Former (current?) Hillary Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson has a new blog.
He is using it as an unabashed platform for promoting his music likes. (As opposed to the more abashed me).
BTW, Howard, if you like Grizzly Bear, check out this Girl Talk remix. And, you also have a kindred blogger spirit in the venture capitalist Fred Wilson.
David Kralick works for Newt Gingrich in Silicon Valley and attracts strange artificial lighting wherever he goes. (photo by Chistina Koci Hernandez for The Washington Post)
The Post has a piece today about Newt Gingrich's emissary to Silicon Valley. It's written by a Bay Area native with an engaging, evocative style and doesn't spare many clichés about life and work between San Jose and South of Market. (Neither apparently does the Post's photo editors. See above).
The lede:
Here, he's from another planet. Here in Silicon Valley, David Kralik is, let's face it, some strange import. That's why he's attracting such buzz one recent afternoon inside Buck's, the legendary eatery, while lunching on a pulled-pork sandwich.
Jamis MacNiven, Buck's owner, plops himself down and blurts out: "So you're the guy that works for Newt the Snoot!"
Yep, that's Kralik. A lifelong Republican in the land of liberal Democrats. Who relocated from uptight, Brooks Brothers Washington. And works for Newt Gingrich.
Bucks really needs to be taken out of the Let's Go Silicon Valley Guide for Media. And, OMG a Republican in Silicon Valley! Get me my binoculars, ma!
But, there are good amounts of interesting anecdotes in the piece -- especially centered around how to apply tech to solve big government problems....
...Says Peter Leyden, the former editor of Wired magazine who heads the New Politics Institute, a think tank focusing on technology's impact on Washington: "There's an emerging sense that both worlds need each other. Think of it this way: The scale of the problems that the world faces -- globalization, global warming, global terrorism -- can't be solved without these two hubs cooperating with each other."
ad_icon
Kralik knows all of this full well. On a recent six-hour flight from Washington to the Valley, he drafted a three-column chart. "The world that works." "The world that fails." "Making government from a world that fails to a world that works."
Kralik puts the U.S. Census Bureau in the world-that-fails column. After spending more than $150 million on handheld computers to count everyone in the country, the Census Bureau announced a few weeks ago that it will scrap that program and hire 600,000 temporary workers and go back to the same way that it's counted people since 1790: with paper and pen.
"You've got to be kidding me, right?" says an incredulous Kralik. "Why can't we get together the brightest minds at Google, at Apple, at whatever companies here in the Valley, and figure out a more high-tech way of counting our citizens?"
Intel Corp., one of the country’s largest and best-known high-tech manufacturing outfits, today is launching an effort to refurbish its brand on Capitol Hill. The two-pronged campaign involves a major inside-the-Beltway advertising push and, ultimately, a transformation of its operation here with a new chief lobbyist.
Another big tech company doubling down in DC. This helpfully supports my ramblings from yesterday.
(Subscription needed to see the full article).
The good and connected Brooks Boliek at the Hollywood Reporter makes some educated guesses on who the next FCC Chair would be if either Senators Clinton or Obama are elected president.
For Clinton, Boliek hears that...
Susan Ness is the name bandied about among the tele-cognesceti. Ness, a former commissioner, has strong ties to the Clintons. She was a fundraiser and former campaign worker for President Clinton and has continued in that role actively campaigning for the senator. She has been named a "Hill Raiser" for raising more than $100,000 for Clinton and has been active in her campaign.
As for Obama...
...his campaign and Senate staffs are dotted with people who have close ties to the FCC. Connecting those dots, however, is Julius Genachowski, a former aide to Hundt and Kennard and a close friend of Obama's since they attended Harvard Law School....
Aside from commission experience, Genachowski was an executive at Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. and a managing director at digital media specialist Rock Creek Ventures and is a special adviser to the private-equity group General Atlantic. (Ed note: Genachowski was Obama's representative at this year's Congressional Internet Caucus conference.)
"He got a lot of people interested in him early on," said Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus who was a top adviser to Hundt. "There are a lot of people there that would be terrific choices, just as there are in the other campaigns."
Levin has also been mentioned as a possibility, but he dodged the question when asked if he wanted the job.
Boliek also mentions: Obama policy director Karen Kornbluh, who also worked at the commission under Hundt and Kennard; Don Gipps, an FCC veteran who was former Vice President Al Gore's domestic policy adviser and is now a top executive at Level 3; and, Larry Stcikling, a former chief of the FCC Common Carrier Bureau and an Obama campaign worker.
You may have seen today that Facebook hired Google executive Sheryl Sandberg to be the social network's COO.
There is notable relevance to this move in these tech policy parts. First, in the press release announcing the move, Facebook noted that she would be in charge of "public policy". This isn't some empty throw-on responsibility for Sandberg. It's safe to predict that it won't be long before Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly has some extra help and we're not writing about the company making a single hire in DC.
First off, before she was at Google, she was Chief of Staff to the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton. She carried this DC experience to Google where she was one of the few executives there openly and actively involved in politics. For example, she is a big supporter of Hillary Clinton and has frequently served as host to policy makers on their visits to the Googleplex.
Sandberg should be able to serve as a forceful voice for policy engagement at Facebook. She's certainly seen the movie before at Google.
Sandberg will also likely carry over a philanthropic bent to her new job. She was instrumental in starting Google's foundation and rolls in the Davos-elite circles. (You can envision Bono getting a Facebook page soon).
The opening lyrics to LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" (above) are:
Yeah, I'm losing my edge.
I'm losing my edge.
The kids are coming up from behind.
I'm losing my edge....
...But I was there.
This is how I feel when reading the new-ish Capitol Valley blog. It's written by two guys. One in the Bay Area. On in DC. The DC guy is almost three years out of college.
Anyway, they have the time and energy to power off 13 posts in the last few days (versus zero here). Most were tech policy related. They are semi-live blogging the FCC hearing today.
And, while I can't say that I fully agree with the tenor of many of the posts there (or some of the purported facts), it's good to have idealistic and over-the-top energetic company in this tech policy blog land.
They are also providing content that I either can't or won't. I've been involved with tech policy since 1996. This means that I know a lot and a lot of people. But, it also means that I am insider, for better or worse, and, therefore, am not going to cut my nose off to spite my face by writing either about scoops that I have access to or opinions that could damage relationships.
On the other hand, the Capitol Valley guys feel free to take Facebook to task for "ignoring Washington at its peril."
The kids are coming up from behind.
I'm losing my edge....
...But I was there.
The Post's Jeff Birnbaum today uncovers that the leading tech companies have clustered their DC offices around one small park downtown:
(Franklin Square) -- which is bounded by 13th, 14th, K and I streets NW -- boasts the capital's highest concentration of tech lobbying offices.
One industry wag has dubbed it Silicon Square as a result.
The large office buildings around the tree-heavy park contain a who's who of the tech world. Residents include Microsoft, Dell, Sun Microsystems, eBay and IBM. Just a block away are Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Oracle, Sony and, in brand new offices, Apple and Google.
Why Franklin Square? I have no idea. Birnbaum guesses that it the proximity to ITI. Perhaps. It might also be that it is an area that had good, fairly priced space as tech firms started looking for space from 1998 and on.
Yet, it should be for this reason... In my best Cliff Clavin voice, it is a little known (yet prescient fact) that:
The Franklin School, completed in 1868 and designed by Adolph Cluss, is a focal point of the square. The school was a model of advanced design in its day and the scene of Alexander Graham Bell's first wireless message. On June 3, 1880, Bell sent a message over a beam of light to a window in a building at 1325 L Street, NW.
463's DC office, btw, is on the old-school corridor of K Street.
Ever since Michael Gallagher left the Commerce Department, he's been shaking up the Entertainment Software Association -- or, more plainly, the video game lobby. More from today's Times:
Michael D. Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, the industry’s lobbying arm in Washington, said last week that the group’s board approved the PAC’s creation last fall and that the committee would be up and running by the end of March. The association represents major game publishers including the Walt Disney Company, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.
“We will be writing checks to campaigns by the end of this quarter,” Mr. Gallagher said. “This is an important step in the political maturation process of the industry that we are ready to take now. This is about identifying and supporting champions for the game industry on Capitol Hill so that they support us.”
if you care about video game policy, be sure to read The Political Game weekly column at Joystiq. The author had high praise for Gallagher after he had been in the gig for a couple months...
...we should create some kind of JFK award for the guy just for having the guts to stand up and proclaim, "ich bin ein gamer." In interviews, the new ESA boss immediately outed himself as the setup man for the office multiplayer Doom network when he worked as a congressional staffer. Of course, I had a great deal of respect for Gallagher's ESA predecessor, but Doug Lowenstein wouldn't know a space marine from the man in the moon. He was no gamer. To his credit, he didn't pretend to be. But it feels better to have someone who is in gut-level touch with the medium at the industry's helm.
(**Tecmo Bowl: The source of many poor showings on midterms in college)
Tech Daily's Andrew Noyes blesses us with photos of Google's new DC office and teases us because we will be thousands of miles away from this week's office warming that promises knock-down Guitar Hero battles and lots of knowing winks about the massage chair. (And, I don't even know what that means).
BTW, when I first mentioned the new office last summer, I got on my high horse about how it should be used as a center of education about technology's impact on average citizens (read: constituents). Won't repeat the rant here, but if you so desire, step back into time.
Cynthia Brumfield tips us to NCTA's new policy blog called "Cable Tech Talk."
The bloggers there apparently had a hell of a lot more time than me at CES and even made it to a few interesting panels (which they summed up nicely). Welcome guys, and you've been added to our illustrious tech policy blog roll to the left.
