The LA Times' Jim Puzzanghera ended 2006 with a well-done lament on the number of tech organizations that purport to represent "the industry."
Unlike most major industries, high tech has no all-encompassing trade association to push its agenda at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Instead, about two dozen groups represent all or parts of the industry, with enough acronyms for a heaping bowl of alphabet soup: AeA, BSA, CCIA, CEA, EIA, SIA, SIIA, ITAA, ITIC and USIIA, to list some.
The last time a big paper wrote about this very issue was May 2005 when Jeffrey Birnbaum penned a Washington Post column that smirked (albeit correctly)....
Like so many associations, these groups like to refer to themselves by their initials, which, of course, can be maddening to the uninitiated. The next time someone starts jabbering to you about AEA or BSA or CEA, don't despair. Nod knowingly and just assume that the person is talking about one of those too-many tech associations that even insiders can't keep track of. Nine times out of 10 you'll be right.
As it was noted in our post on the Birnbaum column at the time, it was expected that the coming years would see some consolidation. Yet, despite all sorts of rumored almosts, nearly-theres, its-gonna-happen and we-just-need-the-board-to-approve-it close merger calls, nothing much has actually happened in the last two-years.
From our seat, we agree with ITAA's Phil Bond in the Times story, when he speaks of consolidation and says that "it really is a question of what's best for the industry."
Clearly, there will be some short-term pain to consolidation, but if it makes the industry more successful in the long-term than that's what we are ultimately getting paid for.
Still, merging a few redundant trade groups won't be a panacea. There still will be a bevy of tech groups and there will likely be more every year. Why, well, is there an industry group that currently watches out for the interest of social networking sites? How about the online video players? You get my point.
Indeed, since we wrote the following in response to the 2005 Post piece, trade associations haven't changed much, but the "industry" has....
.....we're not advocating that the tech industry have one organization represent it. Or two. Or five. We are simply not the movie industry where five companies equal the MPAA or the automobile industry where you only need three fingers to count significant membership. Nor do our issues magically align from company to company or tech sector to tech sector. eBay, Yahoo! and Cisco are based within a few miles of each other and are often looped together as "tech leaders", but their individual policy priorities are dramatically different. And, it , frankly will take maturing on the policymaker's side to understand that while the industry can be a unified force on pushing for the best environment to innovate, the collective tech industry will soon be as broad in scope and focus as the members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce currently are.
After all, tech is becoming ubiquitous in business, entertainment and daily lives. There aren't simply boundries that contain it much anymore. Therefore, the policy issues that will impact tech will come from more and more angles and need specialized focus. An umbrella organization simply couldn't effectively lead on RFID privacy issues one day, China trade policy the next day, and mobile content regulation the next.
As the Wal-Marts, SBCs and Citibanks of the world consider themselves as so reliant on advanced technologies for their competitive advandtage, also consider how these "traditional" forces will have an impact in policy circles on driving technology policy on their own and via the trade groups of their choice. Some day not so far off, "tech policy" may simply become "business policy."
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