Washington trip day 2

Early 6 am start, and feeling good. Breakfast In the hotel was eggselent (eggs Benedict) and on to our first brief from Faten. Great job with diagrams and overview of AEI. Next I was up, I tried to keep it short and sweet and to the point, hopefully I achieved that. 

Vince Reinhart

Started with Vincent Rinehart from the AEI, a really interesting insight to the financial crash and how principle agents had such a big impact. It would be great to sit and talk with this guy for hours just to get insight on the different aspect of the FED, financial institutions, Wall Street, etc... He had a great comment about the "Army Corp of Financial Engineers" working to solve the financial crisis.

Steve Case

Next was Steve Case from Revolution, originally of AOL and Time Warner fame. A soft spoken passionate, unassuming entrepreneur that is leading change and investing in new ways and direction for entrepreneurship. He gave a simple message about what works for him and companies they invest in, "Passion, People and Perseverance"! You need to find a person or company with passion and has the right people on board, to get the right people on board and these people need to be persistent to believe in their idea and to make it work.

Wise words from someone who did that with the Internet long before it was accepted by mainstream. He also talked about innovation out of necessity. When a start has nowhere else to go and they are out of ideas, then they get creative and solve problems a new way. This may be what happens with the students that are coming out of college now that cannot find jobs, and this could be and should be the way to break out of the economic slump that we are in.

Next we had a lunch interview with Emily Morrison the director of travel at the Treasury. An amazing and capable woman that has achieved a lot in a short space and time (watch out for this name in the future). She has some great stories that we may get to hear later in the week at one of the happy hour parties that we (SCU) are hosting. She has travelled and worked with 2 treasury secretaries, one of who was Paulson. All her work with the treasury has been during the economic turmoil that Washington had to deal with which gives some great insight to what goes on behind the scene.

ABC 7 Studio

Next it was off to ABC7 the local news station for a tour followed by a meeting with Kim Hart, a must read from Politico. This is a political tech writer that has her finger on the pulse and is a link between the East and West coast. She is working to keep the focus on what is new, relevant and driving technology business and politics. Kim was joined by Roy Schwartz from the. Sales/business side and he provided us with great insight in to how Politico view their writers, something I had never seen or heard of before. The writers are the product and each of them is a brand. politico promotes each writer in their web and publications and also on TV and radio. Building the journalists brand helps them with the highest level of readership and relevance in political circles. This also helps drive adoption/acceptance of their paper. All the while the business side is able to sell advertising space based on the readership levels and the brand equity of their writers. A great business model that seems to provide a win-win for the journalists, the paper, the advertisers and of course the readers.

To finish the day we took a trip to Capitol Hill and meet with,

Senator Wyden. Unfortunately he was unavailable but we did meet with 3 of his staff for almost 2 hours. This was 1:45 more than expected as these meetings are usually cursory and cut short. It appeared we impressed them and that they we're really interested in hearing what we had to say and even solicited our feedback on certain issues. This was a great meeting because the level of knowledge and expertise was very impressive and it gave me some hope/faith in the political system.

Union Station

The trip back involved a walk through Union station, a magnificent piece of architecture and well worth a visit. The day ended with happy hour back at the hotel and a recap with my fellow students. Dinner was a quick bite to eat at a local pizzeria and then back to the hotel to catch up on work and chat some more. Roll on tomorrow.