Category Archives: Talks & Conferences

I'm off to San Francisco this afternoon for the 2005 annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools. I'm on two panels which is nice, but unfortunately they are very awkwardly timed, one being near the start of the conference and one being near the end. Wednesday at 2pm I'm speaking on a panel about privacy and court records; my job will be to explain the issues that the Florida Supreme Court Committee on Privacy and Court Records is mulling over. Saturday at 8:30am I'm on a panel about electronic money, playing the role of the fossil: My job is to explain why all the predictions about ubiquitous digital cash turned out to be wrong. Other panelists will talk about things like cellphone-mediated payments, paypal and starbucks money which seem to be today's wave of the future.

I would have liked to fly out tomorrow, but if the first plane out had been even an hour late, I'd have failed to turn up to my own talk. No one could object to an extra day or two in San Fransisco, could they? Well they could if the trip will gouge a giant hole in the travel budget, the weather promises to be wet, and a heavy teaching semester of classes start next week. So I'm rushing home on Saturday and missing a good party.

One of the best part of the AALS is that one gets to see lots of old friends in the hallways. If all goes well, blogging will be at best erratic for the next few days.

The Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference 2005, has just issued its Call for Proposals.

A key part of my becoming an Internet lawyer was attending an early CFP..maybe CFP 3?…in '92? '93?…could it really be that long ago?…in order to figure out the lay of the land. I had a computer background, and a legal background, but they were fully compartmentalized parts of my history, and I had only recently thought about putting them together. (I'm certain that the idea of 'computer law' was never breathed in my hearing during three years at Yale Law School.) I wanted to know what the state of the art was. I happened upon an announcement for CFP, it sounded interesting, so with some trepidation I went.

There were a few lawyers there, but not many. Most of them seemed (forgive me, whoever you were) to be talking nonsense, or to be very uninformed about how the technologies actually worked. There was one very noticeable exception, however: Stewart Baker, then General Counsel of the NSA. He was technically clued up, he knew his law. And I disagreed with him. So I came away with the feeling that I could play in that league.

On the other hand, there were loads of technologists, and cypherpunks, and some cops, and they were all pretty interesting. I learned a great deal from them. And for several years I kept going back; one year I even found myself on the program committee.

If you want an introduction to hot issues in the intersection of, well, Computers, Freedom and Privacy, then CFP can't be beat. It's pretty good for intermediates too; experts will enjoy the hallway conversations which tend to be great fun.

A variety of circumstances, some beyond my control, have kept me away from CFP for the last few years. And once again, the combination of distance (it's hard to find a place big enough to hold a CFP that is farther from Miami and still in the lower 48) and the number of classes I'd have to cancel to go may cause me to miss it again this year. Which makes me nostalgic.

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Tonight I leave for a week in the UK, a trip that will mix busineess with pleasure. My plan is to look up old friends in London and Cambridge as well as do the work that brings me there.

When I get back to Miami, I get almost two days to reorganize myself and then it's off to the AALS 'meat market' — the annual law professor hiring fair. It's only my second time there, and my first as a buyer rather than attending as a seller.

Michael Madison has a nice post on his blog about the Meat Market, which links to other helpful accounts aimed at sellers. Now if only someone would write helpful tips for neophyte buyers…

I'm in Orlando today, attending a meeting of the Florida Committee on Privacy and Court Records, so don't expect much blogging. We had to move the meeting to an airport hotel due to hurricane damage having knocked out the power at the original venue. I gather from the headlines in the local papers that the power is out all over the area.

This afternoon I'm to do a presentation on the collection and use of consumer data.

I'm at the PFIR Meltdown Conference.. I'm here to listen and think not blog, so I don't know how many posts I'll do, but there are number of high-quality bloggers here, including:

• Susan Crawford [link improved]
• Wendy Seltzer
• Ed Felton
• Karl Aurbach

Oddly, the WiFi access in the conference is slow, but I don't know if that's here or part of today's general internet slowdown.