db$: Digital Bearer Settlement Conference Status Report

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

I suppose all of you have figured out by now what we're not doing a Digital
Bearer Settlement Business Development Conference at Bretton Woods this
August. :-).

I was willing to give it a shot, even with the admittedly high cost in
hotel rooms, if I could get presenters on the topics I wanted. If I got the
presenters, I could use the content to leverage the keynote speakers, and,
with those, I think I would have gotten the attendance.  Unfortunately, I
couldn't find anyone, with exactly two exceptions, who both knew enough on
the topics I was soliciting and who had the time to come to Bretton Woods.

In the process of figuring out all that out, however, something entirely
different presented itself, and thinking about *that* gave me another set
of conference ideas, which I want to bounce off you guys in just a bit. I
suppose don't really give up on ideas once I get them, though they may get
pushed down on the stack for a while. It's that Frisian expression of the
berserker gene thing, I guess... :-).


So, I was figuring out how I could sweeten the pot for presenters for the
Bretton Woods thing, when I bumped into the editor of a well-known book
:-). This got me to thinking about a book on digital bearer settlement,
containing the contents of this summer's proposed conference, written in
chapters by the presenters of the conference. I talked to the editor about
this, and she said that she didn't like books written by a cast of
thousands, and since we were talking about new technology with no user base
and she was a technical and professional books editor, she was going to
have a hard time selling something like this to her market. However, if a
single person wanted write a book on digital bearer settlement, it seemed
like there might be more room to bash it into something her audience might
want to read. Since *I* didn't want to write a book, really, we sort of
left it at that.

About a week or two later, Pete Loshin, who now works as an editor for
Cutter Publications, invited me to come and stir things up at their
"Summit" conference, and sit on an internet commerce panel, which I've
already told you the story about.  While there, however, I talked to
several authors of books, and one of them, a pretty well-respected author
of hard-core IT computer books, told me that my whole geodesic society /
digital bearer settlement thing was something actually new to him, and that
he so rarely heard something new in his business. So, he encouraged me to
get started on a "trade" book, one for the general public, and spent about
an hour telling me how to get started.

So, when I got home, all excited, and I started bashing away on the popular
book I've been threatening to write for years on all this stuff.  Unlike a
technical and professional book, the typical first author doesn't get
advances for this kind of thing, so you have to write the whole thing in
advance and see what happens. So, we'll see what happens.

And then, something wierd happened. Kieth Dawson's TBTF newsletter did a
bit on me, Philodox, the dbs list and the conference, and, out of that, I
got email from *another* well-known editor asking me if I knew anyone who
wanted to do a book on micropayments or something. So, I got this guy on
the phone, cranked up the reality distortion field to 13  (monkeys flying),
and pitched him on a book on digital bearer settlement, using the content
request from the Bretton Woods conference call for presenters as a jumping
off point. He then asked me if I could do something a little more polemical
:-), and I sent that version off, but I think I scared him away. :-). I
haven't heard back from him, and I suppose he lost interest.

However, Tuesday, I met up with the original famous-book editor, the one I
was trying to pitch the conference book to, and told her what I had done
with the *other* editor on a digital bearer settlement book, and she wanted
to see it. She liked the first, unpolemic, version best, :-), and we're
still talking, which is a good sign.


So, all of this got me to thinking about how I want to proceed with my
proposed conference schedule.

I still want to do a conference this summer. Some kind of "gathering of the
clan" thing on the same order as the mac-crypto conferences Vinnie and I
do, but, of course, I have to make money on it.  Essentially, I'd put out
an open call for papers/presenters, bunch them together on the schedule
together roughly by content, and call it a program, just like I do for
mac-crypto. I wouldn't be reimbursing speakers or anything. People who
speak pay to see the rest of the conference, in essence, just like they do
at FCxx

After that, I'd start working on putting together a peer-reviewed
conference, hopefully in New York, but maybe Washington, where I'd had a
tentative offer. The problem with the Washington offer is that it's at a
university and I have to make money on this. I'm not a sinecured academic
;-), or even someone who has a day job. :-). That was the problem with
IFCA's takover of FCxx, the upside kind of went away for me. Oh, well, at
least I get credit for the idea. And three more trips to wherever the
conference goes as a member of IFCA's board.

Anyway, this doing conferences for profit is also why I can't use a
university location in the Boston area for this digital bearer settlement
developer's conference as well.

Finally, I'd still like to go to Bretton Woods again, but *next* summer,
and with a Workshop, with paid *paid* presenters, which is what this
summer's business development conference should have been all along. Maybe,
if I'm lucky, and the digital bearer settlement book's out, it'll be the
text book for this thing, or something.


So, let's look at this "gathering of the clan" idea first.  Because of all
the problems people had with the prices at Bretton Woods, I started
thinking of all kinds of ways to do it on the cheap.

Stuff like renting the Sons of Italy Hall here in Roslindale, my Boston
neighborhood. Which is not as dumb to do as it was, say, two years ago. The
crime rate in Boston, especially Roslindale/Hyde Park, which is now the
mayor's neighborhood, has fallen rediculously lately, and Roslindale's
undergoing a boomlet of sorts, with lots of new businesses, including a
couple of proto-bohemian cafes, a new grocery store, stuff like that. The
neighborhood is scruffy and full of new immigrants and said
freshly-installed bohemians, and a digital bearer settlement conference
here would feel about the same in terms of culture-clash as FC98 was on
Anguilla, which would be kind of cool. I think I could get a couple of
phone lines in to the hall, and, if I dropped a couple of routers and 56k
modems on them, I could get better bandwidth than we had in Anguilla, even.
;-). Of course, Roslindale in mid-July or early August is not quite
Anguilla in February, but, I still think it would have the same
foriegn-place *extremely* casual atmosphere. No beach, much less total
eclipse off the Montserrat Volcano, of course, but, well, you get the
point: "Hackers invade Roslindale. Film at 11."  The local business
development association would probably love me for it, probably as much as
the Anguillans love Vince for FCxx, which, of course, would have its
attractions for me as a local resident.

However, I still haven't talked to the manager of the hall, and I'm not
sure the place has air-conditioning (it has to, right?), much less
telephone lines, much less touchtone lines. Seriously. Not to mention that
I'd be hanging myself out to dry on deposits, and stuff, if nobody showed
up. Much less that I'd have to collect checks from people up front before I
could even make reservations for all this stuff. Having a credit card
merchant account would be nice, but it's still impossible at the moment.

Thinking about this very problem, I sent feelers out at this month's DCSB
meeting for the use of a company's net-wired auditorium-seating conference
room instead, to see if I could get it by way of sponsorship of the
conference. This would also reduce costs a bunch, but I haven't heard from
anyone on this, so it's probably a long shot at this point.


But, then, after DCSB that day, I was talking to the catering manager at
the Harvard Club, and, just as a kind of pro-forma thing, I asked him for a
small 2-day conference estimate for, say, 30-35 people. Because of all the
business I bring him with DCSB, he quoted me something which was
rediculously low in terms of my own financial exposure if things went
south. It's not like the Club is busy in the summer, when all the bankers
and lawyers go off to places like the Cape and the Vinyard anyway, so he
sees me as a safe way to get some new business in the door. And, since the
Club function rooms aren't booked up this time of the year, I could cancel
anytime up to a week in advance of the date if my attendance wasn't enough,
because I'd be bringing him "found money" anyway.

So, for about half the price of attending any business conference in a
downtown conference hotel, we could have something really nice in the
Harvard Club, 38 stories up, with harbor views, decent food, and
comfortable surroundings to schmooze in. There's the complication of the
jacket requirement, but, if we started on Thursday, Friday's a "business
casual" day, so we'd have only one day of dress code to contend with.  In
addition, I think dbs and dcsb folks, as more business and finance oriented
types, are more inclined deal to a single "dress-up" day than just plain
crypto folks, so I think this could wash.

The price for a Harvard Club version of, what?, "Digital Bearer Settlement
Developer's Conference", "Symposium?", whatever, including Net access like
we had at FC98, and A/V, and maybe video/audio taping or even netcasting,
if I can get the rights hocked off for a percentage or something, would be
on the order of $400 per person, including breakfast, lunch, and a cocktail
party the first night, and of course, paying me. :-). Getting lodging would
be up to you, but at least you're not locked into a $400/night room like we
were at Bretton Woods. I would bet most folks could find friends to crash
with, if it came to that.

I haven't priced the "Hackers Invade Roslindale" option, but I'd be happy
to do that instead if there's real interest in it. I'd just need to collect
money from people almost immediately to get started.

Frankly, I like either option.  They both sound cool.


I'm thinking about July 23-24 at the moment. In the same spirit of
"first-ever, last-minute" that we did mac-crypto in, of course.


So, folks, what do we want to do?

Contact me directly if you have questions on what particulars there are at
the moment, or, especially, if you want to speak at this thing. If there's
interest coalescing around one idea or another, I'll put out a "formal"
call for presenters pretty soon.

Also, if you want to chat publically about this conference or digital
bearer settlement in general, I figure the dbs@philodox.com list is the
best place to do this. It keeps the cross-posting and off-topic stuff on
other lists to a minimum. Here's the URL to subscribe:
<mailto:requests@philodox.com?subject=subscribe%20dbs>



Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/