FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel will be the keynote speaker at the IEEE Global Communications Conference in Atlanta next week. This shouldn’t really be big news. After all, all 5 FCC commissioners routinely go to the NAB Conference in Las Vegas and major CTIA conferences to kowtow to those industries. They also go en masse to key FCBA events such as the recent Chairman’s Dinner to meet with the legal minds that practice before FCC.

But I believe that this is the first time in over a decade that any FCC commissioner has spoken at any technical conference even though technical spectrum policy and Internet policy are key parts of the FCC jurisdiction. This same conference was held in Washington DC in 2007 during the Martin chairmanship and even with it in the FCC’s backyard they were unable to get an FCC commissioner to speak. The IEEE International Microwave Symposium, a major conference for wireless technology, was held in nearby Baltimore in 2011 and was unable to get an FCC commissioner to come despite repeated efforts.

So kudos to Comm. Rosenworcel for breaking with the past. OET Chief Julius Knapp will also speak at 2 sessions.

While the technical community does not have the same expectations as CTIA and NAB, some attention from the 8th Floor would show support to technical innovation and the capital formation that is needed for it. Indeed, such conferences can be a 2 way street for commissioners and senior staffers to meet people and hear things they normally don’t hear on the 8th Floor.

UPDATE

Here is the link to the prepared speech she gave.

The most interesting part of the speech was a proposal to bring FCC hiring of engineers to be the same high priority as hiring lawyers with recruiting at the start of the academic year. A topic discussed here last year. WE hope the rest of FCC can endorse this idea!