Anti-Spam Forces Prepare For Second Summit

Hoping to wipe out the spam epidemic, ISPs, anti-spammers, and e-mail marketers are scheduled to descend on Silicon Valley next week as part of the Email Deliverability Summit II.

Sponsored by the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy (ISIPP), spam-fighting software company Habeas and direct marketing agency Rapp Digital Innovyx, the idea behind the summit is to bring together two (usually opposing) sides of the spam debate.

Similar to the first summit held back in July, the groups hope to work out some common standards for how to deal with everyday issues, such as establishing a Web site with the proper contacts at an ISP in case an e-mail marketer has a campaign blocked.

“Summit I was wildly successful, and we will be presenting the resulting recommendations regarding permission requirements, mailing list maintenance, and sender-receiver communications to the larger group on September 16th,” said Summit co-chair and ISIPP president and CEO Anne Mitchell.

As with Summit I, Summit II is by invitation only, but this time around some 40 CEOs and executive decision-makers will attend the event. A small group of reporters including a representative from internetnews.com will also be in attendance. The first Summit did no include the press.

“We definitely have a forward momentum going here,” said Summit co-Chair Ian Oxman. “In addition to the three recommendations which we will be making to the attending industries, we will be announcing the formation of a formal cross-industry group to follow through with and expand on the groundwork we laid at the original Summit. With both senders and receivers on board, and working together, we can at last really address and deal with issues such as email deliverability and spam.”

The list of attendees for Summit II is being kept under wraps, but documents obtained by internetnews.com show it includes several national-level ISPs, spam-filtering companies, and key email service bureaus and online marketing companies. The July meeting Summit I was attended by twelve companies, including RoadRunner, Mail-Filters, YesMail and CheetahMail.