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TechnologyDaily Mobile
Lobbying Life After Napster
by Bara Vaida
After cutting his lobbying teeth for Napster, Republican Manus Cooney is joining forces with Democrat Karen Robb to form a bipartisan consulting and lobbying firm called Potomac Counsel. Cooney and Robb are still in the beginning stages of forming their business, which they plan to focus on technology policy and intellectual property issues.
"Napster was an incredible learning experience," said Cooney, who was Napster's vice president for corporate and policy development. "We did pretty well given it was only a ... three-person operation. Still it was really tough, given the resources on the other side."
Cooney and Robb decided to team up after working together for several years, first as fellow staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "We became majority and minority staff directors at the same time ... and then later, when Karen left to join the Clinton White House, she began lobbying" the Judiciary Committee, he said.
Before joining Napster, Cooney was chief counsel and staff director of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Robb was deputy assistant to President Clinton for legislative affairs. She also served as deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department and before that was assistant secretary for legislation at the Treasury Department.
In Congress, she most recently was Sen. John Edwards' first chief of staff and before that was minority staff director for then-ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Joseph Biden, D-Del. Before that, Robb spent four years as chief counsel to the chairman of Judiciary's Intellectual Property Subcommittee, who at that time was Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.
What's Cooking In The Tech Industry?
Jonathan Thompson is the new vice president for marketing and communications at the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), replacing Rachel Haynes, who is leaving to become a chef. Thompson was the director of external communications and marketing at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. At SIIA, he is tasked with marketing the association's messages, positions and product development.
In other industry news, Frank Culbertson joined Science Applications International Corp. as senior vice president and program manager of SAIC's Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance contract at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston. Before joining SAIC, Culbertson was an astronaut, logging more than 144 days in space on his three flights and more than five hours of "space walk" time. In 1999, Culbertson was selected to command the third expedition to the International Space Station.
Larry Nelson, global group manager of primary and secondary education at Sun Microsystems, has been elected the new chairman of the board of SchoolTone Alliance, a consortium of educational technology and Internet service provider companies.
Other board members elected for one-year terms include: Shawn Goss, a business development manager at Sun; John Graham, founder and co-chair of Broadware Technologies; Robert Hess, business development director of corporate strategic alliances at Lucent Technologies; Robert Iskander, CEO of VIP Tone; Steve Kohn, director of strategic alliances, education and disability initiatives at Verizon Communications; and Mark Nixon, director of education products at AOLAtSchool.
The Expanding Education Bureaucracy
Education Secretary Roderick Paige last week announced the formation of two new offices within the department. Nina Shokraii Rees, currently deputy assistant to the vice president for domestic policy, has been named to head the Innovation and Improvement Office. And former Texas appeals court Judge Eric Andell has been tapped to lead the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Office.
During her time in the White House, Rees has advised Vice President Richard Cheney on education, crime, homeownership, race, welfare and other family issues. Rees' new office is "intended to be a nimble, entrepreneurial arm of the Education Department, making strategic investments in promising practices," a departmental release said. The office will work with the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education on choice in public schools and supplemental services offered under the sweeping education bill signed into law this year.
Elsewhere in the Bush administration, Richard Clarke, head of the White House Office of Cyberspace Security, is scheduled to visit with TechNet Texas members on Wednesday at the offices of TippingPoint Technologies in Austin, Texas. He is expected to discuss last week's release of the national cyber-security protection plan, which was released in draft form. The public can comment on the plan over the next 60 days.
The New Voices On Embassy Row
The Canadian Embassy's newest spokesman is Bernie Etzinger, who arrived in Washington in late August to begin a four-year assignment. He succeeds Rodney Moore, who had held the position since 1998.
Etzinger began his career in the Canadian Foreign Service in 1996 as deputy head of the political/economic relations program at the Canadian consulate in New York. From there he returned to Ottawa, where he was an executive assistant and policy adviser to the assistant deputy minister for the Americas at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. In his previous assignment, Etzinger headed the Canadian Consulate Trade Office in Silicon Valley, where he was responsible for investment and technology.
Matt Francis is another new addition on Embassy Row in Washington, recently arriving at the Australian Embassy to become the counselor of public diplomacy, with responsibility for the embassy's public affairs and media activities. Francis replaced Sandi Logan, who returned to Australia's Foreign Affairs and Trade Department in Canberra, Australia. Francis had been the press secretary to the Australian minister for foreign affairs, Alexander Downer, in Canberra and also director of that department's media section.
Phil Budden, meanwhile, is the British Embassy's newest first secretary of trade policy, with a focus on the communications and information industries. His areas of responsibility include e-commerce, antitrust issues and the World Trade Organization. Most recently, Budden was the European adviser on institutional issues for Prime Minister Tony Blair and before that covered telecommunications policy in the British Embassy in Vienna, Austria. Budden replaces Simon Towler, who returned to London to work for the Trade and Industry Department.
Blackberry's Reach
House lawmakers have been voting on the floor via electronic cards for at least 20 years, but new wireless technologies transformed the way at least one lawmaker voted last week in a House-Senate conference committee on energy legislation.
"Aye by Blackberry," House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking Democrat John Dingell of Michigan said when the House clerk called the name of Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn.
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