Back in 2008, I served as a member of the City of Davis Finance and Budget Commission. I wrote a post on my lessons learned. Today, I’m excited to announce that I have been appointed by Mayor Mike McGinn and confirmed by the Seattle City Council to be a member of the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (#CTTAB). I am deeply honored and humbled to be selected among so many qualified applicants and look forward to sharing my knowledge, experience, and expertise in public and private sector consulting.
When I first served for the City of Davis, it was my first attempt at being engaged in local government and a chance to exercise my Masters in Public Policy. Years went by as I continued on to consulting and I became disconnected. This is a great leap back into local government in a much bigger City. It’s very exciting to be a part of a thriving City in a tech hub and having the opportunity to inform the future growth of technology in Seattle.
A few of my interest areas include bridging the digital divide. We’re starting to see a flatter world. Although the economic divide continues to get bigger and bigger, closing the technology divide will enable everyone equal opportunity to education, communications, and employment opportunities. Platforms such as Coursera is enabling education to the masses at zero cost. Khan Academy is changing the way we learn.
My other interest is pushing for Fiber-to-the-Home. We’re already observing the Google Fiber pilot in Kansas. Having lived through the transition from no Internet to dial up to broadband, I’m excited to see the next evolution of connectivity. We are starting to pave the road for future data intensive applications such as streaming 4K video. Collaboration technology will push us further and enable us to share video, datasets, etc.
I look forward to contributing to the conversation. Leave a comment or contact me if you have opinions on the subject.
Thanks for your willingness to serve and help Seattle move forward as a leading tech hub and a place that cares about equity in digital access and opportunity. It’s interesting to see where online tools can help, though some people still need encouragement and assistance to use them. Just discovered one in the UK called LearnMyWay at http://www.learnmyway.com.
Thank you David. It’s great to see such interest in driving the conversation and pushing Seattle to service its citizens. My wife and I are taking an intro to guitar class through Coursera. Although we could take a classroom course or private instruction, we thought we’d try an online one.
This is a great example of a person with disability, limited mobility, or limited access to transportation could get the same world class instruction as anyone else. I agree on encouragement, assistance, and awareness.