Terms for Dummies – led by Anil Dash and Gina Trapani.

This is not just true for policy battles. Supernova has always drawn a mixture of entrepreneurs, executives, technologists, investors, law firm partners, bloggers, academics, government officials, researchers, and corporate strategists, among others. The ability to interact with influencers from other industries and professional environments is what often sparks new connections and ideas. One of the lessons of network science research such as Mark Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” or Ron Burt’s “structural holes” is that occasional contacts across different communities are often the most productive and influential. Supernova is built to create those pathways.

When we talked about the Supernova theme of Peristroika,  Jarvis noted “The Internet changes the structures we see, and as Susan Crawford said at PDF, we tend to like to hack around things. But there still is a power structure that can have an impact on us.”
Jarvis is working on a book on “Publicness,”  in a recent blog post about the “Myth of the Opinionless Man” he the challenges of closed and non-transparent government. In our discussion he suggested we demand data from our government, so we can analyze it. Jarvis has seen some government data becoming public since last year’s data.gov announcements, but he says “We need to change the ethics of what is, and what is not open, coming from the government by default.” Open, in his opinion, should be the default.

You can see Jeff Jarvis speak further at Supernova this July.

The rules on copyright are changing, and the Internet’s easy ability to “just pass bits around” has unsettled so many major industries, uleashed creativity, and made knowledge work possible.

At PDF 2010, there was a lot of discussion that “The Internet isn’t going to change politics, but people will use the Internet to change politics.” David said “We need to pay attention to the technology – it’s not just what we build but what the technology enables that changes the way we all interact.”

Holding this year’s Forum only 120 miles from Washington DC will make it easier for policy experts from the US government, leading companies, and public interest groups to participate. To take advantage of the opportunity, we’re making the first day of the event, July 29, Supernova Policy Day. We’ll start with a few roundtable discussions and tutorials to get everyone up to speed on the key issues. Then we’ll break up into a participant-organized “unconference”, allowing anyone who wishes to lead a session. We’ll come together at the end of the day to distill the key insights from the day.

This will be a unique opportunity to engage directly with the decision-makers and influencers from Washington DC. We hope you can join us.

To participate in Supernova Policy Day, register for the 2010 Forum. Early registration is only $100 to cover direct expenses such as food, so there is no special rate for the Policy Day, although we will consider scholarship requests on a case-by-case basis.

Fixing the topics for Supernova is a kind of magnet; it gets me to notice relevant developments. This particular topic brings together two important concepts that don’t quite overlap. One is infrastructure; the other is platforms. A number of friends such as Doc Searls and Brett Frishmann have written about the Internet as infrastructure, there is even an Infrastructure Group now at the Berkman Center. At the same time, it’s hard to follow tech industry developments without talking about platforms: Windows, the iPhone, Facebook, Java,Google, Flash, Android, Twitter… you get the idea.

Infrastructure and platforms are similar but not the same. Both involve layers: there’s something underneath (the infrastructure or platform), and some things on top. Yet I’m not sure I’d call Facebook infrastructure, and I definitely wouldn’t call a highway a platform. What’s the difference? Traditionally, when we’ve talked about the infrastructure of the Internet, it usually meant the physical network connections. The Internet service provider was the road; the hardware, software, and sites on the Internet were something else. Platforms have been all about software APIs and developer communities.

That’s changing. One aspect of “Evolving Digital Infrastructure: Everything is a Platform” is that it’s no longer easy to know what’s on top and what’s below. If I use Google services on an iPhone that’s connected through AT&T Wireless, where do the infrastructure and platforms end? And should we think about the innovation dynamics differently in different parts of that ecosystem? Steve Jobs’ explanation for excluding Flash from the iPhone and iPad captures the dynamic. Everyone sees themselves as the innovation-enhancing platform and the other guys as the innovation-killing gatekeepers. I’m not saying Verizon blocking Google is identical to Apple blocking Flash, just that they are similar problems. We have to look at the details about competition and incentives to decide what to do.

For a conference yesterday on linking engineering and policy for broadband, I was asked to talk about the layered model. This is an idea that I and several other scholars developed a few years ago. Basically, it says that we should think about regulation of the Internet the same way engineers think about its architecture: as a stack of layers connected by interfaces. This was very different from the traditional regulatory categories, which imposed completely different rules for silos such as telephone and cable TV networks. The layered model has been widely accepted in communications policy discourse, and I still think it’s a useful tool. However, like any model it oversimplifies.

The point I made in my presentation yesterday was that we need to appreciate what the layered model (and the parallel notion of “end to end” network design) imply. Layers mean you can ignore everything lower down. In computer science terms, it’s abstracted. In reality, though, that abstracted stuff may be a company or set of companies that has its own view of the network. My substrate might be your market. We need to start thinking more about the alignment of incentives across layers. It’s all well and good to ask the other layers to be simple and open, but they need to have viable business models. The alternative is to define some layers as public utilities in the classic sense, owned or funded by governments. While I don’t think we should write off that possibility, it would be better to find an equilibrium in which competitive market dynamics operate everywhere in the stack.

This is part of what the FCC is suggesting with its Third Way proposal for broadband regulation. (Disclosure: I have a consulting engagement with the FCC, although I as not directly involved in yesterday’s announcement, and these are entirely my personal views.) Finding that the transmission component of broadband access is a “telecommunications service” does not imply public utility rate regulation of all broadband providers. What does it imply? That’s the challenge the FCC faces now.

Supernova is a rare place where those who think hard about Flash vs. iPad come together with those who think hard about network neutrality and those who study the economics and science of networks. Such conversations are more important than ever.

Supernova always seeks to stay ahead of the curve. When we started in 2002, open wireless access, crowdsourced event wikis, attendee blog aggregators, and real-time back channels were innovations that few other conferences incorporated. That tradition has continued. We began to move away from the standard conference format several years ago with our Challenge Sessions and Attendee Roundtables. Our Open Flow and Real Time Flow tracks the past two years utilized a variety of novel tools, from Google Wave to open conference calls to graphic facilitation, to enhance multilateral thought leadership conversations. In 2009, we introduced Network Age Briefing Calls to extend the dialogue before and after the conference.

Supernova is now undergoing its next evolution, moving from a single event to a hub of linked conversations.

As part of that process, we are launching Supernova Forums: one-day focused events designed to be accessible to a broad community of thought leaders. Our first-ever Forum in Philadelphia on July 30, 2010 will consider three key aspects of the great re-structuring of business, government, and society:

- Evolving Digital Infrastructure: Everything is a Platform?
- Networked Business Innovation: Models and Vision
- Crossing the Abyss: Transforming (or Replacing) Established Institutions

Registration for Supernova Forum 2010 is now open. Despite the high caliber of participants, early registration for Supernova Forum 2010 costs only $100. Please join us at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania on July 30 for a day of compelling insights and and valuable connections.

Brigner, in Weinberger’s summary, “says what he would tell the Broadband Strategy Initiative: Build on our this country’s current success providing access to the Internet. Do no harm (= beware of Net Neutrality). And question the research that shows that America has fallen behind other countries in the ubiquity, price, and speed of broadband.”