Karen Coyle note, 11 Oct

Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998
To: cpsr-activists
From: Karen Coyle
Subject: From the conference

Just a brief note from the conference because I haven't had time to write up my real notes. Lawrence Lessig gave an excellent talk, which apparently will appear in text somewhere - hopefully our site. He emphasized the need for governance (leaving the form open) because non-governance cannot represent the will of the people. Panels during the day were of high quality. My favorites were the last two: universal access and convergence. The UA panel had excellent talks by Tracy Cohen of s. Africa, Madan Rao of India and Meryem Marzouki of France. Tracy and Madan's slides will go up on our site as soon as I have time. From this panel it becomes obvious that concepts of governance vary greatly around the world and they have to be taken into account in Internet Governance. The last panel on convergence was a kind of open debate between Jeff Chester (CME), Glenn Manishin and Vint Cerf (and one other panelist that I'm not awake enough to remember, sorry). They were controversial, witty and very bright. Harry did a great job of moderating that one, and the audience really got into the act.

The Weiner award was well-attended, location was perfect, and Stef's talk was an excellent history lesson, reminding us all while we are here. BTW, there's Weiner memorabilia in the hallway by our meeting room, since this is where he taught.

I should mention that we have a very high number of non-US attendees here - many Europeans, some who came over just for this meeting. We really do get to think globally now.

gotta run.
kc