The Washington Plan

Took a trip up to Washington DC this weekend to visit one Garett Rose, who is a long time ally of the Umbrella movement. Beyond doing all the normal catching up and visiting of various locations in our Nation's Capital, we discussed some long-term strategy for the Umbrella.

Since the central framework of the Umbrella Institute will be a non-profit thinktank that interacts heavily with a group of lobbyists and financiers to influence public policy, the question of how we should structure our long-term manuvering is pretty important and bears discussion. Ideally, we should seek to retain a core group of individuals who will serve both as senior fellows in our thinktank (developing new policy proposals), and who have significant previous experience in the government to act as connectors and lobbyists themselves.

To that end, I feel that the Umbrella should move to synergistically coordinate the members of our organization that are interested in working in government for a period of time. This brings up the particular issue of what fields, areas, and strategy we should target. I feel we should launch an initiative to create connections in the Senate though we still need to work out the geographics and broad directions we should pursue.

Issues to consider...we should hold an online meeting at some point to discuss this.