A very hot topic among all technologists, from DC to Silicon Valley, is how the Obama election will change the technology landscape.   There are five key megatrends in IT today, and we should analyze change in the context of each.  These five megatrends in IT are:

• Convergence and trend towards unified communications and user empowerment
• Globalization and increasing internationalization of IT and demographic shifts
• Increasing open development of software and hardware
• Power, Cooling and Space (PCS) impacting data centers and every place computing is done
• Increasing pace of technology development and probability of disruption

President-Elect Obama has long articulated a technology strategy on his website.  It is most definitely worth a read by all enterprise technologists since it will form the basis of many of his policies and actions (one of the key leaders coordinating this plan was Potomac Officer’s Club speaker Julius Genachowski). Read the rest of this entry »

President-elect Barack Obama has selected D.C. tech executive and entrepreneur Julius Genachowski to his presidential transition team and will serve as the key technology adviser to the next president. The appointment is yet another signal of the important role that technology will serve in the next administration.

Genachowski spoke last week at a Potomac Officer’s Club (POC) lunch event featuring Gov. Tim Kaine and Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra and which focused on the tech outlook of a new administration. Genachowski’s former Harvard Law School classmate, Sen. Obama, has an eye towards using innovative technology to deliver 21st century government services. Under the leadership of Genachowski, a Technology & Innovation Plan has been drawn up by the campaign, identifying the three tech policy principles for the new administration as “Open government, open networks, and open markets.”

A lawyer by training, Genachowski is co-founder of LaunchBox Digital and Rock Creek Ventures, a Washington, DC-based new media and e-commerce advisory and investment firm. He has also been a lead player in the growth of major web companies, most notably Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp entertainment company.

After much success both professionally and with the campaign, it is very likely that he may fill in a new post as top technology advisor to the president.

On Tuesday, the Tysons Corner Ritz Carlton served as ground zero for the intersection of politics and technology, drawing hundreds of the area’s leading political and technology leaders. Through the hotel’s wood and glass doors and up to the 5th floor ballrooms streamed, among others, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Jim Moran (D-VA), and congressional hopeful Gerry Connolly. They were joined by area technology executives and innovators such as Mark Ein and CES head Gary Shapiro.

With the Presidential Election just days away, the undercurrent of politics was certainly palpable, but the Potomac Officer’s Club (POC) lunch event panel discussion featuring Gov. Kaine, Rock Creek Partners Managing Director (and member of Obama’s high tech brain trust) Julius Genachowski and Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra, really focused on recognizing and honoring Northern Virginia’s emergence as one of the nation’s true business and technology success stories.

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It’s the height of Presidential election season and you know what that means: an endless stream of inane campaign ads centered around themes about as relevant to one’s Presidential timber as the candidates’ average bowling score. And with barbs flying it is easy to forget that there are policy issues of tremendous importance to the Greater Washington community (and nation as a whole of course). One area of particular interest to executives and the area workforce is each candidate’s technology strategy and views on the role technology will play in fostering innovation and preserving and improving U.S. competitiveness.

Little has been covered in the press on Sen. Obama’s technology strategy, which is why the Oct. 28 Potomac Officer’s Club (POC) event at the Ritz Carlton, Tyson’s Corner featuring Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and LaunchBox Digital co-founder Julius Genachowski (an advisor to the Obama campaign) is sure to be informative and provocative for those who attend.

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Illinois Sen. and 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama joined LinkedIn, the online professional community, further positioning his campaign as the leader in utilizing social networking sites to garner online support.

Already a strong presence on Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr, Obama recently joined LinkedIn, the social network site aimed professionals looking to expand their networks in a particular field. Using LinkedIn’s Q&A feature, Obama posed a question to the broader LinkedIn audience, asking “How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?” The question generated over 1,500 responses from entrepreneurs of every stripe. The Obama camp plans to use the responses to formulate future policy initiatives.

The move into LinkedIn is the latest in a series for the Obama campaign that has employed web 2.0 tools in a variety of ways. The candidate’s homepage features links to no less than a half dozen web-based tools, from his YouTube videos to his Facebook profile.

Critics who may have discounted Obama’s over 170,000 My-Space friends as those unlikely to vote, or Obama’s photos on Flickr photos as merely window dressing, may raise an eyebrow as his presence on the popular LinkedIn is likely to tap an older, more politically motivated demographic.

“LinkedIn is proving to be an effective place to get quality advice and influence others,” Dan Nye, LinkedIn’s chief executive said in an recent interview with Yahoo! News.

The internet is an important focus for all candidates, but especially Obama who received over a quarter of all first quarter 2007 fundraising dollars online.

Look for Obama to pose more questions to the LinkedIn community, as well as other candidates to follow suit.