Agreed about Caspar Bowden. He worked at Microsoft for a while. And both before and after that, he was very active with the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy co

Agreed about Caspar Bowden. He worked at Microsoft for a while. And both before and after that, he was very active with the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in the US (he once described CPDP to me as "a European attempt to replicate CFP"), whose sponsors include Microsoft, Google, and other companies that have similar conflicts of interest. To me it seems that there's something to be said for both approaches. Conferences with corporate sponsorship aren't going to be revolutionary; balanced against that, they do provide places to engage and ways of getting different perspectives out more broadly. [The same's true for government speakers.] Purer conferences like Aral's talking about can have a different focus and I can certainly see why some people prefer them. So, kudos to Aral for sticking to his principles and declining the invitation. I'm still looking forward to the panel, and don't think that Marc Rotenberg or Brigitta Johansen will limit what they have to say based on the sponsorship.