Mr. Cole met with various members of the Internet Caucus to brief them on the research the Center has been doing. I was able to accompany my boss and the client on a meeting Friday. I enjoyed the meeting very much because it was an informational briefing, and the client did not need anything. It was nice to go into a office and not have an agenda that you are trying to convince the office to support. The meeting was a very interesting exchange of ideas. I sat in on a meeting with representatives from the House Judiciary Committee. Whereas the other meetings I have attended have been brief and to the point, this meeting lasted longer than an hour. The people from the House Judiciary Committee were knowledgeable on the technology and communications issues Mr. Cole was addressing and they had lots of questions for him. The meeting was more than just a pitch, it was an exchange of ideas between educated parties.
I really enjoyed listening to the discussion of upcoming issues, ranging from Americans' internet usage to the future of television advertising. The issues that Mr. Cole deals with are extremely relevant to the future of marketing, so that interested me from a business perspective. The work Mr. Cole is doing is exceptionally interesting because it allows him to have a very broad and encompassing perspective on an emerging market. He is very much a scholar, but the information he is collecting and the subjects he studies have very lucrative practical applications. Mr. Cole consults with the government at no charge, but many other industries pay dearly for his reports. Mr. Cole travels constantly, sharing information with a wide variety of interest groups. I admired Mr. Cole's extensive knowledge on communications and technology subjects, and also admired how he is able to apply his scholarly research to very practical problems. Sitting in on the meeting made me think about the role of technology in our everyday lives and how amazing the development of technology is. There are many specific technological developments that could be studied at length, but I appreciated the big picture that Mr. Cole presented through his research. It was nice to take a step back and notice how society has changed due to its use of technology.
I'm very thankful that I got to sit in on the meeting because it gave me another perspective on what lobbying can be. Lobbying doesn't always have to be begging for money in earmarks, it can also be advocating important interests and sharing relevant information with governmental officials who could use it to improve their work. It was refreshing.
In other news...
My roommate, Miss Elizabeth Hague, celebrated a birthday. We went to The Melting Pot and had fantastic fondue festivities.
My other roommate, Miss Michelle Anderson, and I attended a get together with other members of her Peaceful Solutions class. They are trying to play an event so they can be actively peaceful, with an added benefit of possibly waiving their final exam for the class. Everyone decided to advocate for the legislation establishing a U.S. Department of Peace.
This picture is unrelated, besides the fact that it took place at the Peace class meeting, after discussion was dying down. Michelle and another TCUer, Ashley Hale, decided to do some cool contortionist moves. 
Michelle is a certified pilates instructor and Ashley can walk on her hands...Ya, those are their backgrounds. And here we have movedon to full blown pilates.
As I was driving back from themeeting on the Hill with my boss, we noticed a protest going on. So being the protest-lover that I am, I walked down on my lunch break to check it out. It was a Jena 6 protest that started in front of the Justice Department and went to the Capitol. The marchers were chanting, "No justice.... No peace." I like seeing all this civic engagement. So here are some pictures from the march...
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