Last week I had the pleasure of participating in the first annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute, "Rights and Responsibility:  Child Protection in a Web 2.0 World."  Stephen Balkam, FOSI's CEO, opened the conference, by discussing the "new culture of responsibility," a theme which continued throughout much of the day.

What does this mean? Simply put, as the Internet has confronted us with a new medium - one that is highly dynamic and unlike any we've seen before - and parents, teachers, policy makers, and others must work together in order to achieve the highest degree of online safety for our families. Even if parents lack a complete understanding of Web 2.0 tools, they still hold responsibility for instilling safe online practices in their children. One speaker referred to a "Web 2.0 approach based on educational resources; not fear."

Stephen Balkam is quite impressive and did a superb job of organizing the program.  I want to congratule Stephen and the FOSI staff and Board for  an excellent first  annual online safety conferences.  I expect there will be many more FOSI events, which is good news for the online safety community.
 
I will have more to post later this week about the  conference.