Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Mr. Smith (ok – Mr. Holst) goes to Washington


I’ll be heading to DC on Monday to meet with my elected officials (I’ll be joining up with another 40+ technologists). We’re all participating in the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) Fly-In with a simple objective – to educate and inform our representatives and their staff on the tremendous opportunities (and potential risks) stemming from the emerging $20B app economy.

Our message is simple too.  The pace of innovation and growth taking place right now in the app economy is spectacular.   …and we need to do whatever we can to ensure that the app economy continues to grow – especially inside the US. What can the federal government do? We need to increase capacity for mobile connectivity (spectrum) – we need to ensure that developers can protect their intellectual property and efficiently license their work across a variety of marketplaces.  And of course – we need to strike that delicate balance of ensuring consumer privacy without stifling the internet economy (or handicapping US-based companies unfairly). 

The role of government is important – both in terms of what is should be doing – and in terms of where it should be holding back. The greater development community also has a critical role to play and has been working to find solutions on all of these fronts (including the folks at PreEmptive and my own work inside Qi-fense and The Mobile Yogi). …and we’re all looking forward to sharing our progress with our lawmakers next week.

My view is that an informed Congress will help all application stakeholders (both producers and consumers) to continue to flourish. Some of you may find this post a bit idealistic – but this will be my second jaunt to DC in this capacity; I “flew in” last year too – and, amazingly, I think it mattered. 

…and this year, well, I AM from a swing state after all. Go Buckeyes!

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