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 COLUMN
Lobsters, lighthouses, foliage, and Pop!Tech: It's time to head for Maine ORGANIZING A CONFERENCE is its own bag of tricks. Especially if you want the conference to be any good. And very especially if you are working with volunteers.
Our first Camden Technology Conference (CTC) in 1997 was about how modern telecommunications is reshaping American communities. At CTC97 we saw some of how education is being reshaped by the Internet. So we made our second conference about technology's transformation of learning. At CTC98 we saw some of how education has been losing market share to TV, the Internet, and the popular culture that they mediate. And so we decided, even before Littleton, to make CTC99 about technology's impact on popular culture -- Pop!Tech. One trick to making a good conference is to be sure the program is developed by people who know the subject. We accomplished this by recruiting MIT professor Henry Jenkins to co-chair Pop!Tech's program committee with our own local volunteer, Harvey Ardman. Jenkins is director of comparative media studies at MIT and author of eight books, including the forthcoming The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture. Ardman and Jenkins' first pronouncement was that Pop!Tech would not be about the tragedy in Littleton. Rehashing that sad story of games, goths, and guns would not enlighten anybody about digital culture. Pop!Tech's point of view -- and every good conference needs one -- is that media, especially participatory digital media, is making waves. Pleasantville is threatened by the Internet's tsunami of choices, but the proliferation of alternative lifestyles, values, and tastes is good. Prominent among Pop!Tech's volunteers are, of course, its speakers. Already the list is impressive: John Perry Barlow, Stewart Brand, Christopher Cerf, Rosemary Coombe, Paul Godwin, Michael Hawley, J.C. Herz, Christopher Ireland, Alan Kay, Angus King, Brenda Laurel, Pedro Meyer, Erika Muhammad, Janet Murray, Virginia Postrel, Elliot Soloway, Linda Stone, and Sandy Stone. John Sculley, another CTC volunteer, will moderate the conference. I will close Sunday morning with summary, comment, and audience discussion. Also prominent among the volunteers are its underwriters and sponsors. These are led by underwriters Cisco, Microsoft, and Wired magazine. If you have a big name in popular culture, $25,000, and an interest in Pop!Tech, please leave word for Bob Shotwell (my father-in-law) at (207) 230-2425. Now, most Pop!Tech speakers have written books. It's my practice to read as many as I can before our fall gathering. I'm now reading Brand's The Clock of the Long Now. Before that, I finished Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies. I highly recommend Postrel's book for what's left of your summer reading. Postrel explains much of today's conflict in the evolution of culture -- The Culture War -- with a new dichotomy. She separates the dynamists from the stasists. And you can tell just from the words which way she leans. Stasists want us to decide centrally, for example, what's correct to be taught at our public schools, like the one that malfunctioned in Littleton. Dynamists want a thousand flowers to bloom and freedom to choose. The Internet is, I gather, for dynamists -- sign me up. Last but not least among Pop!Tech's volunteers will be its paying attendees. We plan to ensconce 500 stasists, dynamists, and others into the elegant Camden Opera House. Registrations are $795 before the end of August, $495 for academics, and $995 for everyone else after August. Hurry to get your discount and beat the usual waiting list at www.camcon.org. Technology pundit Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet in 1973. He can be reached at metcalfe@idg.net. MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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