Best 'Internet Week' Ever?

Coming soon to a Manhattan near you is Internet Week New York, slated for June 3-10 and billed by organizers as "a weeklong festival of events saluting New York's thriving Internet industry and the many talented companies, organizations and innovators creating the future of online media."

Given that we work at a Web site, and ostensibly just shifted out of one Internet week into the next, we were a bit unclear on the concept. So, we asked organizer David-Michel Davies, executive director of International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) to shed some light. "There's any number of Internet companies here [in NYC], and conferences that happen around the Internet on any given day," he told us by phone Monday. "But there's no real unifying event for the Internet community here, nothing all-encompassing that really ties the Internet community together." Right... other than the Internet...

So what will Internet Week offer this community?

"It's really a weeklong celebration of all things Internet-y," Davies said. "We want it to be extremely diverse, and it's going to serve all different audiences, like New York and the Internet itself."

Fueling that celebration will be events sponsored by organizations including Nokia, The Webby Awards, The Onion, Comedy Central, Advertising 2.0 Conference, Billboard, Conversational Marketing Summit, Flavorpill, and PaidContent.org. In addition, venues across Manhattan will host Internet Week activities, due to the festival's "open platform approach" to affiliated events. In other words, "Anyone can host an event,"" according to the Internet Week Web site, and the event can take whatever form you imagine (within the boundaries of good taste, of course)." Unclear on those boundaries — too much time on the Internet, perhaps? — we asked Davies: What exactly is that barrier between good taste and bad? "I hope there isn't one," he told us. "I guess you know it when you see it."

But why Internet Week? Why not Internet Day or Internet Month? As Davies told us, "A day is not enough time to celebrate something as large as the Internet. A month is too long."