VON Town Hall
I started the day off at one of Jeff’s “Realtime Social Networking” breakfasts. It sounds hokey at first, but everyone runs around sticking tags on each other forming “tag clouds”. At the end of the session you really meet some good people and in reflection get a glimpse of how others perceive you on a first impression basis.
Most of the day was taken up on a workshop around Communications Enabled Business Processes hosted by Tom Howe. His “voice is a spice” lecture is worthy of another post entirely.
What I really wanted to share was my complete disappointment in the leadership reflected by the Town Hall panel. The moderator opened the session as a bridge between those in the beltway and the rest of us innovating outside. Although I’m not from the Valley, I get the distinct feeling that few here care about what happens on the other coast; sad given how there lives could be destroyed if we get broadband policy wrong. For me, the frustration is this slow gnawing process of change. Tweak interconnect here, reform termination there. Everyone on the panel was content at leaving the debate at the services layer. Specifically, government having a light touch on services and nothing else. I could not disagree more. Let’s try NO TOUCH on services (other than safety and other law enforcement issues) and have the focus on ACCESS. There was the obligatory argument over interpretation of OECD numbers, in which all the panelist (Verizon, Google, Feature Group IP and Internet Innovation Alliance) agreed that US was net net positive. There was also somewhat of consensus that fiber roll-outs were going ok (great if you live in a Verizon territory) and that multi-modal competition was sufficient. I’m sorry, but where is the consumer and business interest on this panel pushing for nothing less than a total fiberization in the same sense as electrification in the last turn of the century.
