The 10.22 Marty Wagner update… with good news

I’ve been watching Marty Wagner. For those of you who don’t know, Wagner had a serious accident in July and has been in something akin to a coma since then. [Previous posts here… and here.] But… Marty Wagner’s family posted what could be some good news.

From their update on CarePages.com:

WakingUp!

The great news is that Martin is waking up and coming out of his unresponsive/unaware state. He is alert and can respond to visual and verbal cues. He nods yes and shakes his head no in response to simple questions. Sometimes he frowns and looks as if he is thinking hard about the answer to give. He gave his brother a pretty good version of a “high-5” this weekend. He is also moving his lips and murmuring. Some of his nurses claim to understand him, but it is clear that he is trying to form words. Family have also confirmed he is pursing his lips to return a kiss. So, all of these are encouraging signs of cognitive improvement and we hope it will continue. We are firm in our belief that it is the result of all the bedside visits, reading and chatter about goings on in the world, from all of you friends and colleagues. So, a big thank you to everyone of you for helping encourage Martin. He is doing well with breathing but is certainly still at risk and it is not clear when he might leave the pulmonary floor of the Woodbine facility. We will keep you posted on further developments and hope that many of you will soon see for yourselves how alert he can be.

And I continue to believe that all of your thoughts help. Thanks!

Keep up the good work, Marty!

Google’s Schmidt as the Obama administration’s CTO?

Let the CTO speculation begin.

I told you earlier this week that BusinessWeek mentioned some names for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s proposed CTO post.

And then came this announcement today:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Backs Obama; Will Hit Campaign Trail [WSJ.com, registration required; see also CNet’s story]

Mountain View, Calif. — Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has announced that he will back Sen. Barack Obama in the race for president, planning to join him on the campaign trail starting with an event in Florida on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. “I’m doing this personally,” Schmidt told The Journal, adding that “Google is officially neutral” in the campaign. To this point, Schmidt has not donated money to either campaign, although Google staffers have contributed $487, 355 to Obama and $20,600 to Sen. John McCain. Schmidt has been unofficially advising the Obama campaign on technology and energy issues. The Journal cited “some tech and media executives” who speculate that Schmidt may be interested in a role in a potential Obama administration, such as the chief technology officer post that Obama has considered creating.

That spurred Wired Epicenter blog to speculate that Schmidt might be up for the CTO slot. And they also requested some other ideas.

Schmidt may be a good fit, especially in light of Google’s interests in Washington, but this is not a Googlopoly. We’re taking nominations (after the jump). Who do you think should be Obama’s CTO?

Among Wired readers ideas — serious and non-serious:

* Star Trek TNG’s Gordi LaForge
* Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies
* Ed Lazowski from the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation

Other ideas?

DorobekInsider poll: What do you make of OMB’s CIO memo

We have only seen a draft of the much discussed OMB memo laying out the role of the CIO, but… what is your assessment?

What would you ask presidential candidate representatives?

Frustrated that the presidential candidates haven’t addresses the issues that will impact how the government does business? Have they answered your questions? Well, here is your chance.

You can suggest questions to the technology advisers of both campaigns, who will be speaking next week.

I’m heading down to Williamsburg, VA on Sunday for the Industry Advisory Council’s 2008 Executive Leadership Conference — one of the big government IT conferences of the year. They have a fairly interesting agenda lined up — former comptroller David Walker, NYU professor Paul Light, Charlie Cook, who is one of the best at watching the congressional races and what that will mean.

There has been a shifting in conferences — many of them have been getting shorter as it is just difficult for people to carve out so much time from work. As I reported earlier this year, IPIC, for example, is considering shortening its four-day conference.

ELC is a good way to stay tuned in to what is the buzz around this market. The conference starts Sunday evening and is a full day Monday, and then a half-day on Tuesday. The challenge always has been keeping people in their seats on that Tuesday. So the IAC team has some good stuff on that Tuesday. For example, they have Light talking about “The Path to Reenergizing Federal Service.” They also have a team of the government CIOs who will conclude the event with their goals for the upcoming year. And, given that there is a real opportunity for the CIO Council to be the government IT group, it will be interesting to see what they have to say.

But IAC also has representatives from the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain… IAC has a panel of reporters who will be asking questions — including me, GovExec/NextGov’s Allan Homes, and 1105 GovInfo’s Anne Armstrong — but IAC (and I) am seeking your questions.

What would you like to have them address? Either post your questions/comments here… or you can send them to askELC@actgov.org.

The two speakers:

For Obama: Michael Nelson from Georgetown University and a senior technology advisor to Obama
For McCain: Michael Gallagher, former head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Department of Commerce and a senior technology advisor to McCain

Read the note IAC sent out about these sessions after the break.