As I convalesced this weekend from Day 9 of a terrible cold that just won't let go, the Thin Air Summit took place in Denver. Thanks to Twitter, I almost feel like I was there. I was tweet-reading in real-time. But you don't need to be there in the moment. A quick search for #tas08 on Twitter and you find a ton of posts. Tweets on sessions, tweets on insights, tweets on new acquaintances....

Last week I learned about the in-fighting (and quite often misogynistic) attacks from conservatives on Sarah Palin. #Palin was a trending topic after the election.

When Al Gore got onto Twitter, I saw it first on Twitter. [Update: Twitter has just changed @al_gore to @algore.]

Protests against California's Prop 8 I heard of first on Twitter.

And I found out that other people did not find True Blood tonight as much of a downer as I did. (Yeah, so it's a vampire show. Can't I have at least a little human kindness? Just a little?) When Tina Fey was going to be appearing on Saturday Night Live, I heard it first on Twitter and was able to set TiVo.

Now I'm sure that anybody reading this who hasn't actually tried Twitter probably has no idea what the heck I'm talking about. There are plenty of explanations of what Twitter is, but what strikes me as being important is less of what Twitter is and more of how Twitter is used.

Because you can follow whomever you want, you can listen just to tweets by people who interest you. Of course, as they tweet with others (using their Twitter handles) you can stumble across other people who also are interesting. Soon you have a metaphorical tree of Twitterers tweeting up a storm of miscellany that quite frequently can surprise you, astonish you, and inform you.

Twitter is as the Twitterer does

Some people seem to live on Twitter. For professional bloggers, Twitter becomes a way of building their online presence, connecting with others, sharing links, and picking up on things happening.

Me, I can't spend that kind of time Twittering the day away. But I don't consider Twitter to be simply a distraction. I learn too much from it. And I catch wind of things friends and acquaintances are doing elsewhere.

Heck, it's gotten to the point where people don't have names any more, they have Twitter handles!

Amber Rhea posts regular updates on what she's tweeted.

Earlier, in these pages, Beth Kanter (or @kanter) wrote about the importance of Twitter.

When I'm asked questions that I don't know the answer to, I admit it and use it as opportunity to demonstrate the value of the social brain or having a good network on Twitter. Unfortunately, I did not have my laptop accessible in that moment.

In reflection, I've been thinking about how much richer it is being social - how you don't have to know all the answers when you have a good network (and a decent Internet connection.) It made me think about another digital divide - for those who don't have the Internet connection or haven't yet engaged on Twitter - the knowledge divide.

Heck, in this age when, according to Wired, blogging is somehow no longer something to do, bloggers like Kristen Lowe are blogging about what they're seeing on Twitter.

Paal Hivand asked a question on Twitter this week, which had me thinking about a recent conversation on ... eh ... Twitter. Thing is, Paal said (in Norwegian) that he was contemplating an article about how knowledge used to be individual, but now is social. I'm not going to go into that statement, just offer this anectdotal evidence for how knowledge in some respects is easier available than ever before (click on the image for a readable version):

She then pastes a screenshot of a Twitter exchange....

I'd just jumped into a conversation between Adriana and Freecloud here - which started with the Albigensian crusade and ended with the Twitterian crusade - and it's also worth keeping in mind that we probably wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't for Twitter...

Amy Gahran's post a couple weeks ago illustrates how Twitter can even facilitate conversations among disparate people who may not know each other and likely don't even have each other's email address.

The Twitter Insurgency

The adoption of Twitter has been evolving over the weeks and months. Last spring, you would have been hard pressed to find dominant tweet topics outside of tech geekery, or the personal experiences of tech geeks. But by the time the general election was in full swing, politics had come into its own, with Sarah Palin (or #palin) frequently rising up in the topics. (The Next Women report that Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate -- and presidential elect -- to use Twitter.) Now you see a wider variety of topics, including sports, television and news events spreading across the tweetscape.

From the way things look now, it's only inevitable that the trend will continue. Unless you yourself are watching something happen right in front of you (or on live tv), odds are that the news will hit Twitter far sooner than it can get noticed, digested and spat out by the mainstream media.

In fact, the mainstream media have started to adopt Twitter as an important outlet. (And they haven't always been the smoothest about it. Witness the eruption over the Rocky Mountain News' live-Twitter coverage of a funeral.)

My favorite part of Twitter is still what I first got into it for last year: interesting insights:

@agahran. People don't know they care about the quality of writing, they just stop reading poorly written things. #tas08
#

"Wasilla's all i saw" - a Palin-drome
#

My 10-weeks-into-Twitter-world review: it feels... I don't know, *kinder*, than blog world. Less incentive for trolls, stalkers, etc.
#

Friendster informs me that they now have faster slide shows. I can save even more time by continuing to not log in there.
#

Of course, there are darker views of Twitter....

“Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” according to the report.

“Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives,” the Army report said.

So if you do venture onto Twitter, watch out for those vegetarians.

BlogHer Tech & Web Contributing Editor Laura Scott blogs on rare pattern and pingVision. Follow Laura!

Change is coming. In fact, if you look over the past 15 years it's already here: the Internet. What it is now, with blogs and social networks, software-as-a-service and 'net-enabled applications, bears scant resemblance to what it was like in 1995. Think about how much it has changed just since you got on the net. No question: the Internet is evolving faster and faster. Do we know what it will look like in 15 years? Ten years? A year from now?

No. The Internet is changing too fast too fast.

Why Net Neutrality is important

The phrase "Net Neutrality" itself is unfortunate because, alliteration aside, it doesn't really have punch, but it's very important. Liza Sabater describes it as "digital civil rights." It's a clear concept when you talk about governmental control of the Internet. China, with the collaboration of its state-run ISPs and American search engine companies, has already demonstrated that control and censorship of the Internet is already possible.

Alistair Croll points out that ISPs have increasing capability to control what users can access:

There are a lot of bad things on the Internet: spam, child porn, malware, phishing and so on. Until recently, it’s been up to people to protect themselves, using security software or web site blocking. Lately, however, governments and legislators have been calling for service providers to limit where users can go, both to stop criminal activity and to protect naïve surfers from straying onto malicious sites. Recent advances in DNS may soon let carriers comply with such regulations.

In June, three major carriers agreed to purge child pornography hosted on servers their customers operate in their data centers. Having signed New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Internet code of conduct, every major U.S. ISP has also agreed to eliminate access to certain newsgroups. It’s not just in the U.S., either: Australia’s hotly debated Plan for Cyber Safety blocks content that isn’t child-friendly. Subscribers can opt out, but they’ll still be blocked from content the government deems illegal.

What about in cases of control and censorship of Internet content by corporations for non-government-manded reasons?

Claire, of the Hawaii LRB Library, gives a thumbnail:

Network neutrality is generally the concept of ensuring "unfettered access to the Internet" by regulating owners of Internet networks. CRS notes that the two most common discriminatory actions against net neutrality are "the network providers’ ability to control access to and the pricing of broadband facilities, and the incentive to favor network-owned content, thereby placing unaffiliated content providers at a competitive disadvantage."

It's this latter part -- "incentive to favor network-owned content, thereby placing unaffiliated content providers at a competitive disadvantage" -- that explains the concern of every website owner who does not control a piece of the Internet backbone.

Alice Marshall puts it in the context of the tech economy:

I am very concerned that the whole Web 2.0 crowd and the entire tech community are way too complacent about net neutrality. It is true that articles about net neutrality are regularly featured on Slashdot's front page and tech publications have done some great reporting on this, but I think too many people take the point-to-point architecture of the Web for granted and don't realize the entire basis of their business model could be destroyed.

QU writes:

Just what would be left if in fact corporations were left to create the content we see every day? They may edit and put their own spin on items in order to create a more favorable view for certain topics. When *we* create the Internet, we are able to put our own opinion on things, yes but people are also allowed to create their own opinions after reading multiple ideas from multiple people.

This isn't just about being able to hear political statements by Pearl Jam.

In a post about how "Verizon Wireless plans to tack on an extra 3-cent charge for every SMS message sent by Web information services to any of its mobile subscribers," Erick Shonfeld points out that Net Neutrality is not just about politics' effect on business, but also business' effect on politics:

The other way this could backfire for Verizon is that it could raise some serious Net neutrality issues. If it does not apply this charge evenly across the board, or starts carving out exceptions to do biz dev deals (and Verizon made some indications to Silicon Valley startups it was moving in this direction prior to the rate hike announcement), then it will be giving preferential treatment to one source of information over the other.

What if Verizon were charging the Obama campaign 3 cents per SMS message right now, but cut a deal with the McCain campaign to charge one cent per SMS? That is just a stark example, but you see where this can go. What if it charges the New York Times one rate, and the Wall Street Journal another? It becomes a freedom of speech issue.

The candidates' stances

Recently Slashdot pointed up the issue:

"For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"

Here's Barack Obama speaking on Net Neutrality:

I think it's fair to say that John McCain unequivocably opposes Net Neutrality. John McCain has a tech plan, for which Susan Crawford offers up some perspective:

First, here’s the fact: We don’t have a functioning “free market” in online access. John McCain thinks we do. That kind of magical thinking takes real practice.

Instead, we’ve got four or so enormous companies that control most of the country’s access, and they’re probably delighted that McCain is promising not to regulate them.

The “net neutrality” movement is not about “regulating the internet.” That’s twisted.

You can think of the internet as a conversation being had by more than a billion people walking along a sidewalk. Big sidewalk. Net neutrality would require that the sidewalk keep out of the conversation - not limit it, shape it, charge it based on how interesting it is, or butt in. Right now, our sidewalks are in the business of deciding what kinds of conversations can happen, and they’re no longer required by law to just lie down and act like sidewalks. That’s a problem. We’d like the sidewalks, those basic transport elements, to be separate from the conversation.

Just as the power companies can’t dictate what kinds of purposes people use electricity for, the providers of basic general-purpose communications transport shouldn’t be able to dictate how we communicate.

Danny Weizner notes

McCain’s record in promoting innovation on the Internet and in the large information and communications marketplace is terrible. Mostly, he can claim credit for supporting incumbents over innovators and for failing, in his time as Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to do anything at all to support the innovative and socially beneficial aspects of the Internet.

What about the running mates? leahpeah says:

Biden’s support is ambiguous and I’ll be watching to see how that plays out.

In Wired, Sarah Lai Stirland writes of Biden:

Biden's most-recent reputation in D.C. on telecom issues is more ambiguous, particularly when it comes to net neutrality. Though he ostensibly supported the concept as a presidential candidate during this election cycle, in hearings on Capitol Hill he's been a hesitant supporter for pro net-neutrality legislation.

I don't know if Sarah Palin has said anything about Net Neutrality.

A non-partisan (or bi-partisan) issue?

You might ask why protecting freedom of speech on the Internet has become a partisan issue. Says Techory:

I don’t like to get political on here, but I don’t really see that this is really a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be one. It really shouldn’t matter what political party you follow, it’s more about getting the most out of the Internet, and not being beholden to your service provider for a certain type of content. This image is an obvious exaggeration, but shows what I mean. This might not matter if there were true competition for internet services, but in many instances there are maybe one or two high speed options in an area (usually phone or cable). If they both happen to do what they please with your traffic, you’re out of luck.

And it's not just about Republicans' opposing Net Neutrality. Democratic New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been pushing through an aggressive government program that threatens Net Neutrality:

Obviously, stopping child porn is a good goal, but Cuomo's approach actually makes the problem worse and sets a dangerous precedent....

...[A] recent look at the details of Cuomo's highly publicized campaign found that Cuomo clearly exaggerated the extent of the problem for political benefit, forcing ISPs to block all of Usenet, despite 99.9997% of the 3.7 billion available Usenet articles being perfectly legitimate content. But that's not stopping Cuomo. In fact, he's going even further.

He's been sending ISPs a presentation from a company called Brilliant Digital that's offering a "deep packet inspection" system that could scan every file sent across an ISP's network and try to determine if it was child porn. Yes, Cuomo is suggesting that ISPs spy on every single file sent over their network now, 4th Amendment be damned....

...Last week, we wrote about Paul Ohm's suggestion that we should create a stronger privacy law that outlawed deep packet inspection, as that would pretty much stop any attempt to break net neutrality without requiring special net neutrality laws. It's worth noting that such a law would also have the added benefit of making it doubly clear to Cuomo that such a program is quite illegal.

I don't know about you, but all of this sounds a bit scary to me.

It's a public policy issue, and we all should get involved

Do we want corporations, or our governments, restricting what we can get to on the Internet? That seems rather Orwellian ... or perhaps more like cable tv. I certainly do not want my access to the Internet be controlled like the cable companies control what shows are available on tv.

But that's me. Maybe most people really want the net to be more like tv?

Stacey Higgnbotham encourages dialogue:

I am curious to hear what the Pew survey says consumers think of the cloud. I would have guessed they don’t think much about it all, unless it’s bringing rain. I’m also curious as to what Google thinks regulators should focus on when it comes to running pools of virtualized servers. Bandwidth improvements and ensuring Network Neutrality are one obvious issue for cloud purveyors, other regulation that should be talked about is how laws and regulations govern the physical location of certain data. Indeed, one interesting side note to Google’s patent for running data centers on the high seas is the lack of jurisdiction in international waters.

On the consumer side, a fair issue to consider is how consumer content stored in such clouds can be used. Witness the kerfuffle over Google’s terms of service regarding Chrome, which tried to claim the right to use any content uploaded or displayed via the browser. But when storing files and data in a cloud, ownership and usage rights are essential, as are clear policies that lay out how such content might be accessed, tracked and monitored. Another issue is whether or not such data could ever truly be deleted from clouds, as former Facebook users had discovered. Not all of these issues require regulation, but it’s worth educating lawmakers about them in advance of more services being offered via the cloud.

No matter where you stand on this, the question seems to be not only where the candidates stand on Net Neutrality, but how the policies and laws enacted over the coming months and years might end up affecting, or even controlling, our conversations on politics.

Who controls the information pipelines? Will you be able to get to this website a year from now?

BlogHer Tech & Web Contributing Editor Laura Scott blogs at rare pattern and pingVision, and supports Net Neutrality.

If new music is created and nobody can find it, does it make a sound?

Time was you could listen to alternative radio and discover new tunes. Time was you could spend hours browsing the record store, digging up arcane and obscure artists. Time was the music could be found. But now it seems like all the radio stations are playing the same 20 songs (and a zillion commercials). Now CD departments are shrinking and disappearing from the stores. And now internet radio may be about to disappear. If that happens, how will you discover new music?

I had tried Pandora back when it launched. It was ... okay, but not great, and I let it go. But last month, when the iPhone apps came alive, and I found the Pandora app sitting there, I ended up revisiting the "music genome" service ... and found that they are doing much better at finding music I like than they ever did a year or so ago.

In fact, Pandora now is fabulous! After years of living in a music wasteland, with crap on the radio, worn-out "classics" on satellite, and pretty much nothing to be found on iTunes or in the local store, I rediscovered new music (and even ended up buying some). Pandora has been an incredible resource for introducing to me new music I never would have encountered otherwise.

Of course, that means it's too good to stick around, right?

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Last year when the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board substantially hiked the royalty fees for songs that are Webcast, online broadcasters sounded an alarm. At the very least, they said, the raised fees would force some online radio stations to cap their audiences. At worst, the broadcasters warned, the royalty board could end up writing Internet radio’s swan song.

Now it looks like those grim predictions may come to pass. The founder of one of Internet radio’s leading lights, Pandora, tells The Washington Post that Web royalties may soon force his station out of business. The fees now soak up 70 percent of Pandora’s $25-million annual revenue, according to Tim Westergren. “We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” he says.

What’s striking is that Pandora is no fly-by-night operation: The Web-radio service, which lets users build radio stations to match their own tastes, reaches about a million listeners every day, and its recently created iPhone application has become one of the most popular downloads for the device. But the rules of the marketplace, as currently drawn up, are none too favorable to online broadcasters. Terrestrial radio stations don’t have to pay per-song royalties, and satellite radio providers pay only small fees. But by 2010, Webcasters can expect to pay between two and three cents per hour per listener.

Michelle Wolverton offers some context:

Pandora faces closing the lid on it’s popular streaming radio service after the CRB, earlier this year, tripled the fees due to SoundExchange. Each time a streaming service plays a song they have to pay a small fee to Soundexchange. Soundexchange is deeply associated with the RIAA, who continuously acts like the bully on the playground. Making all the rules and taking your lunch money to boot....

...I support 100% that artists make money from being played ANYWHERE. I know musicians who are struggling to keep up in the daily grind. I also know that there are a few who have passed along their music to Pandora so that new fans can be reached. I’ve also discovered new music over at Pandora and would hate to see them close their doors. I don’t think that anyone in internet radio objects to paying fees for playing songs, but suddenly requiring internet radio to pay 3x the fees that the did for streaming is unbelievable. Yet, it’s done.

Oh, and your regular AM and FM stations? They aren’t getting hit with the same outrageous fees. SoundExchange and RIAA are acting unfairly because they are scared of what internet radio is doing for independent artists at the same time being damn greedy with what shouldn’t primarily go to them, but to the artists that they “represent”. A lot of the time that money doesn’t reach the artist because Soundexchange “can’t find them“.

Techdirt has a dark analysis of all this:

The RIAA knew exactly what it was doing in pushing these higher rates: it was killing off alternative routes to promoting non-RIAA music. The RIAA labels have always thrived off a very limited distribution and promotion channel. After all, distribution and promotion are where record labels really make their money. Competing methods of distribution and promotion are threats to be killed off -- and the RIAA may have succeeded here (with Congress' and the courts' help, of course).

Jenn at BlueCherryDoughnut is upset:

Pandora recently also released an iPhone app, allowing iPhone users to tap into their stations via their phones (which, if I could afford an iPhone, would definitely be an app I would be utilizing). What’s more, a federal panel delivered the order to increase the fees. Ah, our government hard at work in bed with big business. Ain’t it grand!?

I listen to Pandora at least once a week (and usually more often), and have found tons of new music/musicians that I enjoy through listening to it, music I might not have discovered otherwise. I will endure pop-up ads, onsite ads, ad breaks between every couple songs, whatever….just to continue to have access to this online service.

But if Pandora falls, how long till all the other internet radio stations fold as well?

On The Open Piehole, Sister Joyous Whip of Enlightenment has one word to offer on all this:

Crap!

Via Read/WriteWeb, we learn that, despite efforts by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) to arrange a few last-minute deals between web radio stations and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and record companies that would reduce the the recent fees, Pandora CEO Westergren does not sound optimistic.

"The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money." We don't blame you Tim.

In a comment on a Gizmodo thread, Bobbee offers a simple problem:

I think the RIAA just wants to count the money made for them directly through Pandora (things like click-throughs from Pandora to Amazon or iTunes, etc). Since there is no easy way to tell that I bought a CD down at my local shop because I'd been turned on to that music from Pandora, it doesn't count. Typical corporate thinking: if you can't produce direct numbers to prove it's making money then, at best, it's not worth the effort/resources. At it's worst, it's losing money...forget the "intangible" benefits.

Jill Sommer suggests that Pandora change its business model:

That’s sad, because I have been turned on to several new groups and artists through Pandora and even recently attended a concert by “Over The Rhine” because I enjoyed some of their songs through Pandora. I wrote about Pandora back in June in a post about music in the workplace. I for one would pay to make sure they don’t close their site, so hopefully the people at Pandora will reengineer their business model to fee-based accounts....

...Most of you overseas readers probably don’t understand why this is such a big deal to U.S.-based companies, since foreign radio stations have always paid fees for public performance of music. Let’s just say that no one likes change, and this presents a big change to the status quo in the United States. Unlike European countries and other countries around the world, the United States did not collect payment for public performance of artists’ work prior to 1995. Users of music, the digital music service providers, freely performed these works at will, without paying the owners of those recordings or the featured artists who performed the songs. The Digital Performance in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 changed all that by granting a performance right in sound recordings. As a result, copyright law now requires that users of music pay the copyright owner of the sound recording for the public performance of that music via certain digital transmissions. Conventional radio stations don’t pay these fees yet, but that should change soon.

What do you think? How do you find new music?

BlogHer Tech & Web Contributing Editor Laura Scott blogs at rare pattern and the pingVision blog.

I spent last weekend at DrupalCamp Colorado 2008, where 100+ Drupal enthusiasts gathered to meet each other, share knowledge, and spread the word about Drupal. And I always come away from these events with a charge of energy from being around so much enthusiasm and passion for open source. But I also come away with a bit of wonder at why there aren't more women involved, at least in a public way. The only barriers to entry are self-imposed. No gatekeepers. No glass ceilings. I haven't figured it out yet. But maybe others have.

Look Who's Talking

Emma Jane Hogbin recently did a presentation (notes) at OSCON 2008. Slides:

In comments, emmajane writes:

I think there are lots of reasons why women don't participate in FOSS projects (and each reason will be unique to that individual). I think we need to start looking forward to find new ways to encourage women into being comfortable using software instead of focusing on where the problems have been in the past. For example: there are lots of jobs available now to work on open source projects. It's no longer just a hobby!!

Her slides are much more ... unambiguous, e.g.:

My vagina is not relevant to the functionality of my computer or any other computer.

Slide 39 is especially surprising:

72% of proprietary developers are male
98.5% participants of FOSS projects are male
Source: FLOSSPOLS

[Aside: For a good laugh, check out slide 50. Emma Jane blogs at emmajane.net.]

I wasn't at OSCON and did not have a chance to peruse the presentations. This find was via Shelley Powers on Burningbird:

I want to spend more time with Drupal, because I've only scratched the surface of this application. I am extremely pleased, nay tickled to see Angela Byron from Lullabot win an award for Best Contributor at OSCON for her work with Drupal—affirming that my move to this software was the best move for me. In fact, in sounds like women made significant inroads in the open source community at OSCON this year, aided, in part, I think, because of software communities, such as Drupal, which are decidedly woman friendly environments.

In particular Emma Jane Hogbin's Form an Orderly Queue, Ladies presentation at OSCON provides details of a dastardly plot to infiltrate women into the ranks of the tech through open source. I love evil plotters, like Dr. Horrible, and evil plots, like women invading open source through innocent seeming applications like Drupal.

Feel the Sunshine

Maybe times, they are a changin', and yes, you have come a long way. In a slightly different context, Liz Henry maybe summed up the picture best:

So who are we and what are we? Women who are speaking, who are consumers who talk, sort of like journalists, sort of like authors; we are conscious, individually and, more and more, collectively, of our power to speak and be seen in the world of public discourse. We have jobs and we're in public, we're out of the domestic sphere, but our thoughts, the way we're framed in public conversations, in the media, isn't yet all the way out of the domestic sphere. My point is that we are no longer containable by old style media. We aren't an elite of "influencers" to be courted and co-opted. We're journalists who write about who we are, not what we're told to write, like a million mommy-blogging Hunter S. Thompsons writing The Curse of Lono instead of their assigned sports article.

And we're women who are designing and coding and architecting, and we don't need to ask permission to do it.

Cheers to the Inspirers!

Let's pause for a moment to restate what Shelley mentions above: Angie Byron was named Best Contributor of the Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards. Check out the comments on the Drupal.org announcement last week.

Angie was at BlogHer, you may recall.

If you ever met Angie, you would know why she has garnered such accolades. Congratulations, Webchick!

Act

In case you missed it, Emms Jane's notes are posted on the Geek Feminism Wiki. There's stuff there. Check it out!

Brenda Wallace has built Geek Speak Women. Are you registered as a possible speaker?

Have you taken the A List Apart Survey yet?

BlogHer Tech & Web Contributing Editor blogs at pingVision and rare pattern.