PAGE 2 // WEDNESDAY, MAY 5. 2010
NEWS
THE PENDULUM
Elon plans FutureWeb 2010 conference,
brings Internet inventors to Raleigh
Jack Dodson
News Editor
Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee —
two men instrumental in developing
the Internet — stood in front of packed
crowds at the Raleigh Convention
Center April 28 at the World Wide
Web conference, while Elon University
students, faculty and staff tweeted,
blogged and recorded the events.
WWW, an annual event that brings
together people from around the world
to talk about the Internet, was based in
Raleigh this year. Elon’s Imagining the
Internet Center had the opportunity to
play an active role in the event.
The result was FutureWeb, a local
conference stemming off WWW from
April 28 to April 30 that dealt with
the social implications of the Internet.
Students worked with Imagining
the Internet director and associate
professor of communications at Elon
Janna Anderson to organize and host.
Google, Lulu, Facebook, Microsoft,
Mozilla and eBay were among
organizations that sent representatives
to the conference. Sessions at the
event featured discussions by Internet
leaders from around the world on topics
ranging from intellectual property to
open source.
“It was a big success for everyone
involved," Anderson said. “Students,
faculty and staff who attended not only
got the education (from the events) but
learned as they worked how to do real
time journalism."
Anderson led a team of volunteers
from the university to bring guests,
plan panels and cover the events as
they happened. Throughout the three
days, the FutureWeb group kept up a
blog, a Twitter page, a Flickr page, a
YouTube channel and full articles on
the Imagining the Internet Web site.
She said the idea started about a
year ago when she was contacted by
an alumna who told her the WWW
event would be held in Raleigh for
2010. Anderson was later selected
to be on the steering committee for
the conference and was offered the
chance to put together the regional
conference.
In order to plan the event and offer
a chance to educate students on the
future of the Internet, Anderson said
she developed a class held during
Winter Term 2010 that focused
on FutureWeb and the concepts it
addressed. Many of the students in the
class worked throughout the spring to
plan and provide pre-event coverage
and attended all three days of the
conference.
“It wasn’t like your traditional
class," said junior Kirsten Bennett,
who was in the class and worked all
three days at the event. “Most of my
work was after the class ended."
ASHLEY BARNAS | Photographer
Elon University student Morgan Little and alumna Olivia Hubert-Alien work at the FutureWeb 2010 conference in Raleigh, updating Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube and WordPress pages to document events at the conference, which ran from April 28 to April 30.
Bennett said she worked
throughout the current semester to
reserve equipment, recruit more than
60 volunteers and help set up the
conference. She said the event required
a lot of people because frequently
there were multiple sessions going on
at once.
“A lot of times we were in three
rooms at one time,” she said.
For her, taking the class was a
crucial part in understanding how to
cover the topics at the conference.
“I was nervous because before the
class, I didn’t know a lot about the
Internet besides how to use it," she
said.
In the class, though, she read the
“Imagining the Internet” textbook,
written by Anderson, which helped
her understand the concepts of the
conference better.
For Anderson, the highlight of the
event came when she saw students
interacting with Berners-Lee and Cerf.
Bennett said she had her photo taken
with Cerf.
“Our students being with those
global leaders, those innovators of
communications, was a thrill for me to
„ . , . , DAN RICKERSHAUSERI Photographer
see, Anderson said. Google Vice President Vint Cerf is interviewed at FutureWeb 2010 by Lee Rainie, director of Pew
Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.
PHOTO COURTESEY OF IMAGINING THE INTERNET ASHl EY BARNAS | Photographer
Chris DiBona, open source and public sector engineering During FutureWeb, Lee Rainie interviews Doc Searls, a journalist, blogger and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society,
manager at Google, speaks at FutureWeb April 30.