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GOP Tech Lobbyist Misses Convention
by Sarah Lai Stirland and Greta Wodele
Many technology companies and lobbyists are attending the Republican National Convention in New York this week and throwing parties for the delegates. But one well-connected technology lobbyist had to stay at home.
Mehlman & Vogel co-founder Bruce Mehlman, the brother of Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman, has to hold down the fort at home while his brother and the rest of the family are in New York. Bruce Mehlman's wife, also a technology lobbyist, is attending the convention, as are his parents, who went to a party for Mehlman's brother on Monday. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld held the party to honor Ken Mehlman, a former associate at the firm.
"With every other member of my family in New York, we ran out of babysitters," Bruce Mehlman said. "So I will be indoctrinating a new set of Republicans from home."
Mehlman is the executive director of the Computer Systems Policy Project, an association whose members are the CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the technology industry, including Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Motorola, NCR and Unisys. He also was an assistant Commerce secretary for technology policy and technology adviser to President Bush.
Technology At The GOP Convention
Mehlman and others not attending the Republican National Convention can keep tabs on what's happening in New York through several sources on the Internet.
National Journal's top columnists are posting regular updates at their Convention Dispatches Web log, or blog for short. The Republicans on Friday also launched a Web site that features a live webcast of the convention and components such as archived video footage and printed transcripts of speeches. Web surfers can submit questions for convention speakers who will participate in online chats at the site.
David Sifry, a technology entrepreneur and the founder of CEO of the blog-tracking site Technorati is providing a service that helps convention blog readers follow who is saying what on which blog. Technorati also can estimate how influential specific blogs are by tracking links to blog entries. It currently shows that the group blog "Blogs for Bush" has 2,410 links from 1,272 sources. Technorati currently tracks more than 3 million blogs.
RNC Bloggers and Convention Bloggers are two aggregate sites tracking convention chatter.
The man behind the convention curtain, meanwhile, is technology director Max Everett, who has previous experience working for political campaigns. He ran network operations for the Bush campaign in 2000 and later served in technology roles at the Homeland Security Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Everett most recently was the chief information officer at the Commerce Department's Technology Administration.
Also at the convention, there will be a "Republican salute to the entertainment industry" on Thursday to honor Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. Partygoers also will give a special tribute to Jack Valenti, the long-time president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. Dan Glickman, a former Agriculture secretary and Democratic congressman from Kansas, succeeds Valenti on Wednesday.
Innovators In Online Politics
PoliticsOnline and the Worldwide Forum on e-Democracy have published a list of organizations that have been nominated as important in altering the dynamics of the Internet and politics. There are 25 nominees, and the two organizations have asked the online political community to vote for favorites.
The nominations came from 1,096 responses that nominated 292 people and Web sites from 30 countries. The nominees range from news sites such as al Jazeera to the Internet service provider America Online and individuals such as Chinese student Liu Di. Known as "the stainless steel mouse," she was imprisoned by the Chinese government for online activism.
David Abel, the editor and general manager of PoliticsOnline, said Republicans have been unusually active in nominating their sites this year.
"In years past, we've noticed that most of the people who were nominated were on the left. This year, there are more on the right, and it's more balanced," he said. "Maybe that's because the right is catching up with the left, so they're talking about it more."
The Bush campaign is one of the nominees. It has been nominated for its grassroots mobilization for the use of online tools such as its searchable database of donors and its use of online chats and Web video.
Howard Kooligan, the chairman of Move America Forward and the former California state assemblyman who organized the Recall Gray Davis committee, also is a nominee. He has been nominated for using the Internet to rally support for his various political activities.
But the list also contains Democrats. They include the John Kerry campaign; Joe Trippi, who spearheaded the Internet innovations for former presidential candidate Howard Dean; and John Hlinko, the director of Internet strategy for former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark. Hlinko also helped drive popular support for Clark's initial decision to run for president with the site DraftWesleyClark.com.
The top 10 vote getters in the contest will be announced at the e-democracy forum held at the end of September in Paris.
An Eye On Cyber Crime
Robert Tai recently joined the Business Software Alliance (BSA) as its manager of cyber-crime prevention. Tai's job is to promote awareness about the issue and to encourage "best practices" in preventing and responding to cyber crimes.
Tai joins BSA from the planning and research division of the California governor's office. He reports to Dexter Ingram, BSA's director of information security policy. "Robert brings a technical expertise to our expanding security team," Ingram said. "We're excited to have him at BSA and he's already proven to be a valuable addition."
Also recently, the American Bar Association elected Randolph May, a senior fellow and director of communications policy studies at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, as chairman of its section on administrative law and regulatory practice. He will hold the post for a year.
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