Is your community considering a public private partnership to improve connectivity for businesses and residents? Will you be attending the Broadband Communities Economic Development Conference in Lexington this September? If you answered 'yes' to those two questions, you should attend CLIC's half-day event on Friday, September 18th.

Spend the morning breakfasting with telecommunication attorney Jim Baller and Joanne Hovis from CLIC along with Maura Corbett, CEO of Glen Echo Group and Heather Gold, CEO of FTTH Council Americas.

The rest of the agenda from a CLIC email invitation:

An Extensive CLIC Paper on the Key Business and Legal Issues in Public-Private Partnerships :

Moderator: Jim Baller - President, CLIC

Speakers:

• Joanne Hovis - CEO, CLIC
• Ashley Stelfox - Associate Legal Counsel, CLIC

The Private Sector’s Perspective :

Speakers:

• Elliot Noss - CEO, Ting Fiber Internet
• Bob Nichols - President, Declaration Networks Group
• Levi Dinkla – Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, iTV-3
• Steve Biggerstaff – Founding President, Director & Advisor, Metronet
• Nicholas Hann – Senior Managing Director, Macquarie Capital/Macquarie Group Ltd.

The Public Sector’s Perspective :

Moderator: Catharine Rice - Project Director, CLIC

Speakers:

• Robert Wack - President, City Council, Westminster, MD
• Scott Shapiro - Senior Advisor, The Mayor’s Office, City of Lexington, Kentucky
• Jon Gant – Director, UC2B

In April, Chris spoke at the Broadband Communities Summit in Austin. If you were not able to attend, Saul Tannenbaum's Readfold.com article gives you a taste of what it was like. Tannenbaum is a member of the Cambridge Broadband Task Force, recently set up by the city's City Manager to investigate the possibility of municipal broadband connectivity.

Tannenbaum describes his experience there and some of the typical discussions he encounters while investigating a muni network. What role should the local or state government play in bettering connectivity? What is preventing the U.S. from excelling at ubiquitous access for all income levels? Why a municipal network? For Tannenbaum, and other residents of Cambridge, those questions are especially significant because the town is historically a place of technological innovation. Gigabit connectivity may be the gold standard, but in a place like Cambridge, it is the minimum:

Cambridge has companies and institutions for whom high capacity, high speed networks are mission critical. MIT, Harvard, the Broad Institute, Google, Microsoft, Biogen-Idec, Novartis, and many others who are not yet household names, move large amounts as part of daily work. With partners like those, Cambridge can become a true testbed for the network of the future. Cambridge, where the Internet was invented, can be where the next Internet is developed.

We encourage you to read the entire article, which also offers up some great resources, but Tannenbaum made the case for his home town:

[Cambridge] pairs a legacy of being on the frontiers of social justice with an economic sector whose future health requires a free and open Internet. It is a rarity in Cambridge politics to find the interests of our innovation community and our social justice community to be so closely aligned.

On May 13th and 14th get y'allselves to Altanta to attend Gigabit Cities Live 2015. The event will bring together members from the public, private, and non-profit sectors to explore how gigabit networks are changing local communities. 

From the event summary:

Gigabit Cities Live 2015 will deliver a highly ‘immersive’ experience for attendees, exploring everything from the infrastructure required to deploy ultra-high-speed networks to the applications these networks are enabling to how gigabit networks will transform communities.

... Meet decision-makers from all aspects of the Gigabit Cities ecosystem – from service providers to urban leaders to technology vendors to applications developers and more – to learn about different approaches and business models for gigabit network success.

Hear thought leaders, see new products and services and learn from peers and solutions providers, all under one roof.

Chris will participate in a panel discussion, Open Access and the Future, on the morning of Thursday the 14th, time to be determined.

This panel session focuses on Open Access broadband networks, the provision of infrastructure to competing carriers that serve end users. Open Access is one of the most talked-about concepts in the broadband and gigabit city community today. Panelists will provide insight into open access models and the treatment of passive broadband infrastructure as a mechanism to encourage competition on the local level, and spur economic investment and development.  This includes successful public-private partnership structures, various models of open access including structural separation and the results of early Open Access network developments in North America. Does Open Access ultimately deliver a vibrant, competitive marketplace for broadband access?

Chris will travel to Syracuse, New York to speak on March 4th as part of Syracuse MetroNet's Broadband Speaker Series. If you are in the area and interested in attending, the lecture will be at 7 p.m. at Grewen Auditorium at the Le Moyne College campus. A PDF of the press release is available online.

Syracuse MetroNet serves fifteen community anchor institutions, including hospitals, educational institutions, government agencies, and community organizations. Unfortunately, the connectivity situation for businesses and residents needs a better solution.

Last fall, Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner expressed interest in developing a municipal network to improve connectivity in this community of 147,000. Residents now depend on Time Warner Cable for service and do not treasure the idea of dealing with an even bigger behemoth, should the merger with Comcast come to pass.

If you are still contemplating whether or not to trek to New York City on March 2nd and 3rd for Freedom to Connect 2015, now is the time to take action. Tickets are going fast and seats are limited. ATTENDANCE IS BY REGISTRATION ONLY and this year the event is hot!

Register online through EventBrite.com.

A working agenda has just been posted. An email from David Isenberg, who tirelessly plans and promotes the event every year, described some of the issues to be discussed:

The aspects of the Internet's protocol suite that make it the success it has become

The all-fronts attack on the Internet by the National Security Agency

How community controlled networks, especially the fiber to the home networks being built by communities such as Chattanooga TN and Wilson NC, as well as alternative networks being built by Google, Ting and others, are challenging incumbent telcos and cablecos

Title II as the centerpiece of the FCC Open Internet Report and Order

The agenda will continue to develop as planning progresses, so be sure to revisit.

Guest speakers include:

• Chris Mitchell from ILSR and MuniNetworks.org
• Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law School
• Harold Feld, Public Knowledge
• Jim Baller, Baller Herbst Stokes & Lide
• Deb Socia, Next Century Cities
• Gigi Sohn, FCC
• Tim Wu, Columbia Law School

...and many, many others.

Spring is the time for the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities (IAMU) Broadband Conference in Des Moines. This year is it scheduled for March 18th and 19th at the Ramada Tropics and Resort Center downtown. Don't forget your swimsuit!

Chris will be presenting again this year. He has been there 2 out of the last 3 years and it is always a good time with lots of great energy. This year they are particularly welcoming people from outside Iowa as well - so put it on your calendar if you are nearby!

The agenda is still being developed but will include a variety of topics including the proliferation of the connected home, legislative and regulatory updates, and marketing for small broadband utilities. You can view a working agenda [PDF] at the IAMU website.

You can register now for special rates. Call 515-278-0271 and ask for the IAMU room block.

The 2015 Broadband Communities Summit is scheduled for April 14 - 16 in Austin, Texas. When you book your flight and reserve your room, plan on coming a day early so you can take advantage of the is year's special pre-conference event. The Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC) will offer a full day's agenda on the politics of local Internet choice on Monday, April 13.

Chris will speak at both events. As Senior Advisor to CLIC, he will be speaking on Monday to CLIC pre-conference attendees and then addressing economic development at the Broadband Communities Summit on Tuesday, April 14. The Summit Agenda at a Glance is now available to view.

For a limited time, CLIC members can register online for the CLIC program for $125 and attend the entire Summit for free. Choose the CODEHOLDERS button and enter the code CLIC125 to receive the special rate.

(Pssst! This is an awesome deal! You save $895!)

Once again it is Freedom to Connect time! On March 2nd and 3rd, New York City's Civic Hall will light up with people like you who understand, appreciate, and cherish connectivity. You can register now at F2C15.eventbrite.com. For a limited time, special earlybird pricing is available.

This is shaping up to once again be and incredible event. You can see videos from the 2013 event here. From the speakers to the live music, this is not an event to be missed!

Chris will be back to present again as will Susan Crawford, Elliot Noss of Ting, and others. More distinguished speakers are being added to the line up as the event approaches. You can get more updates on the website or on Twitter at #F2C15. 

Here is a brief excerpt from the website:

F2C: Freedom to Connect provides a platform for understanding the social utility of infrastructure, for innovation, for creativity, for expression, for little-d democracy. The Freedom to Connect is about an Internet that supports human freedoms and personal security. These values are dear to many of us whose consciousness has been shaped by the Internet, but they are often at odds with the values of mainstream media, Wall Street and governments around the world.

Our friends at the Blandin Foundation recently sponsored another Minnesota Border to Border Broadband conference. Video and materials are now available. 

In addition to the archived video of the November 19th event in Brainerd, Minnesota, Blandin on Broadband's Ann Treacy provides links to summaries of each session, some of which also have PowerPoint presentations or video available for viewing: