Will Wynn — Austin Mayor

~cfadm Thu, Feb 20, 2003 (15:07) seed

Will Wynn is the pro business council member who is the darling of the Austin Chronicle. He voted to against keeping the Austin Music Network. He has the deepest pockets of all the candidates and he is the only city Council incumbent running so far. Because of his wealth, he can finance his own campaign and doesn't have to deal with the $100 limit on campaign contributions. Thus far, he is the man to beat in the race.

~terry Wed, Feb 26, 2003 (19:08) #1

~terry Wed, Mar 12, 2003 (07:34) #2

The Richard Florida keynote speech on Tuesday, March 11 at SXSW. Florida, author of the "Rise of the Creative Class" poses the challenge to cities to court the creative class of artists, writers, musicians. Cities high on the Bohemian Index, like Austin, tend to develop along economic lines. In the audience were Austin's former Mayor Kirk Watson (who I asked for an interview) and Austin's current Mayor Gus Garcia. This was followed by a panel with one of the members being Will Wynn, Austin's leading candidate to be the next Mayor. Clearly, Richard Florida was manifesting a mayoral love fest, judging by the approving nods and smiles from all three of the Mayors and Mayor candidate on hand. I got to ask Will Wynn and the rest of the panel three questions at the SXSW forum. I got the idea for the questions from a guy I talked to over fish and chips at BD Rileys sixth street pub. He worked for Austin Ventures as a telecom funding specialist. The questons 1. With the advent of "fabless" manufacturing and the rise of Chinese fabs the semiconductor industry may well be moving out of Austin in the next 5-10 years, can this be prevented? 2. What new industries can we stimulate in Austin in the event this does happen? 3. What can the city do to stimulate affordable, two way broadband to homes and businesses? What we have now is essentially one way downstream bandwidth you get with cable, but bandwidth where people can run their own webservers and truly have internet businesses. Will Wynn's responses: 1. He agreed that China was mounting a serious challenge. We should always try to leapfrog technology, and look in to other areas like cutting edge materials production and tools production. 2. He said he was a big proponent of the clean energy industry (eg. solar panel, wind turbine mfg, fuel cells). We should continue to fund research by the Environmental Research Dept at UT since it is "the best on the planet". And on the onsumer side, he said 7500 businesses belong to Austin green energy green choice programs and we have customer base to support R&D and manufacturing of clean energy. 3. On hte residential broadband issue, he said the city plays pretty small part in overall economic strategy and economic development of the community, ultimately it takes market demand. City should press for wireless zones, wireless access in city parks. Scott Aiges, City of New Orleans 1. He knew nothing about semiconductors 2. They are pushing in to biotech 3. The guy who is now mayor, oversaw installation of fiber optic network in New Orleans - broadband increasing Richard Florida passed on the question. Hans Veldhuizen, indictus.com He said that the city council of Amsterdam has legislated that every house in Amsterdam would have fiber within five years and is serving as a major driver for creative industry. He said, in a post panel interview with me, that he saw no reason why Austin couldn't do the same. It would transform the city in to a world leader in Internet technology.