KMB Video Journal Comments
Mike et. al:The new website looks wonderful, and I thought I’d use “reply all” to alert the KMB community to a new “research note” I’ve put out at the website of the Pew Research Center. The piece is called “Broadband: What’s All the Fuss About?” and is relevant to the discussions we had at KMB.
It can be found online here:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/616/broadband
JBH
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John B. Horrigan, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Pew Internet Project
jhorrigan@pewinternet.org
202.419.4512 Download the Pew Research Center Publication: Broadband: What's All the Fuss About?
Here are links for another perspective from a KMB Participant speaking from the Broadband world, Geoff Daily.
October 8, 2007 8:44 AM
Thoughts from the KMB Conference
After a successful run at the FTTH Conference, I headed west to the Gulf of Mexico to attend the 40th edition of the KMB Conference.
The “MB” in KMB stands for Mike Beilis, a former AT&T executive and a driving force in the development of the tele-lecture, which leveraged the then-new technology of telephone conference calls to enable remote teaching in university and corporate settings.
His conference brings together a dynamic, diverse group of individuals representing everyone from state officials to broadband providers to think tankers to discuss the real problems and opportunities of this thing we call the Internet, and how broadband should or shouldn’t be regulated.
He’s been doing this for more than 20 years, while simultaneously producing an impressive stream of informative video interviews that have been praised by state legislators and regulators as key resources in their understanding of how the telecom industry works. Many of these videos are available for download on his website.
But back to the conference: it was a tremendous experience for me personally, and I believe for everyone else in the room as well.
The best thing about the event was its intimacy. Coming from the two thousand plus attendees of the FTTH Conference spread across what seemed like miles of exhibit floor and session rooms into an event with forty to fifty people all in the same room and with the added bonus of having most everyone’s name and title listed in the program was a revelatory experience.
I got to know who everyone in the room was. I got to have real, meaningful conversations with at least half of the attendees. And we were able to have true conversations in this setting, with audience and panelists bouncing ideas back and forth in an environment where Mike encouraged everyone to “leave their ideologies at the door.”
Mike featured a jam-packed agenda over the 48 hour run of the conference, including sessions on telemedicine, public safety, gaming, and a number of angles on the central topic of how do we get more broadband into under and unserved areas of the country.
My overarching feeling from attending this event? That everyone agrees broadband is a good thing, that there are a lot of smart people working really hard to try and figure it out, but that there are also a lot of unresolved questions as to what’s the best way to move forward.
I’m not sure if we came upon any hard and fast answers last week, but we did have a series of great conversations that the legislators/regulators I spoke with agreed had helped them explore these issues for themselves to a much greater degree, making them all glad they attended the event.
Now I just hope that my contributions were worthy of an invitation the next time around!
Click on the Link below to see this post: http://www.apprising.com/gdblog/2007/10/thoughts_from_the_kmb_conferen.html
October 9, 2007 10:18 AM
Microsoft Enters Consumer Telemedicine Market, with Thoughts from KMB Conference
Click on the Link below to see this post by Geoff Daily:
http://www.app-rising.com/gdblog/2007/10/microsoft_enters_consumer_tele.html
October 10, 2007 2:53 PM
The Impossible Dream of Competitive Broadband Marketplaces in Unserved Areas
Click on the Link below to see this post by Geoff Daily:
http://www.app-rising.com/gdblog/2007/10/the_impossible_dream_of_compet.html