Agreed about Caspar Bowden.  He worked at Microsoft for a while.  And both before and after that, he was very active with the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in the US (he once described CPDP to me as &quot;a European attempt to replicate CFP&quot;), whose sponsors include Microsoft, Google, and other companies that have similar conflicts of interest.<p>To me it seems that there&#x27;s something to be said for both approaches.  Conferences with corporate sponsorship aren&#x27;t going to be revolutionary; balanced against that, they do provide places to engage and ways of getting different perspectives out more broadly.  [The same&#x27;s true for government speakers.]  Purer conferences like Aral&#x27;s talking about can have a different focus and I can certainly see why some people prefer them.<p>So, kudos to Aral for sticking to his principles and declining the invitation.  I&#x27;m still looking forward to the panel, and don&#x27;t think that Marc Rotenberg or Brigitta Johansen will limit what they have to say based on the sponsorship.