Brainstorming Breakfast - Jun 6 2024

Notes by Mike Nelson. Approx. 10 people attended, including including a special guest from London, Wendy Grossman, publisher of the NETWARS newsletter.

1. The conversation was held under the Chatham House Rule (no attribution) and no recording was made.
2. We liked the Upside on Moore location--even if two different staff members had to condemn us for smuggling outside coffee and pastry into the food hall (because only one vendor was open and they didn't sell boxes of coffee).
3. There was a rough consensus that 9:00 AM is a good time for future breakfasts. We discussed convening the next one in the food court of the Reagan Building (which is a few minutes from the Metro Center Metro station). We also hope to hold a breakfast in NW Washington (American University?), Montgomery County, or near UMd's College Park campus.
4. Most attendees learned about the breakfast via the ISOC-DC mailing list although some people also saw the announcement on Facebook and LInkedIn.
5. Everyone was invited to consider nominating themselves or someone else for the empty Council seat. We are particularly interested in someone with practical lawyering skills.
6. We had a useful discussion about what makes the ISOC-DC chapter unique. Among the reasons we are "special":
   1. Access to policy makers in Congress and in the Administration
   2. Ability to recruit great speakers (and members) from government, industry, interest groups who either work in the DC area or visit.
   3. Ability to interact with tech attaches of 50+ embassies (and the foreign visitors they bring to DC)
   4. Possibility of "field trips" to organizations (or even data centers) that help shape or run the Internet infrastructure (although security at Cloud data centers is a LOT tighter than in the "Good Old Days"
   5. Many of the "Internet pioneers" live in or near the Beltway
   6. Proximity to the team at ISOC global
   7. A rich and LONG (20+ year) history of convening "ahead of the curve" and/or high-level discussions on Internet issues.
7. The longest discussion was about what the Chapter's focus could be. Some suggestions:
   1. We should help bridge the knowledge gap, especially on Capitol Hill, by visiting with key staffers and establishing that Chapter members can be a reliable source of advice and contacts regarding Internet technology and policy.
   2. We should focus on shaping policy debates in the U.S. but use case studies and lessons learned from overseas (good and bad) can give us a unique way to contribute to those debates
   3. We want to continue having the kind of panels we have had in the past--on topics that combine policy and technology-- (and support IGF-USA), but we might also consider doing more structured debates on hot topics.
   4. We don't need to do the same kind of panels on Artificial Intelligence that everyone else seems to be organizing--but there are topics related to how AI can make the Internet better or worse that would be good to explore.
   5. New developments on Interplanetary Networking mean that it might be timely, fun, and exciting to have a panel on that topic.
   6. There were several good panel proposals for IGF-USA and there will not be room on the agenda for all of them. We might contact the people who proposed them and see if they want to work with us to organize an ISOC-DC event.
   7. Off-the-record roundtables with tech attaches from the embassies could help them and us.
   8. Mike Nelson challenged the group to think WAY outside the box and come up with panel titles that cover topics not usually associated with the Internet. Examples: the panel at the first TEDxGeorgetown conference on "Net, etc. -- The Internet and Everything Else"