It was a busy morning. The traffic was bad and the parking at UNSW was even worse.

The Federal Government’s Realising Our Broadband Future Forum was a highly sought after event, with a lot more people turned away than could attend. The first morning of the two-day event saw the rollout of heavy weight digital evangelists from around the world who spoke eloquently about the digital future. Prime Minister Rudd made it clear that the Government was committed.

Of the plenary sessions, I found Mike Quigley’s, CEO of NBN Co, the most beneficial. He gave a good overview of the actual network design. This is the perspiration to support the inspiration. The Forum was divided between the main plenary session and five specific streams: Smart Infrastructure, Digital Education, e-Community, e-Health and e-Business. Each stream was asked to address their topic in three stages, i.e. What are the Possibilities?, Reality Check and Next Steps. As the presenters were not advised of this approach till very late in the piece, many had already prepared their presentations and things did not flow quite to plan, but nonetheless, a lot of good ideas came out.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak in the e-Business stream and I summarised some of Bullseye’s thinking on ‘business@100mbps’. Our white paper had been read by many of the participants and that allowed for some meaty discussions to take place. The wrap up session was intended to bring the findings of the various streams back to the plenary group. It was difficult to condense all that was canvassed in the time available, but this was more than offset by utilising digital tools to capture and publish the outcomes. So as I cleared away my parking ticket (had to happen), I reflected on over 20-years in the telecommunications and digital industry and the many false dawns witnessed. This is the real deal and anyone with their head in the sand is heading for a rude awakening.