No, that's not a cheesy marketing line from a technology company -- it's the campaign slogan from the (*winning*) campaign of Deval Patrick, the new Governor of Massachusetts, who spoke at this week’s annual meeting of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. Governor Patrick has so far been very connected to the tech community in Massachusetts, with this being his third visit with the MTLC in 3 weeks on the job.
The governor refers to himself self-effacingly as being “primitive” in his use of technology, but his vision of governor’s podcasts and blogs betrays an underlying geekdom. Governor Patrick reviewed Massachusetts’ history of being fertile ground for technologists and entrepreneurs, noting our concentration of intellectual capital (world-class universities, over 5,600 patents awarded in the state in 2006) and venture capital. He celebrated some Massachusetts achievements in Life Sciences and Alternative Energy, and asserted that the growth of the technology-based economy is not a question of “if” or “when,” but of “where,” and that although we have a rich history, our past successes do not guarantee our future (RCA, Polaroid, and Digital all say “hi”). Hard work is needed to sustain this advantage.
The governor detailed the following areas of focus by his administration:
- Improving the speed of issuance of permits to business. Patrick put forth the name of a new “permitting ombudsman,” Greg Bialecki,to facilitate state permitting issues for business.
- Improving the state’s relationship with towns to promote technology companies. The Lieutenant Governor, Tim Murray, has been personally tasked with this, and Patrick gave the assembled crowd Murray’s phone number (617.725.4000) to make his point about how important it was to him. (my wife, who used to field those calls when she worked in the Weld and Cellucci administrations, got a kick out of that one)
- Improving infrastructure, supporting wi-fi initiatives in Boston and the Pioneer Valley.
- Promoting more affordable housing, which he cited as the #1 gating factor to economic growth in the state, based on feedback he receives from business leaders.
- Reforming education by making it more comprehensive (supporting initiatives for pre-K through college), more relevant (initiatives around math, science, and critical thinking), and more integrated (high-school and college dual-credit programs). A great data point here was that 85% of our public education graduates stay in Massachusetts, so this really makes a difference in our workforce.
- Modeling behavior, by improving the state government’s efficiency and by encouraging civic engagement with technology (tag line: “them” = “us”).
All of these were great talking points, and I still looked forward to the Q&A session, where I knew the technology execs, capitalists, and others around me would have some engaging and perhaps pointed questions for the governor.
Governor Patrick completed his remarks, and opened the floor for questions, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Nothing. OK, thank you very much, goodbye, and he was out of there.
How could that room full of very smart, very opinionated people have no questions for the senior executive of the Commonwealth? No coffee? Is he still in his honeymoon period? Were we all charmed into silence? (the guy does light up the room, by the way)
I expect that once some of these initiatives start to flow and a track record is established, the MTLC members will have much more to ask the gov. He got off pretty much scot-free this time.
This is not a political blog, but this day, which began with the MTLC breakfast, continued with President Jimmy Carter’s speech down the street from KMA at Brandeis, and ended with President Bush’s State of the Union address, provided more than enough of one of Boston’s three favorite sports: Politics. (Note: the other two are baseball and revenge).
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