Plan on spending Thursday, October 9 in Mount Vernon, Washington. Chris will speak with three other experts on creating a local environment attractive to the tech industry. 

The "Connect With The World" event will occur at Skagit Valley College's MacIntyre Hall from 10 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. PDT. Other speakers will be:

Mark Anderson: One of FORTUNE's “100 Smartest People We Know,” Mark is a frequently sought after speaker around the world. His long- running weekly newsletter, Strategic News Service (SNS), counts a stellar readership, including the likes of Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Susannah Malarkey: Executive Director of the Technology Alliance, a statewide organization of leaders from technology businesses and research institutions dedicated to Washington’s long-term economic success.

Craig Settles: Municipal broadband expert for journalists at CNN, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine and a host of business, technology and local media outlets.

Mount Vernon's municipal open access fiber network serves public entities and businesses within the City, in nearby Burlington, and in the Port Skagit area. The community began the project in 1995 and developed the network incrementally. We spoke with Kim Kleppe, Information Systems Director, and Jana Hansen, Community & Economic Development Director, in episode 38 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast.

For more on the event, contact Jana at (360)336-6214 or email her at:  janah@mountvernonwa.gov.

New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute will host "Localism Over Consolidation: An Exploration of Public Broadband Options" from 9:30 - 11 a.m. on May 28th. Chris will be participating in the discussion; if you can't make it to DC, the event will be live streamed.

Conversation will focus on different approaches to improve connectivity and community strategies to make those approaches successful.

From the event page:

Today, more and more communities are thinking of broadband as a local issue. Even large cities like Baltimore, Seattle and Los Angeles have recently begun public discussions about ways to improve broadband services and what role the local government could play in that improvement. Current technology policy debates about net neutrality and the potential Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger mean it is more important than ever that local governments play a more active role in ensuring their communities do not get left behind in the digital age.

Joining Chris:

• Joanne Hovis,President, CTC Technology & Energy, @joannehovis
• Will Aycock, General Manager, Greenlight, Wilson, NC, @greenlightnc
• Catharine Rice, President, SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA), @seatoa

Sarah Morris, Senior Policy Counsel at the New America Open Technology Institute will moderate. You can sign up for the event and livestream on the 28th at the event page.

If you can make it to Vail in early June, you can enjoy more than the summer mountains. The Mountain Connect Rural Broadband Conference is scheduled for June 8, 9, and 10 at the Vail Cascade Resort and Spa.

From the conference website:

This year our conference theme is “Progress through Education” and it’s our hope that, through our conference topics and speakers, we explore lessons learned and alternative ideas to successfully implement rural broadband initiatives.  For the first time in our MountainConnect history, we are soliciting voices from around the U.S. to broaden our knowledge base and, in some ways, take us down a path we have yet to travel.

Topics include economic development, fiber and wireless communities, telehealth, education, digital media consumption trends, and legislation.

Speakers include a long list of familiar names from private industry, education, and public policy.

Chris will be moderating a panel on community networks on June 9th at 4 p.m. You can check out the full agenda online to plan your visit. 

The Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities is presenting the 2014 IAMU Broadband Conference on March 26 - 27. The event will be held at the Ramada Tropics and Resort Center in downtown Des Moines. (Psst! Take your swimsuit - there is a water park in the Resort Center!)

Christopher Mitchell will be presenting on March 26 along with Craig Settles at 10:15 a.m. Central. The discussion will focus on economic impacts of broadband. Check out the schedule to see the broad range of topics, speakers, and vendors.

You can register online or contact Curtis Dean at IAMU for more info on the event.

The 2014 Broadband Communities Summit is scheduled for April 8 - 10 in Austin, Texas.

Chris Mitchell will be speaking at 3 p.m. on April 8 during the Economic Development Program as part of the talk titled "Economic Development: The Killer App." Chris will be back on April 10th to speak during the Rural TeleCon segment. He will present information on the state of broadband in regions that continue to struggle with connectivity. The "Envisioning a Future for Broadband Deployment" panel from 11:00 a.m. - 12:20 p.m. CST.

Other panel discussions in the Rural TeleCon segment will be:

• The Bandwidth of the States: Where They Stand in 2014 (a quick review of broadband in all 50 states as stimulus projects roll out)
• Financing Future Bandwidth
• Disruptive Technology Is Spurring Learning In the Classroom
• Measuring Prosperity from Rural Broadband Utilization
• Cool Things Rural Communities Are Doing With Broadband

You can view the entire summit agenda online, review details about free workshops, and plan your trip. You can also register online for the event, to be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Austin.

On Friday, February 21, 2014, Christopher Mitchell will be speaking in Stockholm at the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Center. The event, titled Fibre: The key to creating world-class IT regions, will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Sweden (1:30 a.m. CST for viewers in the U.S.) and will be livestreamed.

Chris will be providing an update on fiber efforts in the U.S. He will join a distinguished line-up of speakers including Benoit Felton. Felton joined us for Broadband Bits podast episode 21 to talk about his work in Stokab.

From the announcement:

The 21st century has presented a major shift into the digital age and enabled us to make fundamental progress in areas such as connectivity and sustainability. Access to the digital age is to a great extent made possible thanks to high-speed connectivity through fibre infrastructure.

Experience and international rankings show that fibre roll-outs and open networks are crucial in order to fully exploit the possibilities a connected society offers – stronger regional development, increased growth and sustainability. We can also see that when public and private sectors cooperate competitive, affordable and sustainable infrastructures have been accomplished.

Mark your calendar to attend Boarder to Boarder Broadband: A Call to Action on February 4 - 5 in St. Paul, Minnesota. The event is sponsored by the Blandin Foundation and a long list of organizations concerned with connectivity, economic development, and education ni Minnesota.

ILSR's Chris Mitchell will be presenting on February 5 as part of 9:15 CST Breakout Session, Broadband Infrastructure Development. Other Breakout Sessions are Digital Inclusion, Business and Economic Development, and Applications. A detailed agenda and speakers list is available [PDF].

A description of the conference from the registration page:

The time is ripe for Minnesota legislators and residents to have a “So what? Now What?” conversation about our shared aspirations for Border to Border Broadband:

• The Governor’s Broadband Task Force is issuing their 2013 report and recommendations soon.
• The director of the Office of Broadband Development will be in place in January 2014
• Minnesota state legislators have been touring rural areas to hear directly from Minnesotans about their technology needs and dreams.

Conversations have been happening but…What does it all add up to?

The event will be at the RiverCenter in downtown St. Paul. Attendee tickets are $120 ($60 per day) and Exhibitors pay $300 or $60 if your organization is a nonprofit. You can secure your ticket by registering online. See you there!

On December 19, 2013, TechFreedom is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment with lunch and policy analysis. The event will include a luncheon keynote address by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai followed by a panel of policy leaders moderated by TechFreedom President Berin Szoka.  

The panel:

• Harold Feld, Public Knowledge
• Rob Atkinson, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
• Hance Haney, Discovery Institute
• Jeff Eisenach, American Enterprise Institute
• Fred Campbell, Former FCC Commissioner

From the announcement:

Join TechFreedom on Thursday, December 19, the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, AT&T’s negotiated settlement of antitrust charges brought by the Department of Justice that gave AT&T a legal monopoly in most of the U.S. in exchange for a commitment to provide universal service.

The Commitment is hailed by many not just as a milestone in the public interest but as the bedrock of U.S. communications policy. Others see the settlement as the cynical exploitation of lofty rhetoric to establish a tightly regulated monopoly — and the beginning of decades of cozy regulatory capture that stifled competition and strangled innovation.

So which was it? More importantly, what can we learn from the seventy year period before the 1984 break-up of AT&T, and the last three decades of efforts to unleash competition? With fewer than a third of Americans relying on traditional telephony and Internet-based competitors increasingly driving competition, what does universal service mean in the digital era? As Congress contemplates overhauling the Communications Act, how can policymakers promote universal service through competition, by promoting innovation and investment? What should a new Kingsbury Commitment look like?

Earlier this month we alerted you to Alex Marshall's upcoming appearance at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. We want to remind all of you "policy wonks, economists and planners of all types" that the event is quickly approaching.

If you haven't already, you can register for the event scheduled for 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. on Thursday, October 24. The lecture will be held at the Freeman Commons at the Humphrey on the U's West Bank.

Marshall recently released The Surprising Design of Market Economies. From an interview and in the Atlantic Cities:

The Surprising Design of Market Economies debunks the notion that free markets are "natural." Indeed, Marshall explains, market economies are about as natural as the "completely human-made and -maintained" Prospect Park near his Brooklyn apartment.

"City leaders didn’t just leave nature as is," he writes. "They constructed it." The same is true for market economies, Marshall explained…

For more of Marshall's writings and appearances, visit his website.