"the techies and the policy people need to meet up." I completely agree with you. But myself, I've found it very hard to do efforts in that direction. As a techie, I don't have much "status" among the policy set, and there's times it's acutely clear that not being a "club member" puts me at an extreme disadvantage among the social maneuvering. Similarly, there's subtle economic effects. I literally can't *afford* to put in certain types of unpaid work that policy person would do, because it's an investment to their careers, but it's basically just a waste for mine. Maybe if someone is a tenured professor, or a dot-com millionaire, these problems aren't significant. But that makes the talent pool much, much, smaller. In my efforts which eventually *won* a (temporary) DMCA exemption, because I wasn't part of a policy organization, I ended up spending hundreds of dollars *out of my own pocket* to fund the advocacy, not getting public recognition (until the very end), and really not having the work respected in a way it would have been if it were an organizational project. End result: I'M NOT DOING THAT AGAIN! Which is rather a sad commentary on your point :-(