The content of the fellowship doesn’t end once fellows find their placement. A key goal of the program is for fellows to learn about Congress and become better acquainted with the policymaking universe. That’s why a big focus of ours is connecting fellows to existing thought leaders and the tech policy network by arranging events, one-on-one meetings, and ongoing programming.
We organized our first piece of ongoing programming last week, gathering the community of technically-skilled individuals that work on policy in Washington D.C for lunch at the New America offices in DC.
It was our first “technologist lunch,” with 27 folks from the administration, civil society, technology companies, and the Hill, from both sides of the aisle. It was extremely productive to get all these folks in a room together, a great number of whom had never met. We spent an hour or so getting to know one another, with each person sharing one thing they're working on that others in the room might want to plug into.
We think TechCongress can be a hub for policy technologists on the right and the left in DC, Silicon Valley, and across the country. This was a good first gathering to help build that community.