January 24-25 2004
Bicentennial Hall 216

In January 2000, a pioneering group of Middlebury College students, alumni, parents and friends launched what has grown into DigitalBridges2.0. This year's January conference marks a major milestone: DigitalBridges2.0 is five years old.

DigitalBridges2004 is the product of the hard work, can-do attitude and consistently high standards of 12 Middlebury College students; and from the enthusiastic collaboration they enjoyed with panelists drawn from our growing network of College alumni, parents and friends. Thank you!

Saturday, January 24, 2004

8:30-9:30 Continental Breakfast

9:30-9:45 Welcome - John M. McCardell Jr., President

9:45-10:00 Introduction - Michael Claudon, D.K. Smith Professor of Applied Economics and Director, DigitalBridges2.0

10:00-11:45 Can Customers be Trusted?

Increasingly, innovators are trying to constrain, curtail, confine, and control their customers as opposed to cost-effectively creating greater choices for them (see "You Bought It. Who Controls It?" TR June 2003). For understandable but controversial reasons, innovators invest heavily in techniques and technologies that treat customers as potential thieves and competitors. People procuring innovative products and services are discovering that their ability to pay matters far less than their willingness to behave as vendors want them to.
The problem, alas, is that innovators and their customers often have profoundly different notions of appropriate behavior. Your seemingly reasonable desire for a backup copy of your new software program or DVD may be your vendor's very definition of intellectual-property theft. Shame on you? Or shame on them? Caveat adapter! (Michael Schrage, MIT Technology Review)

Facilitators: Andrew Jacobi '05 and Clark Read '05

Panelists
1. David Buckland '88, Vice President of Strategy, Digital Fuel
2. Matt Grossman '93, Director of Digital Strategy, Motion Picture Association
3. Tom Knox '84, Partner, Shaw Pittman, L.L.P.

11:45-1:15 Lunch in the Great Hall of Bicentennial Hall

1:15-2:45 E-waste - Dark Side of the Digital Age

These days, it's often cheaper and more convenient to buy a new PC than to upgrade an old one. But what happens to those old computers once they've been abandoned for newer models?
The refuse from discarded electronics products, also known as e-waste, often ends up in landfills or incinerators instead of being recycled. And that means toxic substances like lead, cadmium and mercury that are commonly used in these products can contaminate the land, water and air. (Kendra Mayfield, Wired.com)

Facilitators: Pavel Gavrilov '04 and Ngetha Waithaka '04

Panelists
1. Betsy Sweeney Backes '82, Asset Manager, Fleet Bank Asset Management
2. Robin Ingenthion, CEO, Good Point Recycling, Former Recycling Program Director, MA
3. Jonathan T. Isham, Jr., Assistant Professor of Economics, Middlebury College
4. Carol Peddie, Director of Budget, Planning and Assessment, Library and Information Services, Middlebury College

2:45-3:00 Coffee

3:00-4:30 Web Strategies - Destination Resorts and Hospitality Business

Many destinations have suffered steep declines in visitors over the past three years. And while travel to some destinations is down by 10%, 15% and in some cases 20%, online travel to these same destinations has grown by 30% annually over the past three 3 years.
Defining a Destination Web Strategy. A Destination Web Strategy means leveraging the popularity of your destination to your own advantage by making your hotel or cluster of hotels the "hero" of the destination, and in the same time turning your hotel website into a valuable destination resource for your online customers and increasing its value and relevance for the search engines.
This strategy is one of the most effective means to market a local property or a cluster of properties within a particular destination. It allows the hotel to leverage the richness of the destination and shape the local attributes of its environment with creative marketing initiatives that appeal to its online customer base. The strategy is also an imperative for hoteliers to highlight the property within the context of local resources, because local government sponsored initiatives to promote the richness of the destination, which includes your hotel, are quickly diminishing. (Jason Price and Mark Starkov, "Building a Destination Web Strategy in Hospitality")

Facilitators: Bryan Lodigiani '05 and TimPieter Nijnens '05

Panelists
1. Trevor Crist '93, President and Founder, Inntopia
2. Chris Diamond '68, P'03.5, President, Steamboat Ski and Resort Corporation
3. Bill Stenger, President and CEO, Jay Peak Resort

4:30-6:00 Break

6:00-7:15 Keynote Panel - Town Meeting

Websites dedicated to personal interactions and hookups, business contacts, affinity groups, even dating, are currently witnessing unprecedented growth, at least in terms of membership and usage. Movers in this category are showing several common traits, including user discretion to opt in, being exceptionally viral (causing effective word-of-mouth growth), and modest funding requirements.
Several companies in these areas have been able to rapidly attract exploding networks of participants and a groundswell of buzz. The phenomenon has captured the attention of VCs and entrepreneurs alike, who are intrigued with the upside potential, yet also hold strong reservations about how such companies plan to make money. During the forum, the panelists will examine the challenges that lie ahead for these companies, ranging from existing and future functionality, to scaling beyond the early adopter stage and, most importantly, their business models. Issues to be examined include:
· What makes the use of some of these platforms so viral? What are the key factors driving their early success and sustained growth?
· What have these startups done right to win over their respective user communities and have their users continually recruit others?
· How price-sensitive will users really be?
· Will Social Networking translate uptake into real profit (witness Napster)?
· Are there opportunities for other entrepreneurs to capitalize within this category?
(http://www.vlab.org/204.cfm?eventID=37)

Facilitators: Tim Tutsch '04 and Drew West '04

Moderator: Karen Lewis Jacobs '97, Product Manager,Advertising.com

Panelists
1. Aaron Abend '77, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Viapoint Software
2. Ted Adler '99.5, Founder and President, Union Street Media, Founder Middkid.com
3. John Davidson '68, Silicon Valley private investor, serial entrepreneur

7:15-8:00 Reception in the Great Hall of Bicentennial Hall

8:00 Dinner in the Tormondsen Great Hall of Bicentennial Hall

Sunday, January 25, 2004

8:15-9:15 Continental Breakfast

9:15-10:45 Technology is Back! - Dotcom Déjа vu?
Engage in conversation in certain circles and it's only a matter of time before you hear the phrase "Google IPO." If and when the company decides to go public next year, it will be a defining moment for the tech sector. It would be the first tech IPO since perhaps Netscape's on Aug. 9, 1995, to garner grandmother-level public awareness. But tech investors shouldn't get stuck waiting for Google like characters in an updated Samuel Beckett play: Plenty of tech companies are testing the waters of the public markets right now, and the IPO market is heating up. (Eric Hellweg, Business 2.0)

Facilitators: Peter Garcia-Sjogrim '03.5 and John Schrim'05.5
Panelists
1. John Burton 'P07, Managing Director, Updata Capital
2. George Lee '88, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs & Co
3. Jim Robinson '84, Principal, Middlebury Capital LLC
3. Jed Smith '88, Managing Director, Catamount Ventures LLP

10:45-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 The Digital Age - Post-Industrial Revolution?

This panel will explore the impact and compelling public/private/social issues around the accelerating sea change that the Digital Age is visiting on manufacturing. Blue-collar manufacturing jobs are disappearing globally, while white-collar service-related jobs are migrating off shore from Canada, Japan, the US and elsewhere at an accelerating pace.

Facilitators: Neli Georgieva '06 and Laurel Houghton '04

Panelists
1. David Logan, President and CEO, Autumn Harp
2. Mark Patinkin '74, Columnist, Providence Journal
3. Jeffrey Schutz '74, Managing Director, Centennial Funds

12:30 Lunch in the Great Hall of Bicentennial Hall

A special thank you to our generous sponsors:
DigitalBridges2.0 is funded solely by the generous support of Middlebury College alumni, parents and friends. To each and every one of them we extend a hearty, "Thank you!"
· Frederick M. Fritz '68
· Rory Riggs '74
· Pieter Schiller '60
· Jeffrey Schutz '74
· John Templeton Foundation