Attendees at TechNet's first fundraiser for itself, held at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation, included venture capitalist John Doerr, Netscape founder James Barksdale, Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz, 3Com CEO Eric Benhamou and Microsoft CEO Bob Herbold. Individuals shelled out $1,000 a ticket for the event, and many companies, including Cisco, Intel and 3Com, paid $10,000 to sponsor a table.

    TechNet's raising money for other folks as well. The lobbying group will hold a joint fundraising event in Silicon Valley with the National Republican Congressional Committee in mid-May. They plan to invite National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-VA, House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-CA, House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-CA, and House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-LA, to the fundraiser. Its Democratic side sponsored a fundraiser for Vice President Al Gore last week; guests included many from the high-tech community, such as America Online CTO Marc Andreessen, Novell Chairman Eric Schmidt, Excite Co-Founder Joe Kraus, Genentech President Art Levinson and Mark Michael, chief counsel at 3Com.

    The Rev. Jesse Jackson launched the Silicon Valley branch of his Wall Street Project, meeting with several high-tech executives seeking ways to open their business doors to women and minorities. "Silicon Valley is an area of prosperity and growth. It is the key to America's industrial strength in the next millenium and it has grown with the support of government... yet they are leaving a considerable number of Americans behind," Jackson said in an interview with National Journal's Technology Daily.

    Gov. Jesse Ventura, Ref-MN, has been named his state's entrepreneur of the year by the Minnesota Entrepreneurs. The group said that Ventura has taken entrepreneurship "to a higher level" through his "use of Internet technology and his plans to market his name and image." Licensed Ventura merchandise, including coffee mugs, T-shirts, hats, action figures and bumper stickers, are sold through the Web.

    MindSpring CEO Charles Brewer spoke Monday about his upcoming testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee concerning the deployment of broadband technology. He plans to urge the Senate to preserve consumer choice and competition in the broadband marketplace by ensuring that all ISPs have the opportunity to purchase access. "MindSpring and the members of the OpenNET Coalition believe it is in the best interest of consumers that we preserve open access to the Internet," Brewer said. "Consumers should be able to choose among competing Internet Service Providers, weighing price, service quality, content features and privacy policies in their choice."

    Law professors at the University of Belgrade used the Internet last week to send a letter asking their colleagues worldwide to protest NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia. Some of the professors said via e-mail that they had put the letter on the Internet so they could reach their overseas counterparts directly, bypassing Western media outlets. "The value of the Net is in keeping up the lines of communication, especially in unfortunate situations like this. In Vietnam you had television pictures of villagers. That had an impact on the war. Now we can talk to people on the other side as they are being bombed. What will this do? It's going to humanize the conflict," said University of Pittsburgh School of Law Associate Dean for Communications and Information Technology Bernard J. Hibbitts, on whose Web site the letter was first posted.

    Netscape Public Policy Director Peter Harter has left to head business development at Goodnoise.com.

    The Los Angeles Times named the people to watch as L.A. grows into a technology force. Among them: Buena Vista Internet Group Chairman Jake Winebaum, who spearheads the Go Network; California Institute of Technology President David Baltimore; California State Sen. Debra Bowen, who has worked to make legislative information available via the Internet; Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance Executive Director Rohit Shukla; Redwood City venture capitalist Tim Draper; GeoCities founder David Bohnett; USA Networks' Barry Diller; ICANN Interim Chairwoman Esther Dyson; and Los Angeles Information Technology Agency General Manager John Hwang.

    Thomas G. Paese has been appointed director of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Technology Center by Gov. Tom Ridge, R.

    Office of Management and Budget Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Deidre Lee has been named acting deputy director for management at OMB. Lee will fill both roles, following the departure last week of G. Edward DeSeve, who resigned March 31 to become a partner in the consulting firm KPMG LLP.

    Premier Jeff Kennett of the Australian state of Victoria has cancelled New Year's Eve travel plans because of Y2K. Leave for all senior Victorian public officials has been canceled, "so therefore, my idea of being on top of Ayers Rock or anywhere else has been canceled and I'll be at my office as well," he said.

    MCI WorldCom Senior Vice President Vint Cerf, who founded the Internet Society, praised the donation of $1 million in Internet routing equipment to the University of Virginia by MCI WorldCom and Cisco Systems. "There is a desperate need for Internet-enabled engineers," Cerf said. "We need people who can scale the Internet to the size it needs to become and we believe this opportunity gives us a chance to train and gather more people." Technicians installed the equipment in the new VINTLab, named after Cerf, and ran a test demonstration for several students and professors.

    Send comments and contributions to Peter J.M. Orvetti.