Silicon Flatirons: The Gossip Post
Now that our serious work is out of the way, here’s a quick take on the non-attributed, behind-the-scenes, from-the-hallways-or-maybe-even-the-restrooms stuff we heard at the Silicon Flatirons conference in Boulder last weekend:
Where’s AT&T? Too busy filtering traffic? Too bad reps from Ma Bell weren’t on hand in Boulder, since the company’s pledge to sift through all its traffic for possible copyright violations seemed to be part of every panel discussion, whether it was part of the topic or not. Since this was a conference mainly of lawyers, the main question seemed to be whether or not AT&T was setting itself up for legal liabilities by pledging to do deep-packet inspection on all bits running across its network. (At one point we were worried that Tim Wu was going to charge the stage in his no-need-for-a-microphone back-and-forth exchange with panelist Mark Lemley. But things calmed down.)
In the end, there seemed to be no good answer (though Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe told his lunch table that his company was legally afraid to do such inspections), especially since nobody from AT&T was around. “It doesn’t really matter if they would be guilty or not,” noted one men’s room pontificator. “No court would convict them of it anyway.” Nothing like a good cynical note to close it.
(At any rate, AT&T did sponsor the Sunday-night beer-n-wine reception, where on their dime we had a tasty 90 Shilling. Thanks!)
Low Morale at the FCC? That was the claim of one overheard conversation — “people there say morale is the lowest it’s ever been,” said one attendee, noting that staffers have been leaving left and right. “It’s almost like he [chairman Kevin Martin] is trying to hollow the place out on purpose.” The discussant’s friend came back with: “Well I hear it’s actually getting a little better, since now they feel like they can see the end.” Ouch!
Whitt, Waz stick around: One measure of respect for a conference is whether or not big-name speakers stick around after their scheduled appearance. To their credit, both Google’s Rick Whitt and Comcast’s Joe Waz hung around Monday, the inevitable “down” day at Silicon Flatirons. Whitt even got into the spirit of being on campus, showing up Monday attired in an untucked flannel shirt and jeans — much more in tune with CU than the ubiquitous blue-suit-but-hey-no-tie look that passes for “informal” with the D.C. lawerly crowd.
Upstairs at the Kitchen: The cool gathering place for Silicon Flatiron attendees Sunday night seemed to be the Upstairs Bar at the Kitchen, a cool new spot on Pearl Street that recently earned an honor as one of 5280 Magazine’s “best bars” in the Denver/Boulder area. Unfortunately, your correspondent had to write Sunday night, so I couldn’t follow Tim Wu and Paul Ohm into the joint.
Hummers all around: I actually laughed out loud when I saw that my Avis rental SUV was actually a Hummer H3 — an unasked-for, same-price upgrade that made me feel, at least for a moment, somewhat special. Turns out Avis must be renting a bunch of them, since there were two ahead of me at the check-out gate and then several more in the valet lot at the Hotel Boulderado, the Silicon Flatirons event hotel of choice. For the record, I am of the opinion that the whole Hummer thing is a bit of an abomination. In reality, the H3 is little more than a boxy-looking SUV, with tight seating compartments. But when we hit white-out conditions on Vail Pass Thursday night, we were happy to have its 4WD on demand, which got us to Vail to enjoy knee-deep powder Friday and Saturday. Who said telecom reporting couldn’t be fun?
