Large grey-green room with low ceilings and small flying saucer light fixtures.  I am in the back with the bloggers, of which there are many, many.  The Immoderator, Daniel Ben Horin, President and CEO of CompuMentor,  interviewing Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of PolicyLink and former Rockefeller Foundation VP, are flanked by two large screens with NetSquared in orange letters. LinkTV is filming the event from a single camera in the middle of the room.  Angela Glover Blackwell is  a striking African-American woman, articulate, self-assured, and broadly knowledgeable…a very good choice to open the conference.

Politics is in the air.  From hall conversations about current legislation on net neutrality to the Democratic primary race for the California governor which pits a silicon valley luminary against a Democratic stalwart.  Angela’s presentation zeroes in on technology policy and how policy and technology impacts people…all people.  She points to the response on the net to Katrina, how people organized themselves, not waiting for government. She stressed that in that situation, Americans understood that we are all in this together, we are struggling together, and we are not afraid to get out there and participate.  “We don’t have to wait for politicians to tell us what to do we can decide what to do.  We have the web to organize, and that is a very political act, one  that scares governments.”