Former Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, a charismatic former candidate in the 2008 presidential election whose bizarre YouTube "Rock" video became an Internet phenomenon, chatted with Tech Daily Dose at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference Tuesday about President Obama's high-tech and cybersecurity agenda. As expected, Gravel has a lot on his mind. Enjoy!
Republican National Committee New Media Director Todd Herman stood before an auditorium full of technology experts on Tuesday, many of them left leaning, with the message that the Grand Old Party is preparing for a Web-based revolution. Tech-savvy conservatives have finished licking their campaign 2008 wounds and are ready to take advantage of the same kinds of Internet innovations that helped President Obama win his bid for the White House. "We'd be fools to not admit what happened," Herman told the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference. The GOP was slow to rally Web supporters and got spanked on Election Day.
"I can tell you that's changing. Conservatives online are dying to organize," said Herman, who previously served as MSNBC's video evangelist. For starters, the RNC plans to re-launch GOP.com in about 45 days. While he refused to offer details on the new site's features, he said RNC Chairman Michael Steele told him to "take the lid off" when it comes to the party's Internet strategy. A memo Herman posted on GOP.com promises "[a] new look and a more enjoyable, modern, open and participatory way to share our ideals with the country." "The Web site you see today is difficult to update, hard to use, and locked in a Web 1.0 environment. It is also stale. It is in need of a massive spring clean," he wrote.
At a reception honoring the winners of Virginia's Innovative App Contest on Saturday, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Jim Shelton, head of the Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement, shared the stage to give remarks and field questions from the audience. Technology's role in the classroom is less about hardware and software and more about the marriage of ideas and relevance, Chopra said. The tech guru was careful not to endorse a particular product in a room full of educational technology vendors. The State Educational Technology Directors Association hosted the event as part of a five-day forum on emerging technologies.
The forum overlaps with the National Educational Computing Conference, which began Friday with opening remarks from popular author Malcolm Gladwell. The event ends Wednesday afternoon. When asked what tops his ambitious agenda on leveraging technology to improve education, Chopra stated that data and analytics are the key. "We know more about retailing than we know about the educational experience," he said. Shelton agreed, adding that improvements to the infrastructure of education must be made to enhance decision making. Shelton also emphasized the importance of boosting access in education through broadband. -- Eliza Krigman
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking a page from White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra's playbook by announcing a new annual competition that will let his tech-savvy constituents repurpose raw government data to create innovative Internet applications. The forthcoming "Big Apps" project will be housed on NYC.gov and while the size of the initial data dump was not specified, Bloomberg told the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference it would be "huge." "The point of collecting data is to manage information effectively... so why not allow the private sector to help us do so?" he reasoned during a keynote via a Skype video call.
Kundra spearheaded a similar project called "Apps For Democracy" while serving as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia government and in May launched Data.gov, a Web site that offers raw feeds of information from a range of federal agencies. Bloomberg's contest will offer cash prizes, publicity and networking opportunities to those who take part, he said. The billionaire businessman said he will also take the winners of the contest out to dinner "and we'll definitely order some apps." The 2008 D.C. government competition produced 47 applications in 30 days using open source programming for iPhones, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps and others.
The man who helped President Obama win his White House bid through a groundbreaking Internet mobilization effort offered some advice to the Republican Party on Monday during remarks at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference in New York City. To rebound in 2012, the GOP needs new leaders who not only understand technology but also can embrace "the wants, needs and desires of regular people across the country," new media strategist Joe Rospars said. "It will not only help them electorally but will also drag the leadership back toward the middle." During an exchange with Mark McKinnon, who advised Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on the campaign trail, Rospars argued the GOP has veered too far right and despite making some technological progress in recent years is still stuck in the pre-Web world.
"We got millions of people to do stuff... in a substantive way," Rospars said of the Obama campaign. "You have to capture something both at an emotional level and at a this-matters-to-me level." McKinnon agreed, saying the future of conservatism hinges on connecting with people in new ways. Republicans have to get "leaner, tougher and smarter" while using emerging online tools to spread the message that they understand what the American people care about. McKinnon said his party is suffering from a "leadership deficit" similar to the one Democrats experienced a decade ago. But he believes the GOP can regain its footing as voters begin to feel disenfranchised by the party in power. "I hope President Obama is an extraordinary success for the sake of our country [but] the hard stuff is just beginning," he said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., is among the first in the political world to embrace ChallengePost.com, a Web site that lets users create and join challenges to accomplish goals. The New York City based start-up launched Monday at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual Internet and politics conference. Gingrich's wishes include:
• "Create a method of learning math and science that kids like, and that enables us to leapfrog India and China."
• "Create a method for reusing nuclear waste to make Yucca Mountain, Nevada unnecessary as a repository."
• "Create the first privately financed permanent lunar base."
• "Create a reusable system that could get people into space at 10% of the current cost, thus enabling genuine space tourism and launching an age of exploration."
• "Create a cheap method for turning large quantities of seawater into fresh water."
• "Create a modestly priced, mass-manufacturable hydrogen engine for cars, which would be the biggest single contribution to reducing carbon loading of the atmosphere and reducing subsidies through high oil prices to dictatorships."
• "Create a low-cost vaccine or preventive intervention for malaria -- possibly the single biggest potential improvement in the quality of life in poor tropical countries."
ChallengePost founder Brandon Kessler got the idea after seeing 23-year-old Colin Nederkoorn's contest to run Windows XP on an Intel Mac in 2006. Donations poured in, bringing the cash award to more than $13,000. The ChallengePost community can similarly add prize money to competitions they think are worthwhile. Read more here.
Electronic commerce trade group NetChoice launched a new project Tuesday intended to "track dangerous legislation and mobilize citizens in defense of core Internet principles." The Internet Advocates' Watchlist For Ugly Laws (iAWFUL) identifies the top 10 legislative and regulatory proposals that its creators believe are "truly bad bills that threaten the future of e-commerce and online communication." The roster will be regularly updated to reflect the most immediate dangers, based on severity and likelihood of passage. "Some of the most serious threats to the Internet arise when lawmakers try to 'fix' it," NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco said in a press release. "Knee-jerk, overly prescriptive laws can destroy whole business models or stifle innovations in e-commerce and communication before they even have a chance to prove themselves."
Topping the inaugural iAWFUL list is a New Jersey social networking bill, which the group argues would force a large number of Web sites to become law enforcement investigators. The measure would impose civil and Consumer Fraud Act penalties on social networking sites for failure to promptly probe and report to law enforcement a user's complaint of sexually offensive and harassing communications. Other bills making the iAWFUL top 10 include proposals from California, Connecticut, North Carolina, Nevada, Texas, New York and federal bills aimed at curbing organized retail crime. Some measures would penalize environmentally friendly digital download purchases, hobble the use of online marketplaces, and harm local businesses, iAWFUL stated.
After more than a month of fine-tuning, a new trade group called Business Forward is launching with the goal of promoting President Obama's economic competitiveness agenda. The organization tried to woo big high-tech firms like Cisco Systems, Google, IBM, and Microsoft as members, a source involved in the effort told CongressDaily in March. The New York Times reported Thursday morning that initial members include AT&T, Facebook, Hilton, IBM, Microsoft, Pfizer and Time Warner. Rather than lobbying, Business Forward's initial aim will be hosting events around the country to focus on maximizing funds in the $787 billion economic stimulus package. "There are very few platforms for the administration and Congress to engage the business community," the official told CongressDaily.
It will be led by political operative Jim Doyle; former Viacom lobbyist David Sutphen, whose sister is Obama's deputy chief of staff; former Obama media consultant Erik Smith; former Obama campaign staffer Julie Andreeff Jensen; and Hilary Rosen, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Business Forward's founding members will pay up to $75,000 per year for a membership, while smaller firms will pay $1,500 in annual dues. One organizer rejected the notion that the group is the Democrats' answer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. It won't compete with progressive think tanks like the Center for American Progress or grassroots group MoveOn.org, the organizer said.
"You know what you get with all the existing organizations around town," the official said. "They all have a role to play. This isn't an 'either-or' endeavor. It's an 'and.' "
Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents Dinner: "Who's idea was it to give the Queen an iPod? What is she gonna do? Download Lady Gaga? What are you gonna give the Pope? A Bluetooth?" Watch full coverage from C-SPAN here.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., will become the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking member after reaching a deal with Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley, aides familiar with the talks said on Monday. The official announcement could come as early as this evening after the panel's GOP members meet, CongressDaily reports. The appointment requires endorsement of the full Republican Conference, which aides said should not be a problem. So what do we know about the former Alabama attorney general's track record on tech policy? The Information Technology Industry Council's congressional scorecard, which has been rating members since 1998, says Sessions had an 80 percent voting record in the 110th Congress.
Sessions voted in lockstep with ITI in favor of the America Competes Act; the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement; comprehensive energy legislation; and a Senate Finance Committee tax extender package, which included a provision to expand the research and development tax credit for two years. But Sessions voted against the financial bailout package. At the time, Sessions issued a statement saying government "can and should be part of the solution, but we should tailor its role to have maximum benefit with minimal market interference." He called the Obama administration's plan well-intentioned but said it represented "unprecedented governmental intervention in the economy." "Its enactment will be a signal to the world that America has turned its back on the free market," Sessions said.
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