Politics Online '08 Day 1: Facebook rep dodges questions, NTIA rep sweats, Professor Wu teaches, annoying questions ignored.

By
Andrew
on March 4, 2008 5:28 PM | | Comments (2188) | TrackBacks (0)
Unfortunately, I was too busy taking pictures to really pay much attention to the first plenary, which really didn't capture much attention except for a few panelists' fixation on the "death of email" which I talked about yesterday. 

First off, Facebook's Adam Conner proved himself a gracious, good-humored and more than capable spin doctor. During his panel on the "youth vote," when an audience (not me) questioned him on whether or not he considered it a problem that Facebook profiles could potentially be used in the future as opposition research, and that people with political ambitions might be afraid to even use the sites, Mr. Conner gave a non-answer about how "more transparency" is a good thing. 

When I attempted to ask him the same question about the problems posed by an online "audit trail" and comparing it to Hillary Clinton's attempt to use Barack Obama's admitted drug use in his book against him, Mr. Conner first made a joke about the election, attempted to dodge the question by talking about 40 year old Facebook users, and was rescued by a much older man who made a crack about older people's drug use. At that point I ended the conversation by "agreeing" since I had other places to go.

Here is a recording I made of my follow-up question: 



You would think Mr. Conner, being an adult, could answer without help. No hard feelings, though, Adam. I know you've got a tough job to do, defending a privacy nightmare. Seriously. I had the opportunity to speak with Adam about it later that night, and he's a great guy. I hope he might be able to contribute to these discussions in the future, and he does have a really tough job to do. And if you were wondering, we do agree on many, many things, but sometimes its' my job to stir the pot a bit. Done.


The highlight of the day so far was the keynote panel, moderated by Drew Clark and featuring Professor Timothy Wu, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, and Eric Werner from NTIA.

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(L to R: Adelstein, Werner, Clark, Wu)

The debate, of course, was over the U.S. Broadband strategy, or lack thereof. While we know that Drew and Commissioner Adelstein have been firm advocates for a sound broadband strategy and Professor Wu is a known net neutrality advocate. Since the Bush Administration's policy comes from NTIA, Mr. Werner came into a panel of "sharks" and was a bit on the defensive during what was quite an informative and substantial discussion. It really is hard to defend a policy of not having a policy and "letting the market decide" when there is a monopoly running the market. Mr. Werner did his best, and when I had the opportunity to speak with him was quite accessable and a perfect gentleman. The moderator, Drew Clark, is, of course, the man behind Broadband Census and knows a thing or two about fast pipes.

A recurrent question was how exactly to define broadband. Internationally, we're pretty bad at it. Remember, that a recent Connected Nation study said that a true US Broadband strategy would give us $132 Billion for the economy. While Mr. Werner continued to insist that "market" solutions were best, Mr. Clark, Professor Wu, and Commissioner Adelstein did a pretty good job of knocking him down. I kind of felt bad for the guy, who was earnest in his defense of NTIA's position and actually performed quite well under the pressure.

There were at least one comical highlight, though. At one point, this guy named Andrew Slack (how appropriate), shown below, got up towards the end of the discussion when the room was nearly empty and instead of asking a  real question, demanded that Mr. Werner treat the U.S. broadband situation like Katrina and simply apologize for "doing a bad job.: The microphone was quickly removed from his hands, and Mr. Werner did the right thing by simply ignoring him. He didn't even identify himself. I know who he is because I spoke with him in passing  at an earlier panel. Here he is, before the de-microphoning:

Andrew_Slack.jpg




This is a guy whose business card lists him as running the "HP Alliance," the goal of which, I kid you not, is:

The Harry Potter Alliance is dedicated to using the examples of Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore to spread love and fight the Dark Arts in the real world. Please join us in creating the real Dumbledore's Army.
On the other hand, Professor Jonathan Taplin of USC asked one of the best questions all day which was a simple query: "What about DARPA?" DARPA, for those not in-the-know, was the agency that funded creation of what evolved into today's Internet. Taplin suggested that the government should take a more active role in developing and deploying high technology, since all agree that it is essential to our economic competitiveness and national security. Professor Taplin also spoke at an earlier panel, and seems to have quite the clue about things. Here is a picture of the man himself:

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It's noteworthy that Commissioner Adelstein was a refreshing example of perfect ethical standards by making a conscious choice to not talk about the ongoing Comcast net neutrality proceeding. However Mr. Werner from NTIA was gracious enough to speak with me for a few minutes about his view on market forces in net neutrality, and the importance of disclosure for broadband.



Not quite satisfied, I turned around and took a minute to speak with Net Neutrality luminary and Internet legend Tim Wu, and got a much more clear answer. Professor Wu was in a hurry, and I thank him for chiming in on the issue.


Many thanks to Drew Clark for moderating a great panel composed of such knowledgable and just plain nice people. Drew and I regularly overlap on some subject matter, and I look forward to possibly working with him in the future. All of the panelists were quite gracious, especially the very busy Commissioner Adelstein, shown here possibly giving a "thumbs up" for Broadband:

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That picture, by the way, could be totally out of context. Commissioner Adelstein made an explicit point of not speaking on issues before the Commission like Net Neutrality. Either way, he's quite the nice guy, photographs well, and was quite apologetic about having to run off without talking after the panel ended.

Later on came the most "meta" moment ever. During a panel discussion on privacy and  data portability, the subject of Robert Scoble's attempts to port his Facebook friend data and its' privacy implications came up. No sooner than had I looked up from my screen than my phone rang with none other than the Scobleizer himself on the other end. Very strange.

Tomorrow: More from Politics Online, Day 2. Plus,  how do candidates plan their schedules? They go where the people are. The guys at Eventful have a great system for letting you get people to your community, and I spent a good chunk of time with one of them yesterday. Until then, this will have to do. Cheers! 


If you're in DC, come say hi!



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