Going to the Show

We walked down the big swooping marble staircase from the second floor of the Rayburn House Office building. We popped out the art deco steel swinging door right into the middle of Condoleeza Rice’s security detail. The Secretary of State had her helmet-hair perfectly coiffed and she looked relaxed and self assured. She looked younger than she does on television, and she did not have that grim look that goes along with announcing that something horrible has just happened.

The security detail did not appear that concerned with us, and were moving ahead with determination through the crowd. I had taken a startled look at the Cabinet Officer, who I realized suddenly was younger than I am. She was on her way to the show at the International Relations Committee.

I realized it would be prudent to let the thick-set Secret Servicewoman with the severe haircut and multiple ear-piercings get between us and her Protectee.

The Secretary disappeared through a door adjacent to the Thomas E. ”Doc” Morgan Room. There was a man guarding the door, behind which there was a holding area there for people who were going to testify, a sort of Green Room, so they did not have to stand in the hallway with the audience.

There was a crowd gathering, and an almost festive air. Young people with intense good looks rushed around preparing for the hearing, and then silver-haired Henry Hyde appeared on the arm of a younger man I did not recognize. It might have been his legislative aide, Blaine Aaron, but I could not be sure. The Congressman has been up here since 1972 from the Sixth District of the Land of Lincoln.

His seniority and the Republican ascendancy in Congress has given him the chair of the Judiciary and the International Relations Committees.

The Judicial side is how he came to prominence in the Clinton impeachment affair. He looked a little infirm, and he is shaped precisely like a Bartlett Pear.

I was interested in the preparations for the Show, but I was up there on other business, meeting with some concerned citizens in nice suits who had invented a new technology.

My company is building an approach to a comprehensive national wireless network. It is supposed to enable Public Safety officials to communicate with one another. It should be a no-brainer, but it is slow going. The technical part is relatively easy. It is the public policy side that is complex.

There are over 50,000 entities to be linked together, all the fire and police stations and associated local officials. We need to have space dedicated by the government for that purpose on the electromagnetic spectrum. The problem is that all the space is currently occupied. So there are many interested parties, and a lot of moving parts.

One of my co-workers heard about a start-up IT company that was hosting a demonstration in the Rayburn Building, and providing lunch. What they were going to demonstrate was an automated calling system that could link together groups and provide tailored warning messages. I have been dabbling in this area for a few years now, starting as a Government official and now as a capitalist, so I was interested.

Public warning is a good thing. How to do it is another of those interesting technical problems. I have some friends who have invented a means of using the cellular system to locate the telephone in space, and tailor warning messages not only to the identity of the subscriber, but where they are physically in the world.

Warning people is fine. But wouldn’t it be nice to warn people that were actually in the way of something horrible, rather than being on the golf course or home eating dinner?

Having a capability for public warning seems to me to be an essential part of any national public safety communications initiative, and consequently I jumped at the chance to see how this company’s system was different than the one proposed by my friends. Plus, the lunch was free.

The demonstration was set up in one of the lesser conference rooms, and we swept in not too late to chat with the intense young CEO of the company, and his aggressive VP of sales.

I was seated with a couple of officials from the Atmospheric Administration who have satellites and sensors to do weather, and it is remarkably similar to some of the things I used to do in national security. Perhaps there is a chance to converge all these sensors into one gigantic network. I am going to follow up with them this week, for sure.

After the sandwiches were munched, the entrepreneurs explained what their system could do. They did an overview, and then had a testimonial from a man from the Postal Service. He explained how they intended to use the capability to warn the workforce in the event of another anthrax attack. He thought it was a wonderful system.

Then he then introduced a young software engineer from the Palm Corporation, the company that had invented the Personal Digital Assistant. He explained how he had integrated data and voice onto a handset of their own design- a competitor to the ubiquitous Blackberry text messaging machines that everyone has on the Hill.

He was apologetic, since attention span being what it is on the Hill, several people in the audience were reading their e-mails on Blackberries as he spoke.

Then the Sales Manager took the stage and projected the image from his laptop on a huge screen at the end of the room. He asked everyone to turn on their phones, which is the direct opposite of the social norm in town, which is to set personal phones to ”vibrate” at the start of a meeting. We fumbled at our belts and people looked up from their Blackberries.

There is nothing more irritating than watching people at a meeting working on their e-mail while you are trying to talk to them. The sales manager typed on his laptop and the words ”How was lunch?” appeared on the screen. He gave us a couple options to answer, like if we liked the vegetarian option or would have preferred that the meal be catered by Lockheed-Martin.

Then, with great drama, he mashed the button and in three or four seconds, all the phones in the audience began to ring in a cacophony of tunes and tinkles and beeps.

I looked at mine, and pushed a key that said ”Lockheed-Martin.” They would have had a buffet.

It was impressive, and we exchanged cards all around when people flushed out of the room and on to the next activity. I asked directly if this system could locate exactly where the individual telephones were located that got the message, and if they could tell if they had been destroyed or just turned off.

The CEO said they couldn’t, but would like to have the capability. I made a note to follow up with my friends to see if they could get together and partner on a comprehensive solution. With the Postal Service already under contract, it looked like they were just about hitting critical mass and were really going to take off.

We were the last ones out of the conference room, and Sales VP had attached himself to me like a pilot fish. We walked down the marble staircase, and that is how we walked into the middle of the Secretary’s security detail.

”It is a circus up here,” I said, looking at the notables rushing down the corridor.

”Yeah,” he agreed. ”You never know who is going to come out of the elevator. It could be Richard Gere to testify about Tibet, or Susan Saradon and Tim Robbins to talk against the War.”

We walked down the corridor, heading away from the show and toward the exit. As we walked toward the gray doors I recognized Diane Watson, the Democrat from California’s 33 rd District. She was on the committee, and headed for the International Relations hearing. I caught her eye and I told her how much I admired her position on the conflict in Darfur, and that something needed to be done.

The Congresswoman agreed, her body language saying that she needed to go. I told her she ought to hold the Secretary’s feet to the fire on this one.

She agreed, and then she went to the hearing and we went to the exit. The Sales VP asked me how I thought it went.

”Couldn’t have been better,” I said, not precisely answering his question. ”It is the greatest show on earth.”

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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