Engine Advocacy Turns Tech Nerds Into Political Experts
How do you turn technology nerds into political experts? That’s the question being asked by Engine Advocacy, a group dedicated to getting “tech startups, entrepreneurs and technologists” involved in shaping public policy.
The goal of Engine Advocacy is “to give entrepreneurial people and businesses a voice in the Washington policy arena that they haven’t before,” according to co-founder Michael McGeary.
The group has a stake in a variety of issues, including an open Internet, intellectual property rights, privacy laws, broadband access, spectrum reform and immigration reform. (Why immigration? Engine Advocacy wants a “startup visa” to make it easer for people to come to the U.S. to innovate.)
Engine Advocacy has no registered lobbyists working for it. Instead, the organization seeks to teach Silicon Valley about Washington, D.C and to give technological innovators “action tools” for getting involved with public policy.
“Most people realize it’s not good enough as an entrepreneur or startup CEO to take the feeling of ‘let me do my job,’” says McGeary. “I come from the political world, I’ve worked on a couple of campaigns and I’ve come to Silicon Valley and I’ve been heartened to talk to so many smart people that are saying ‘ok, let’s figure out how to do this so we don’t have to be passive all the time.’”
McGeary says his organization is a “loosely formed coalition” that’s growing “quickly by the day.” The idea to start the organization came before SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) became the hot-button issues of the day, but according to McGeary, they were the sparks that “set the building on fire,” so to speak.
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