Comms Policy @SOTN | Sens Thune & Schatz & Mark Jamison & Gigi Sohn To Speak

Expectations are that the incoming Trump Administration and Congress will work together to realign regulatory authority in the area of communications policy. After this realignment the communications policy roles for the FCC, the FTC, counties, cities, and states may be quite different from recent memory.

At State of the Net 2017 we will be closely examining what the future of communications policy in the US will be with the help of our Keynote Speakers and through our panel discussion later in the day.

Leading the conversation will be:

Keynote Speakers

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Senator John Thune (R-SD) is the Senior US Senator for South Dakota and is currently the senior most Senator and Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. For the 115th Congress, Senator Thune also serves on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee and the Finance Committee. Thune also served in Republican leadership as Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee from 2009 – 2011 and now serves as the Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the number three position in Senate Republican leadership.

Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) is the Senior US Senator for Hawaii and is currently the Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. He also serves on three additional Senate Committees: Appropriations, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and Indian Affairs. Senator Schatz is also one of just three Democrats on the Select Committee on Ethics.

PANELISTS
Larry Downes is is author of the New York Times and Business Week business blockbuster, “Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance” (Harvard Business School Press, 1998). His new book, now a best-seller, is “Big Bang Disruption.” He serves as Project Director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy’s Evolution of Regulation and Innovation project, and as Research Fellow with the Accenture Institute for High Performance.

Markham Erickson is a Partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLC, regularly representing clients in regulatory complaints, investigations, rulemakings, and proposed mergers before the Federal Communication Commission and the Department of Justice. He also represents clients before the United States Copyright Office and the Patent and Trademark Office. He has challenged and defended regulatory actions before federal courts.He has been appointed by the White House to represent the United States before the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development on Internet speech and regulatory matters. He also is co-chair of the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Committee and a member of its Technology Committee.

Gigi Sohn is currently the Leadership in Government Fellow at the Open Society Foundations. From 2015 to 2016 she served as Counselor to the Chairman at the FCC. Ms. Sohn served from 2001-2013 as the President and CEO of Public Knowledge and, from 2011-2013 as the Co-Chair of the board of directors of the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG).

Dr. Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center (PURC) at the University of Florida and also serves as its director of Telecommunications Studies. He provides international training and research on business and government policy, focusing primarily on utilities and network industries. He directs the PURC/World Bank International Training Program on Utility Regulation and Strategy.

We invite you join our Keynote Speakers and Panelists at the 13th Annual State of the Net Internet Policy Conference on January 23, 2017 for a closer look at the Future of Communications Policy.