I’m preparing for FiberFête, and in going over my notes from last year’s Freedom2Connect conference, I’m (re) acquainting myself with some of the brilliant players from last year’s conference.
Public Knowledge is a public interest group which concentrates on network neutrality and broadband issues.
The Sunlight Foundation strives for full disclosure and accountability in government.
Harold Feld has an exhaustive dissection of the recent Comcast/FCC ruling. Harold’s blog, Tales of the Sausage Factory appears as part of wetmachine.com. (I always wanted to write that.)
Like the Freedom2Connect conferences, FiberFête celebrates municipal broadband systems, as well as fiber to the home (FFTH); i.e. ubiquitous very high speed fiber connections which deliver internet, voice, data, and television to homes, and which enable the same to be delivered from homes. In some parts of the world this is going pretty well, in a lot of others it is not. While many of the presentations and discussions relate to policy and financial aspects of telecommunications, my presentation on home telemedicine highlights an application, which, if fully developed, is expected to play a major role in the transformation of health care and elder care. One of the reasons telemedicine hasn’t taken off as might be expected is that the financial beneficiaries, i.e. those who could save money implementing telemedicine aren’t necessarily the same as the implementers; doctors and hospitals.
The site venue, Lafayette LA, happens to be dedicating its own municipal FTTH network, and the conference is partly a way to celebrate that accomplishment. Lafayette is also hosting a music festival which coincides with the end of the conference.
Last but not least, on the Mac the way to type a circumflex over the ‘e’ in FiberFête is Option-I and then ‘e’.
tfnp 