The first-ever conference covering the applications that are driving broadband use opened today in Fort Wayne, Indiana. With standing-room-only crowds in the conference sessions and throngs on the exhibit floor, we're off to a strong start. Longer articles (and pictures, and videos) are coming soon, but in the meantime, a few highlights from Day 1:

- In Bandon, Oregon, a small town that installed a new fiber-to-the-home network, high school students are now staying in town when they graduate, instead of leaving for bigger cities. The local art center is being expanded, a new golf course is being built, and the hotel is being refurbished.

- In Winona, Minnesota, the ambulances are outfitted with videocameras and transmit live video from accident scenes to the hospital emergency room, so the ER can be ready to deal with what's coming their way.

- In Lafayette, Louisiana, the community center sheltered evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Because the center was fiber-wired, they quickly set up VoIP service and allowed evacuees to contact their relatives long before anyone else could.

- In West Valley City, Utah, the executive director of the UTOPIA fiber-to-the-home network not only keeps in touch with his grown children by videoconference, he even shares his TV with them through a Slingbox. Seems like fiber communities are getting more channels and better reception than others...

- Global Online Solutions Network is providing a "Safe Site" surveillance application to developers. The company brings in a fiber trunk and a headend and sets up motion sensors that trigger video cameras. The system helps developers monitor the site during building and can provide security services to homeowners once the lots are sold. Because the security team can always see what triggered the alarm, "there are no false alarms," the company's founders say.

- Some property developers are using "virtual flythroughs" on the Web to sell their properties. Others are creating replicas of new developments on Second Life. They can not only give homebuyers an advance look at the development, they can even sell the virtual houses!