World's First CampFiber Starts Tomorrow!

The anticipation is killing me: tomorrow begins the world's first ever CampFiber in Lafayette, LA hosted by Lafayette Utility Systems and Abacus Data Exchange.

A CampFiber is an unconference modeled in part after the BarCamp concept, where the attendees are the presenters and the structure allows for free-flowing discussions around the topic of what can a fiber community do with all that bandwidth.

This first event is focused on local developer, entrepreneur, and creative types with the goal of helping facilitate the creation of the next generation of big bandwidth applications. It's all about coming together, brainstorming, and sharing ideas.

We're going to be talking about:

- LUS's full-fiber network, the 100Mbps intranet every customer will have access to, and how the network can help support innovation
- Abacus' LiquidIQ platform, its capabilities for hosting applications, and what can happen when fabric computing and big broadband unite
- Lafayette's K-12 school district, how it's already using broadband, and its wishlist of problems to be solved and/or apps to be built
- Lafayette's city-parish government, their technology plan, and how they can use the capacity of fiber to extend and enhance that
- Acadiana Open Channel, what PEG 2.0 can mean, and how they can leverage fiber to redefine local community media
- And a variety of attendee-led discussions ranging from local developers showing off their apps, to topics like the possibilities of virtualization, the benefits of standardization, and the importance of usability

Needless to say, we've got a full day of fascinating topics to cover!

We're going to have at least myself and one other person live blogging the event either on this site or through Twitter. Follow geoffdaily or jeskaNOLA to get updates.

Also, we're going to be setting up a basic webcast that'll hopefully allow those who can't make it to tune in. I'll post the link to this site, through Twitter, and to the CampFiber wiki as soon as we get it set up.

It's my fervent belief that the next generation of the Internet will be built in places like Lafayette, so I couldn't be more excited or honored to be able to work with the good people in this fiber community and others to help spark this discussion about how to make the most out of these cutting edge networks.