We have received many exciting proposals for CFP 2009, however there have been numerous requests for a few more days to submit proposals. We are happy to announce that we are extending the deadline to FRIDAY, JAN. 23rd.So, if you've been thinking about sending something in ... please do! The submission page is here.
The 19th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference is now accepting proposals for panels, workshop sessions, and other events.
CFP is the leading policy conference exploring the impact of the Internet, computers and communications technologies on society. It will be taking place in June 2009, just months into a brand new U.S. administration -- an exciting moment in history, as we look into the future and ask, "Where do we go from here?" For more than a decade, CFP has anticipated policy trends and issues and has shaped the public debate on the future of privacy and freedom in an ever more technology-filled world. CFP focuses on topics such as freedom of speech, privacy, intellectual property, cybersecurity, telecommunications, electronic democracy, digital rights and responsibilities, and the future of technologies and their implications.
We are requesting proposals and ideas for panels, plenaries, debates, keynote speakers, and other sessions that will address these and related topics and how we can shape public policy and the public debate on these topics as we create the future.
w00t, w00t!
"Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks."
May 23, 2008
Dear presidential candidates:
We call on your help to seize the momentous opportunity that the 2008 elections provide to spark a nationwide discussion on how information technologies (IT) and the knowledge economy impact traditional policy areas such as education, health care, social welfare, and civil liberties.
Our "Dear Potus 08" project is a series of web-based, interactive and open letters to the next President. This work, along with the accompanying broad dialog online and off, will cover topics that touch everybody in our nation, and in the process both engage and educate the public as well as industry and policymakers.
The topics we'll be discussing include
The participatory open letter format, along with accompanying discussions in online and offline forums, allows citizens to engage in the political process in a more deliberative way. We hope to pave the way and refine the methods for ongoing interactive communications between the general public and our government in the new administration. This effort will also help people develop a shared national vocabulary while gaining a deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges of the role of technology in the issues and concerns of Americans.
If you think this is a valuable goal and interesting approach, you can assist us by highlighting the importance of these issues, and your positions, as you're campaigning. Just as importantly, please challenge the media -- "old" and "new" -- to cover the issues with the depth they deserve and the attention currently paid to the sound-bite and horse race aspects of the campaigns.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. We look forward to hearing what you and the technology policy experts in your campaign think of it.
Signed,
What techniques make it more likely for larger blogs to cover your story -- or link to you?
It's an example of Charismatic Content ... an important question for activists ... and something that several of us tried to solve last year at CFP as part of the Stop Real ID Now activism campaign, where despite working with the EFF, ACLU, and having folks like Bruce Schneier at the conference, we just couldn't get the story picked up by Slashdot until the very last moment.
So let's figure it out. And in the spirit of learning by doing, as an initial experiment, we're going to focus on Slashdot. Can we them to pick up Mike Godwin's recent article for Jewcy, I seem to be a verb: 18 years of Godwin's Law?
Initial ideas are on the CFP community wiki. Your thoughts welcome -- either here on the blog or the wiki!
PS: We'll also be discussing this at the social network workshop on Thursday
9:15 - 9:45 Eric - the ACLU's experiences with activism and education campaigns
9:50 - 10:20 Jon - examples of social network activism, trolls, flaming, etc.
10:20 - 10:45 - Alex - Facebook
10:45 - 11:00 open discussion, Q & A
11:00 - 12:30 - multiple simultaneous hands-on sessions: create profiles, explore various social networks, Greg on promoting books, questions, other topics based on participants' interests
12:30 - 1:30 - lunch break
1:30 - 3:00 - multiple simultaneous hands-on sessions, create profiles, explore various social networks, Jon on dealing with trolls (etc.), questions, other topics, other topics based on participants' interests
3:00 - 3:30 - afternoon break
3:30 - 5:00 - closing discussion, led by Elizabeth: brainstorming - questions going forward, including how best to evolve social networks for activism purposes, and countering legislative threats
Update, May 27: see the initial open letter to the presidential candidates, press coverage by Elise Ackerman in the San Jose Mercury News, and the overall Dear Potus plan.
If the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy community wrote a letter to the next President of the United States about our priorities for technology policy, what would we say -- and how would we get him or her to read it?There's only one way to find out.
We'll be using this blog as a big part of the "Dear Potus 08" project, both to update the details -- currently described as "mostly TBD" -- and to discussparticular topics. The 9.5 theses thread is the best place to get involved with the technology policy discussion right now.At this year's conference dinner, we will launch a collaborative effort to write a short letter to the next President from the CFP '08 attendees. We'll get these initial results up on a wiki for comments and evolution, and refine them over the follwing 36 hours. By Friday morning, if we've managed to converge on something plausible, we'll start circulating the current draft for signatures. At the end of the conference, we'll mail the current draft to the presidential campaigns and invite their response.
We'll also put it all up on the web - with a Creative Commons "by" (attribution) license - and invite others to use it for whatever purposes they want as we revise our initial draft, get broader involvement and discussion, and try to get our voice heard amidst the din of the campaigns.
From the web site for the 18th ACM conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, CFP: Technology Policy '08:
This election year will be the first to address US technology policy in the information age as part of our national debate. Candidates have put forth positions about technology policy and have recognized that it has its own set of economic, political, and social concerns. In the areas of privacy, intellectual property, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and freedom of speech, an increasing number of issues once confined to experts now penetrate public conversation. Our decisions about technology policy are being made at a time when the architectures of our information and communication technologies are still being built. Debate about these issues needs to be better-informed in order for us to make policy choices in the public interest.
This year, the 18th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference will focus on what constitutes technology policy. CFP: Technology Policy '08 is an opportunity to help shape public debate on those issues being made into laws and regulations and those technological infrastructures being developed. The direction of our technology policy impacts the choices we make about our national defense, our civil liberties during wartime, the future of American education, our national healthcare systems, and many other realms of policy discussed more prominently on the election trail. Policies ranging from data mining and wiretapping, to file-sharing and open access, and e-voting to electronic medical records will be addressed by expert panels of technologists, policymakers, business leaders, and advocates.
CFP2008 is being held in New Haven, Connecticut, on May 20-23. Back in 2000 Elizabeth Weise called it "the most important computer conference you've never heard of"; Lorrie Faith Cranor's Ten Years of Computers, Freedom and Privacy gives the early history, where hackers, lawyers, law enforcement, and goverment representatives fought out "crypto wars" and internet censorship battles (ending with a defiant "we'll be back" from the Clinton adminstration as the Clipper Chip went to its well-deserved fate). Since then the conference has taken a progressively broader and more inclusive focus while moving in a more activist direction. This year's chair, with perfect timing during an U.S. election year, the focus will be on the role of technology in society.
The call for presentations, tutorials, and workshops asks for proposals on panels, tutorials, speaker suggestions, and birds of a feather sessions through the CFP: Technology Policy '08 submission page. The deadline for panels tutorials, and speakers is March 21, 2008, and the birds-of-a-feather deadline is April 21. The submission process can seem a bit intimidating (this is an ACM conference and so it has some academic overtones) but the guidelines are helpful and have links to some examples.
We'll use this blog to give updates, discuss ideas for potential sessions, delve into particular topics, and introduce some of the people involved in CFP. One of the things we're really trying to do this year is to broaden participation, and that includes the people who aren't at the conference in person -- sure, there's nothing like being there, but between the blog, the wiki, and presence on various social network sites, hopefully it can be interesting and entertaining for people joining virtually as well.
<
