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Hill Dwellers Join High-Tech World
by Bara Vaida
Greg Garcia is leaving Capitol Hill to join the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) as vice president of information security policy and programs.
For the past year-and-a-half, Garcia has managed tech-related science and research issues for the House Science Committee and its chairman, New York Republican Sherwood Boehlert. Before that, he opened the Washington office for 3Com and was director of global government relations there until budget cuts forced 3Com to shut the office in mid-2001.
Before working at 3Com, Garcia was a coalition manager with Americans for Computer Privacy, which focused on loosening export restrictions on encryption products. And Garcia spent six years lobbying on international issues for the tech group AeA.
After 10 years on the Hill, meanwhile, Shawn Bentley has left and joined AOL Time Warner as vice president for domestic public policy, where he will be the company's lead policy manager on copyright and intellectual property issues.
Bentley worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff, most recently as the deputy chief counsel and chief intellectual property counsel. Before that, Bentley was in private practice as an associate attorney at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson in Washington, where he focused on intellectual property and antitrust law, and general litigation.
Thank God I'm A Country Boy
Lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee on Wednesday tried to outdo each other as country boys during a hearing on the federal fund that aims to guarantee all Americans access to communications services. Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Byron Dorgan, D-S.D., all touted their rural origins.
Dorgan noted that in his youth, his hometown boasted a population of more than 300 but that the number since has fallen to less than 300. Burns said people would stay in the town if they could learn how to earn a living and added that telecommunications could help them achieve that goal.
Even witnesses played the country-boy game, with Carson Hughes of Cellular South touting his upbringing in the Mississippi Delta. But William Gillis, director of the Center to Bridge the Digital Divide, topped them all, saying that although he did not like to brag, he had to mention that he was graduated in the top 10 of his high-school class -- a class of 12 people.
Ironically, South Carolina Democrat Ernest (Fritz) Hollings, in his most distinctive Southern drawl, chastised the constituents in Burns' states for objecting to Hollings' proposed solution for bolstering the dwindling monetary base of the universal service fund. "I understand that the country boys resist any kind of charge at all," he said.
Wheeler's Multi-Wireless World
Tom Wheeler, CEO of the Cellular Telecommunication and Internet Association, has six wireless phones, one for each company that provides service in Washington. That makes keeping track of the busy president difficult because the people wanting to contact him need to know which phone he has with him on any given day.
When asked which service he prefers, Wheeler quipped that it depends on which company executive wants to know.
Wheeler said the use of multiple services gives him a chance to try all of the new services and the latest gadgets, like phones that take photographs and offer video streaming. He said the first photo he took with his new Nokia phone was of the sports stadium at Ohio State University, a photo that the OSU graduate proudly passed around the table for reporters to admire.
ICANN Says Goodbye To Leaders
At the close of its first meeting this year, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) bid a formal farewell and thank you to outgoing CEO M. Stuart Lynn and longtime outside counsel Joe Simms. The Internet oversight body approved resolutions thanking Lynn and Simms, a partner with Jones, Day, Reaves and Pogue, for their service.
Simms has been a lightning rod for criticism about the way ICANN has operated over the years, and as the board moved to laud Simms, one member, Karl Auerbach, dissented. He voted no on the resolution and sought assurance that the resolution would not wave Simms' legal liabilities associated with his services to ICANN.
In his final press conference, Lynn refused to reveal what the initial for his first name represents but recounted the story behind his abbreviated name. As a boy in England, Lynn said, his parents accidentally listed Stuart as his middle name rather than as his first name. To fix the situation, they simply switched the order. But when Lynn arrived in the United States, customs authorities would not accept the revised name because it did not match his birth certificate.
"So that's when I started going by M. Stuart," Lynn said.
Bush Taps Exports Nominee
President Bush last week said he intends to nominate James Jochum to be assistant Commerce secretary for the Import Administration. He currently serves as the assistant Commerce secretary for Export Administration.
Previously, Jochum served as senior manager for government relations with Accenture, where he specialized in trade, financial services and technology issues. Before joining Accenture, he served as majority counsel for the Senate Banking Committee and as trade counsel and legislative director for Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
Elsewhere in the government, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has named John Brighton, provost of National-Louis University, as the new leader of foundation's directorate for engineering. Brighton previously was provost and university professor at the Pennsylvania State University, where he was also dean of the college of engineering.
Brighton will manage a $540 million budget and strive to ensure U.S. leadership in engineering.
Getting To The Hart Of The Matter
Former (and potential) Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart has started his own online journal, or web log, as part of his personal Web site. The site includes a calendar of Hart's public events, news clippings about him, his biography, his published writings, his statement on the war with Iraq and a request for contributions.
Web logs, known by the abbreviated term "blogs," were among the types of interactivity lacking on almost every campaign site in the 2002 election cycle, according to a George Washington University report. GWU professor Michael Cornfield said blogs have proven popular with Internet users because they give personality to an impersonal medium, and he hopes more campaigns will use them in the 2004 election cycle.
TechNet's Spring Activities
The high-tech lobbying group TechNet and the Pacific Research Institute are hosting a conference on state wireless issues on April 15 in San Francisco.
The scheduled speakers include: William Bold, vice president of government affairs at Qualcomm; Thomas Hazlett, senior fellow for policy research at the Manhattan Institute; Mark Lowenstein, managing director of Mobile Ecosystem; Peter Passell, editor of the Milken Institute Review; and J. Gregory Sidak, director of the telecom deregulation project at the American Enterprise Institute.
In other event news, TechNet, the General Services Administration and Virginia Republican Tom Davis, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, are hosting three workshops on the government procurement process to try to help businesses learn how to get government contracts. The first workshop will be held April 22 in Palo Alto, Calif., the second on April 23 in Torrance, Calif., and the last on April 25 in Boston.
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