I attended part of the Broadband Cities 2005 conference today. I went to hear the keynote by Lawrence Lessig titled "Assuring the Adequate Provision of Broadband", but also wanted to listen to how the conference participants thought broadband (100+Mbit/s) would revolutionize the world. It was my first time to hear Lessig in person. I could see why he is so popular in the technology world. I also had the privilege to visiting with him after the keynote to discuss technology and the role of government involvement and regulation.
The show presented examples of telemedicine, distance learning, intelligent transportation, etc. The applications highlighted obviously suffer somewhat from the chicken-egg dilemma -- need broadband to support the applications, but need the applications to drive demand for the broadband. The conference attendees seemed to be a mix of early adopters, application and equipment suppliers, and curious public policy folks.
This is a fairly new conference, spearheaded by the UTOPIA/DynamicCity folks. I would love to see them really open up the conference to encourage greater Utah attendance and participation.
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