IIC Young Professionals and Internet policy

Email to organisers of iicom.org

Good to see you last night and to chat with a few other IIC-ers. I bent Julie, Andrew T. and Martin’s ears for a while too.

The reason I never became a member is that, for the price (not negligible for an itinerant academic!) the only real benefit is Intermedia – and as I write for it so much, I tend to get author’s copies anyway. I could never afford a conference.

So to present a more compelling case, IIC really needs to get round the chicken-and-egg of having so many incumbent interests (who have the time and money to get involved, plus their attendant law firms!) and such an elderly crew – it looked like the Conservative Party conference!

Here’s 2 ideas:
[1] a blog – perhaps run by the young professionals and the board – to update members on what’s happening – requires no maintenance and just a bit of enthusiastic posting to it – like our ofcomwatch.co.uk

[2] trying to get the Young Pros really happening – which needs a UK chapter head – a youngish person (I tried to persuade Martin last night). The catchment is the type of person we have as ofcomwatch bloggers: http://www.ofcomwatch.co.uk/aboutus.htm There are now about a dozen – the bios page needs updating…

So to do this, you need an introductory rate for Young Pros (say 60 quid) and perhaps also one for student/academic members (say 30 quid – the latter not including Intermedia). There are so many Masters students who can later become Young Pros and then full members – think of all the Stanhope associates who are not members…

It might also help to talk about more than telecoms and broadcasting policy to include the word Internet – Brian last night mentioned Voice over IP but not the Internet. And AOL is not a bright shining star of Internet innovation – rather the opposite!!!

The Young Pros possibly could be tasked with running the Internet section of the Annual Conference – that would really get them involved.

I’m only suggesting all this because I’d like it to work – but it desperately needs a massive injection of young blood!