While it probably sounds presumptuous, I now officially endorse and recommend David Isenberg's Freedom To Connect conference that will be held March 30-31, 2005 in Washington, DC.
My original concerns are no longer valid. As the agenda and speaker list has continued to fill out in the last few months, it became apparent that Isenberg, true to his word, has included significant wireless content. Such as:
Even with the wireless content, Freedom To Connect isn't anything resembling a wireless conference... so why am I endorsing and recommending it? Two reasons. The first is Isenberg himself... he is a human catalyst, attracting SMART people from all over the world. Isenberg's first public conference - WTF 2004 was a rousing success... more of a three day graduate school seminar on "the bigger picture" of telecommunications and society than a conventional conference. F2C is focused sharper still on the critical and rapidly-evolving policy issues of a telecommunications system grounded in the technology, economics, and social implications of this century, not the last.
The second reason I'm endorsing F2C is that it will be an excellent conference where the focus will be on BWIA as an enabling technology... not the technology-in-a-vacuum approach that most BWIA conferences take. It sounds obvious, but for too many it's not... BWIA is, in the end, merely a pipe to deliver information. F2C will discuss what information will ultimately be allowed to be delivered by Broadband systems... and that bigger picture perspective really needs to be understood by those who fight the good fight to make Broadband widely available and affordable.
A personal note - my endorsement and recommendation also come, in part, as a result of an epiphany I had very recently regarding Isenberg and his view of Broadband Wireless Internet Access. While I'm used to debating and discussing BWIA in excruciating detail (you can ask my remaining friends), I've never been able to engage Isenberg in such discussions, except for the first time we met a few years ago. As a result, I didn't credit Isenberg with quite "getting it" about BWIA and its significance. That was an egregious error on my part. I now realize that Isenberg does indeed get it about BWIA and especially license-exempt BWIA. He got BWIA thoroughly; he did his own analysis of BWIA, pronounced it good, working-just-fine, and significant. He saw no need to discuss the minutiae of BWIA vendors or technologies any more than it was necessary to discuss vendors or technologies of Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) systems to thoroughly grasp their implications. Having learned as much as he needed to incorporate into his (very) big picture perspective, Isenberg moved on to the bigger issues that really required his personal attention... like telecommunications policy.
Isenberg is one of those rare people that operates several levels above, and ahead, of the rest of us... but tries to make himself and his thoughts accessible. If for no other reason than that, you should try to attend F2C... and learn. I will be attending F2C to do just that... learn.
Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2005 by Steve Stroh
Comments