The principle I adhere to and which needs to be defended is that data is data is data... (and this point should be defended against FCC and others).

Consumer, Civic, CTC, and other many-hatted persons met in Chicago on Weds. Dec. 15th to strategize and enumerate the issues of Illinois' pending telecommunications legislation "rewrite" from our perspective. The group will meet again in Chicago early in January to coordinate the first of what we expect will be several community action/education events. CTCNet Chicago offered to coordinate one in Chicago in partnership with the other groups, with a tentative date of January 13th. We'll further flesh out the content in the early-January meeting.

We anticipate many more such community gatherings on the rewrite issue in around the State.

My oblique spin on a recent list discussion.... Thoughts on blogging When one blogs, one always blogs somewhere... So (bear with me as I continue to restate the obvious, and correct me when I mis-state it) one generally blogs within a community of bloggers at some blog site... Now blogging tools have spread so that practically any site can incorporate them... Some sites are all about the blogging activity, but others want the blogging to be the generation of a portion of content, lets say in a puposive member community (Such as AFCN,or RTC)... If one is a member of several communities one often wants to share one's words and thoughts in each of the several...

I write a lot about Illinois and Chicago. That's where I am.

I keep an eye on developments elsewhere... as a lot passes through my in box. I've been following ICT coordination efforts in California and Ohio for some time as Illinois has been following suit in organizing statewide ICT interests. Here in Illinois we've begun to think more about Policy and Vision, and whether we are "asking for enough" or "doing enough" ourselves. We've also begun to think a little more regionally, first in terms of the different sectors of the state, then of the several states around us.

It occurs to me that we should be able to arrive at models for professional development and professionalization of our work (speaking more from my CTC side) that will have some degree of standardization.

Recent (and perennial) discussion has touched upon the ethics of network service and content providers that require a significant amount of personal information (and what they do with it), along with reasons some of us may not want to disclose such information, or that we should be recommending the development of community oriented/owned network infrastuctures that take this as a starting point. Concerns for protecting one's identity (and personal privacy) are likely to grow, so there will be an increasing demand for services or technologies that offer some degree/promise of protection.