2025-08-10 –, Andromeda
Language: English
This talk is based on my experience working for Comcast/Sky Group in WLAN (802.11) standardisation. It follows the trajectory from environmental laws through to technical regulations and finally in to technical standards, patents and technologies. The talk argues that well-enforced norms and regulations remain a good way of incentivising socially and globally desirable outcomes, while explaining how technical regulations and standardisation work in practice from the industry insider perspective.
A version of this presentation was previously given at the SICT Summer School at ULB in Brussels. It will also be presented at Bornhack and BalcCon in 2025.
I feel like such a talk is especially important now that Europe is no longer under an American security umberella. Europe consistently fails in pushing a rules-based world order, while, in fact, it is difficult to see any other form of world order work either for Europe or indeed the vast majority of countries. We have many parallel examples from privacy, security and data protection law where Europe, again, fails to understand and identify its own critical interests.
Amelia has an eclectic career mostly at the intersection of technology, politics and Europe. When backed into a corner, she doubles down. Recently she's been managing risks at a Swedish sovereign cloud service provider, and before that she was moving capital in the chip industry by reorienting standards work to privacy and power save modes. When Amelia was a Member of the European Parliament she got accused of being a communist by a large French telecoms provider, since she has the firm belief that structural separation and vertically disintegrated markets are beneficial for market entry and consumer choice.