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The President Of Progress And Freedom
by Heather Greenfield
The Progress and Freedom Foundation is formally looking for another president after acting President Thomas Lenard and Vice President for Development Garland McCoy resigned.
Lenard was promoted to president in April when Dan Caprio left to work for McKenna Long & Aldridge on the firm's radio-frequency identification initiative. Caprio had been president since August 2006.
"All of us at PFF are excited about the opportunity to bring new energy and ideas to bear on the challenges facing policymakers in the digital world," PFF Chairman Jay Keyworth said in announcing the search. "We are of course grateful for the long service and substantial contributions made by Tom and Garland, and wish them the best as they depart."
He said PFF is considering several qualified candidates and expects to announce its choice of a new president within weeks.
Bill Archey To Get AeA Achievement Award
The AeA board plans to present departing CEO Bill Archey its medal of achievement award Tuesday at a meeting in San Jose, Calif.
Archey has served as CEO for the past 13 years. When the Democrats introduced their competitiveness agenda, much of which became law, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated, "I would like to thank Bill Archey and AeA for providing the intellectual basis for the Democratic innovation agenda."
Before joining AeA, Archey was at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was first the international vice president and then senior vice president of policy and congressional affairs.
Before that Archey held a number of high-level government positions. He was acting an assistant secretary for trade administration in the Commerce Department from 1983 to 1986, making him the senior official for export-control laws and other issues. He also was a deputy commissioner and acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, a vice chairman of the executive committee of the Customs Cooperation Council, and a senior deputy assistant secretary for enforcement and operations at the Treasury Department.
Past high-tech leaders who have received the AeA award include: Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore of Intel; William Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett-Packard; one-time presidential candidate Ross Perot of Electronic Data Systems; and Thomas Watson of IBM.
Archey will retire next year. The board may name his replacement during the meeting.
Yahoo Finds Public Affairs Director
Yahoo's search for a director of global public affairs is over. They found Tracy Schmaler in the office of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Friends and colleagues said goodbye to Schmaler -- complete with Magic Hat beer, a Vermont export -- at a party Thursday in the Judiciary hearing room. Leahy said he is sad to lose Schmaler, his import to Washington from Vermont, where she worked as a reporter.
John McManus, the deputy chief information officer and chief technology officer at the Commerce Department, also has left the government for the private sector. After less than a year in his Commerce job, McManus joined Watermark, a small, Kirkland, Wash.-based property-management firm, as its new chief information officer.
McManus became deputy CIO at Commerce in November 2006 and co-chaired the CIO Council's IPv6 Working Group for transitioning the government to Internet protocol version 6. Before that, he was the deputy CIO and CTO at NASA.
Movie Industry Group Taps New Tech Chief
Jim Williams has a new role as the senior vice president and CTO for the Motion Picture Association of America.
Williams has been with the MPAA as a senior technology executive since 2002. He holds 11 U.S. patents, with another nine pending. He has won six technology and engineering and advanced media technology awards as part of various engineering teams.
"Jim has played a crucial role in the film industry's efforts to facilitate a smooth digital transition that provides consumers new ways to enjoy Hollywood content when, where and how they want," said Dan Glickman, MPAA's chairman and CEO.
Williams joined the MPAA as vice president of television and video systems standards in 2002. In 2006, he moved up to lead all international technology initiatives of the MPAA's international counterpart, the Motion Picture Association. "Jim has been a tremendous asset to the association for several years, and we are delighted that he will continue to help us chart our course into the future," Glickman said.
Before joining MPAA, Williams spent nearly 20 years with Hughes/DirecTV.
MPAA also has a new vice president of corporate communications: Angela Belden Martinez. She replaces Gayle Osterberg.
Science Panel Makes GOP Assignments
Texan Ralph Hall, the ranking Republican on the House Science and Technology Committee, has announced some new committee assignments.
Paul Broun, R-Ga., is the newest member of the panel. He will be taking the seat of Jo Bonner, R-Ala., on the Technology and Innovation Subcommittee.
Dave Reichert, R-Wash., who joined the committee in March, also will be taking the seat of Frank Lucas, R-Okla., on the Research and Science Education Subcommittee.
Both Broun and Reichert also will be joining the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee.
Public Knowledge Names Annual Winners
Public Knowledge announced the winners of its annual IP3 awards, which are given to individuals who have advanced the public interest in one of three areas: intellectual property, information policy or Internet protocol.
The winners are: activist James Love; Columbia University law professor Tim Wu; Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat Software; and the members of the band OK Go -- Dan Konopka, Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind and Andy Ross.
Wu was recognized for his work on information policy. He has long been an advocate for a free and open Internet. His book "Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World," written with Jack Goldsmith, looked at the issue on the international level. He is working on a new book about anti-discrimination rules in communications.
Young is being recognized for founding and sustaining a company built on "open source" software whose code can be viewed and altered. Public Knowledge said that Red Hat, which started in 1993, proved that Linux and open-source software can be the building blocks of a company and the foundation for products that businesses could use. Red Hat now has 2,000 employees located in more than 50 offices worldwide, and more than $400 million in revenue.
Love, the director of the group now known as Knowledge Ecology International, spearheaded the earliest efforts to get public-interest groups involved in international forums like the World Intellectual Property Organization.
And OK Go used the Internet, not traditional publicity outlets, to spread the word about the band. The group created a video for the song "Here It Goes Again" and uploaded it to YouTube. The tune became a worldwide phenomenon, now approaching 23 million views on YouTube.
The awards will be presented Oct. 11 in Washington.
Quote Of The Week
"The Congress should encourage innovation and broadband deployment, not tax the life out of it."
-- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in arguing for a permanent ban on taxing Internet access.
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