SEATTLE -- Maria Cantwell, who has largely been flying below the media radar since her election to the Senate last year, emerged Monday night in Seattle.
The senator was the featured speaker at the semi-annual Seattle TechViews, an invitation-only affair for venture capitalists and a select group of technology companies in search of funding.
In a rapid-fire speech that left little time to digest her words, Cantwell -- the former senior executive of streaming media pioneer Real Networks -- addressed issues that ranged from ensuring a homegrown workforce by improving math and science education to the importance of environmental protection in attracting IT professionals.
Cantwell, who campaigned as an independent-minded Democrat with a fiscally conservative streak, said "some tax reform would be beneficial" but warned that it should not come at the expense of full funding for programs that have long-term value to the economy. She cited the National Science Foundation's support for research and development grants as an example of projects that could receive lasting harm by short-term cuts.
"This is probably the most significant issue juxtaposed to the debate about taxes," she said. "I want to see those things funded so that the research that allows us to have the new advances in productivity and new products and services takes place."
She quoted a science advisor to the previous Bush Administration as having said, "No science, no surplus."
"There will be a variety of tax credits for R&D purposes, but we also have to make sure that those tax credits apply to small businesses," Cantwell said.
Cantwell emphasized the need to educate the workforce to fill the shortage of tech jobs, noting that the challenge is to expand the successful grant-funded programs to reach wide areas that have been left behind.
"I've seen great programs where a Microsoft executive has gotten 300 youth from Seattle's Central District to have access to technology," she said. "But that still leaves (the question of) how are we going to scale that to the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, or the Lummi Reservation or parts of eastern Washington."
She said the issue extends to retraining for low-wage or displaced workers who are still struggling. "We need to think about today's worker," she said. "They cannot just necessarily quit their jobs, take 15 credit-hours and apply for financial aid to be retrained in some of these activities. We need more flexibility."
On the issue of access to the Internet and broadband technologies, she said "where industry does not move fast enough or think of the access issue, government will step in."
She noted that West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry have proposed providing tax incentives for wiring under-served rural and inner-city areas with current and next-generation Internet infrastructure. Cantwell said that Washington state is becoming a model for local and regional governments that partner with the private sector to develop what she referred to as "the Farm-To-Market roads of the 21st century, as they like to call it in Eastern Washington."
Cantwell appeared to have disappointed her audience, despite coming into a friendly environment and hitting on a variety of apparently important matters.
"Most of the people I've heard from gave her low marks," said Chuck Gourley, who's company 180 Solutions, was voted an award for the best presentation.
He said she spoke too fast and on too many topics to have made a strong, positive impression.
One investor, who asked that his name not be used, said Cantwell would have been better served to choose a few bullet-points of interest to the high-tech entrepreneur community and "hammering them home."
