The 463: Inside Tech

87+88 = A Review of SV-Backed California Initiatives

When you do an overview of Silicon Valley's involvement in California statewide ballot initiatives past and present, you start with with the VC firm on top of Sand Hill Road.  Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has not only helped launch dozens of the tech industry's most successful companies, the firm is, at most, only one degree of separation from a vast majority of the top tech policy efforts.

One partner, one former partner and one beneficiary of early KP funding are key players behind two of the 13 initiatives on the California November ballot this year.

Mary Anne-Ostrom of the Mercury News looked at this over the weekend from Sacramento...

Two of the boldest electoral initiatives yet to emerge from valley interests will be on November's ballot: NetFlix founder and CEO Reed Hastings and Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr are backing Proposition 88, an unprecedented statewide real estate parcel tax to benefit education; and Vinod Khosla, another Kleiner partner, is behind Proposition 87, a first-ever royalty on oil pumped from California to fund alternative energy ventures.

We've covered former Vinod Khosla's Clean Alternative Energy Act here. (BTW, he's now an "affiliated partner" of Kleiner and runs Khosla Ventures).  It's his first initiative, but the Merc notes that Doerr and Hastings have been down this road before and provides a Valley scorecard on statewide ballot efforts...(plus, our look back after the jump)...

Blair @Cisco

Three months after President Bush held a small townhall meeting at Cisco, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair held a roundtable with Valley notables yesterday at Cisco.  The Cisco government affairs blog welcomes the other 75 percent of the G8 to their HQ.

Attending the Sunday meeting were Cisco CEO John Chambers; David Gardner, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts; Hector Ruiz, chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices; Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist for Google; Shantanu Narayen, chief operating officer of Adobe Systems; Jim Ward, president of LucasArts; Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems; John Hennessy, president of Stanford University; Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer; and Mark Hurd, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard.

The Merc covers it here.  Photo from Cisco.

DC to 2.0: Wake Up! (DOPA)

The writing on the wall

Silicon Valley woke up yesterday, rubbed it's collective eyes and looked at a pretty big number.  It wasn't YouTube's valuation or the number of parties that Valleywag attended the previous night; it was this:  410 to 15. 

Four-hundred-and-ten members of the House of Representatives said, yes, let's pass the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) -- covered here and here at The 463 in May -- and keep sites like MySpace and Facebook from minors in schools and libraries that receive a form of federal funding.  Fifteen said perhaps we should focus on the criminals and not a communications medium.

The tech community (at least those who blog and comment on blogs) seem to be shocked by this result. (Old-school media has ignored it).  Consider TechCrunch.  It's probably the most well-read blogs that focuses on the emerging Web 2.0 companies.  Consider its reaction today:   

The C Words in Online Video

Consumer created content and copyright -- an exploration by Ze Frank...

the show with zefrank

The episiode expands on our overview of online video, copyright and regulatory issues. 

Interesting ding on Adam Curry's Podshow for "hijacking" the vlog Rocketboom on their site.

I Like to Watch

Time for another check in on the incredibly fast and powerful online video transformation.

It's been about seven months since the "Lazy Sunday" SNL video shot YouTube past Google Video, into the mainstream media and onto any respectable tech/media hot list.

How hot?  And, what kind of list?  YouTube's co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley was on the uber-A-list Allen & Co. Sun Valley media conference last week.  It took Google five years to get invited.  Hurley joined Murdoch, Buffett, and Bloomberg 17 months after launching YouTube.  More than that, he "was the most talked about person of the event."

Back in February, folks like AOL/Netscape exec Jason Calacanis (and Digg emulator) were saying that "YouTube is not a real business" primarily because of its alleged reliance on copyrighted work to drive traffic.   Our guess is that Hurley and the head of CBS weren't talking about imaginary business in their 45-minute sit down in Sun Valley.

Yes, but talk is cheap and schmooze is free.  How about some numbers?  Okay, get this:

Coming to a Voter Near You: Podcasting

Our friend, Donnie Fowler, today is featured in an interesting story in the LA Times by the one and only Mark Z. Barabak on the future of podcasting in politics.  Donnie, who came within a whisker of besting Governor Howard Dean for DNC Chair, is one of the brightest guys in politics and is on the cutting edge of a technology that will help push out politicians' messages to increasingly fragmented audiences.

He recently started a company called Cherry Tree Mobile Media to help promote wireless communications as a campaign tool.  We have no doubt he will be a success at this as he has been with his many other endeavors.  The money quote from Donnie: "You'll not only be able to text people with messages, you'll be able to raise money, deliver video, audio, create viral organizing — where one person sees something really interesting and it gets passed on and on."   

Tech Policy -- In the Flesh

What could possibly be better than online babble about tech policy issues?  How about face-to-face discussion action!

I know.  The minds reels.  When?!  Where?!  Who?!

Calm down and pace yourself.  The Tech Policy Summit just officially announced itself.  The executive-level event will be next February 26 and 27 in Silicon Valley.  Already, Intel, AT&T, Comcast, IBM, Cisco, Verizon, WIRED magazine and National Journal are on board.  As are the noteworthy journalists Walt Mossberg of the WSJ, Karen Tumulty of TIME, Jim Goldman of CNBC, Drew Clark and Bara Vaida of National Journal/Technology Daily, Larry Magid of CBS News and Om Malik of Business 2.0/GigaOm.

And, yes, 463 Communications is also lending a hand along with the good folks at the New America Foundation, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and the Association for Competitive Technology.

Can't wait until February?  Then join us at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit next month.

Flickr photo credit.

Daily Show on Net Neutrality

From Ninjas to tribute songs to, now, the Daily Show, Net Neutrality is an issue that is so (oddly) bountiful in ironic humor that we just sprained our smirk muscle (despite our best efforts).... so beware...

hat tip:  IP Democracy

Gates, Brin & Deere

Silicon Valley is great.  Lots of smart people clustered around.  Endless pools of entrepreneurs.  Fantastic research centers.  Yada yada ya.

And, while many regions may try and fail to replicate SV, it's a great untold story how pervasive the products and intelligence of the Valley are now ingrained in critical industries and businesses across the United States. 

Perhaps this is just a missed PR opportunity for tech land.  But, we think it's a bigger deal.  It's a missed opportunity for "tech" to show policymakers that when they are considering tech policy laws and regulations -- they're just not supporting or ignoring the provinces of Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Francisco, Redmond, Boston and Austin -- they are impacting businesses, period.

Where did this mini-rant come from?  Check out the "In The Lead" column by Carol Hymowitz in today's WSJ (sub required).  The column mostly focuses on the quintessentially old-school big business John Deere.  It seems that the old tractor maker is now fashioning itself as an innovation company first and foremost...(after the jump)...

Geek Gone

Just when you thought you were understanding the new, participatory Web, everything is changing again.  From a thought-provoking post today by chartreuese:

The era of the geeks is coming to an end....

Hate MySpace? Too bad. It may not really be bigger than Yahoo but it doesn’t matter.

Blogs as you know them? Paleeze.

Words are for suckers like me.

The Kids are already working on special effects.

Read the whole thing.