Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Program committee introductions

The members of the program committee have their bios on the wiki; we'll also use this thread to introduce ourselves informally.

(Originally posted March 23; bumped to the top on March 26. Thanks to the one dozen program committee members who have introduced themselves so far.)

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I started working at EFF in January as International Affairs Director, and am working in the near term on European IP and Access to Knowledge (A2K) and the Development Agenda at WIPO. I'm also a lecturer at Yale Law School teaching a research group/clinical course called A2K Practicum. Until January, I was the Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project and am still an ISP fellow for the remainder of this academic year.

My first CFP was in 2002 in San Francisco and I've been to almost every year since. I've always looked forward to it as a key gathering of public interest law and technology advocates, policymakers, and technologists and am honored to chair this year. I think this year is a particularly good opportunity for CFP to contribute to public discussion of these issues because they seem to appear more and more prominently in mainstream political debate.

scrawford said...

I want to support Eddan's comment about the importance of CFP - it's been a key conference that brings together some fascinating people, and I'm glad to be on the committee this year.

I'm a visiting professor at Yale this term, teaching internet law and communications law. Last term I was at Michigan, and I may be there again next year.

Most importantly, I want all of you to know about OneWebDay, which is each Sept. 22 (see onewebday.org). It's an Earth Day for the internet, with local events around the world. The Internet Society is working on it with its chapters, and in this third OneWebDay year I'd like to make sure that everyone at CFP hears about it. The idea is to create a global constituency that cares about the future of the internet.

I'm also a member of the board of ICANN.

Anonymous said...

I'm a freelance writer and sometime musician, based in London, much detail on my Web site.

My first CFP was 1994, and I haven't missed one, and most of the people I remember from then have drifted away, so I'm beginning to feel like one of only a few pieces of institutional memory.

I think of CFP as the happiest place on earth (because for four days you don't want to finish anyone else's sentence).

wg

Frank said...

I am a law professor who focuses primarily on information law; my homepage is here.

I have written some articles on search engines and intellectual property, which you can find here.

I also blog on tech issues; some archived posts on search engines are available here.

Substantively, my primary concern is to inform technology policy with normative concerns about power, inequality, and fairness.

Anupam Chander said...

Like Susan, I'm a Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. This coming year, I'll be a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School. My faculty home is in California, at the University of California, Davis.

I teach and write about both cyberlaw and international law. This year, I'm teaching the Law of E-commerce and International Finance.

I blog on globalization and digitization at Chander.com site.

I'm honored to be invited to join a committee full of individuals who have shown tremendous leadership in protecting privacy and freedom in cyberspace.

Anonymous said...

Hi, everyone. I'm Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where my work focuses on government accountability, civil liberties and intellectual property issues. Prior to joining EFF, I was Staff Counsel and Director of the Open Government project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The first CFP I attended was in Berkeley in 2004, and this conference has been my favorite each year since then. I'm honored to be on this committee and very much looking forward to working with all of you to organize a fantastic program for 2008.

Anonymous said...

My background's in software engineering and computer security; my static analysis startup Intrinsa was acquired by Microsoft in 1999. I worked there for about eight years: in Microsoft Research, where I wound up focusing on computer science as a social science, and then as GM of Strategy Development for their online systems group before leaving last November. Currently I'm working with Deborah Pierce on Tales from the Net, a book about social networks; blogging at Liminal States on various topics including voting rights; and doing some strategy consulting.

After going to CFP for over a decade, being on a panel, organizing BoFs, and helping out in various ways when Deborah chaired the 2005 conference in Seattle, I was honored and delighted when Eddan asked me to be on the program committee this year. I see CFP as the most important conference — and network of people and organizations — focused on civil rights (and increasingly, human rights in general) in an electronic society. With this year's focus on technology policy and perfect timing in the middle of the US election season, I think there's a chance that we'll have even more impact than in the past.

One area I'm particularly interested in is broadening participation in CFP -- including for people who aren't able to make it to the conference itself. So I signed up to lead the blogging here and the Facebook outreach. Hopefully others will get involved and start up CFP groups and communities on other social network sites as well! We'll have more to say on this front as the program gets finalized and we get closer to the conference ... so stay tuned :-)

Unknown said...

Hi all. This is Sherwin Siy. I'm a Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge, where I work on our international portfolio in IP and broadband policy, as well as domestic IP.

Before joining PK, I was a fellow at EPIC, focusing on consumer privacy issues.

I've attended 2 CFPs so far--Berkeley in 2004, when I was a student at the Berkeley Samuelson Clinic; and DC in 2006. I'm looking forward to being involved in CFP this year, especially as privacy issues are becoming more prominent in the copyright debates, among others.

I'm flattered to be in such august company on this committee and hope to be helpful as planning progresses.

Unknown said...

Ahrash Bissell -

I am the Executive Director of ccLearn, the education division of Creative Commons (CC). I came to Creative Commons from Duke University (Durham, NC) where I was a Research Associate in Biology and the Assistant Director of the Academic Resource Center. The bulk of my time in recent years has been focused on educational research and technology, pedagogical and curriculum development, assessment (with a focus on critical-thinking skills and metacognition), and facilitating interdisciplinary research, especially via open dissemination, data sharing, and web-based “communities of expertise.”

When ccLearn launched, I leaped at the chance to really get into the trenches in terms of reducing the legal, technical, and cultural barriers to the opening up of educational resources and practices. Within the framework of open education, I am actively negotiating the interface of technology and the law, especially internationally, with special emphasis on methods of simplifying the process of engaging people in this movement.

I am looking forward to seeing the ideas and energies shared at CFP.

-Ahrash

Aaron Burstein said...

Hello everyone: I'm currently the TRUST and ACCURATE research fellow at UC Berkeley School of Law. (Those acronyms are signs of NSF funding. TRUST = Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology; ACCURATE = A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections). That helps to spell out a bit of what I'm working on right now: information security law and policy, and electronic voting.

I was at CFP 2002 and 2004, and I'm looking forward to being involved in the conference after being away from it for too long.

Anonymous said...

I write about technology, law, and politics in San Francisco for News.com (part of CNET Networks) and my first CFP was in Cambridge, Mass. in 1996. FYI, my personal homepage is here.

I had been to technology conferences before CFP and policy conferences before CFP '96, but never one that combined both. It was a magical experience -- I remember my first CFP conference better than many of the following ones! It's a privilege to have the chance to share this experience with others.

I think I've been to just about every CFP since then except for one, which probably makes me an old-timer by now. It may also make me a bit curmudgeonly -- CFP seems a bit more insular than it was in the now-distant past; fewer technologists show up; the $750 cost is much less than conferences like RSA but it is still expensive for people who don't have someone else paying the bills. (Then again, the cost of $750 is cheaper in real dollars than CFP's $630 conference-and-tutorials fee in 1994, so my concern may well be misplaced!)

Anonymous said...

I'm Susy Struble. I work at Sun Microsystems in both the office of the CTO and our government strategy team. My job is to promote social and economic progress through interoperable IT systems. Technology standardization is a key tool of my job, as it forms the intersection of competitive strategy, economic growth, law, industry requirements, innovation, public policy and - increasingly - a notion of the common good. My educational background is in economics and government. I'm still working on getting those phD letters. I love Joan Didion and backcountry skiing.

I'm also embarrassed to admit that I've never attended at CFP, although not for lack of interest. I'm honored to be a part of this august program committee and hope my input is provocative and useful.

Michael Zimmer said...

I am currently the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. I have a PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU, and my research interests focus on values in technology, privacy and surveillance theory, Web search engines and Web 2.0.

My blog is here.

This will be my first CFP, and I'm very much looking forward to the discussions and debates.

freedom4internet said...
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Anonymous said...

I am Robert Guerra one of the founding directors of Privaterra - we provide training and technical assistance to NGOs in the area of data privacy, secure communications and information security.

My areas of interest are Internet Governance, surveillance, censorship and privacy as they apply to social justice NGOs.

I am a long time board member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), and advise several non-profits and/or their related projects , including Taking IT Global, DiploFoundation's Internet Governance and Policy Capacity Building Programme, The Open Net Initiative and The Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and its Security and Stability Advisory Committee - to name a few

Leah Belsky said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Leah Belsky said...

HI All-

I'm a fellow at the Information Society Project with Nathaniel and a student at YLS. In my non-student life I work as the Director for Global Strategy and Product Development at Noank Media (www.noankmedia.com), the private sector implementation of Terry Fisher's blanket licensing model for digital media.

Most of my research focuses on collaborative communities, new media business models and social networks. This is my first CFP and I'm thrilled to be working with you and meeting what Eddan describes as "the best in tech policy of his generation." (where this generation ends and begins is as of yet unclear ;) )

Leah

Anonymous said...

I lead the Safety Net Project which focuses on all things tech, privacy, and victim safety at the National Network to End Domestic Violence in Washington, DC. Our Safety Net Team has 5 staff members and we're hoping that at least 3 of us will be able to attend this year.

My first CFP was in San Francisco in 2002 and this May will be my 7th CFP - it is an amazing event and I am honored to be part of the planning process.

Laura DeNardis said...

Hello everyone. My name is Laura DeNardis, the Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. I'm following in the footsteps of Eddan Katz in this position and am excited to be part of the CFP program committee. I am an interdisciplinary scholar in technology, law, and society with a research focus on Internet governance and technical standards. Everyone at the Yale ISP is thrilled that CFP is being held in New Haven this year.

Anonymous said...

Apparently, control of the program of the CFP conference has fallen into the hands of ideologues who seek to promote their selfish agendas (rather than the public good) via the conference. A good example is the session titled, "Network Neutrality: Beyond the Slogans." The title of the session creates the initial impression that perhaps one would see an unbiased presentation of the issues. However, the description, at http://www.cfp2008.org/wiki/index.php/Network_Neutrality:_Beyond_the_Slogans, contains one-sided and highly biased statements, such as "we have seen major violations of network neutrality" (as if this assertion and any definition of the term were not open to debate) and "debates over network neutrality are often not only contentious, but also unhelpful, if not dishonest" (as if it were a foregone conclusion that those who did not agree with the unnamed author of the description were necessarily dishonest). What's more, while the panelists are not listed, I have not been able to identify a single person who is actually in the business of providing Internet service who is on the panel; rather, all of the panelists I've identified appear to be lobbyists and/or people who take an extreme viewpoint on the topic. This obvious bias does harm to the credibility and reputation of the conference and its organizers. Clearly, the conference's program committee consists of far too many ideologues and few or no people with actual "boots on the ground" in the world of technology -- a recipe for bad policy recommendations.

Anonymous said...

Clarification: Brett is not actually on the program committee. More context here.

I don't have anything to do with organizing the Network Neutrality panel Brett is so incensed about but since he left the same post on my personal blog, I'm going to respond to this -- speaking for myself, and not the program committee as a whole.

CFP has always tried to present multiple sides of the issues, and some of the best moments had been the highly contentious ones. That doesn't mean that all panels present all sides of each subject. The net neutrality panel does include a high-profile skeptic and I'm confident that the panelists will be good choices. Hopefully you'll be able to attend the conference and take part in the discussions.

It's certainly true that the vast majority of program and steering committee members for an online civil liberties conference called "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy" have values in common. To the extent that makes us a cabal of ideologues ... sign me up!