Bush Says Hi to Tech Leaders

Those proposals are sure to be met with applause from the 15 technology executives who are scheduled to attend the forum. All but one are Bush enthusiasts who lent political or financial support to his bid for the presidency.

Among the attendees: Michael Dell of Dell Computer, Craig Barrett of Intel, Carol Bartz of Autodesk, Lou Gerstner of IBM, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, Len Pomata of Oracle, and Floyd Kvamme of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers.

The only participant who did not contribute to Bush's campaign or to Republican causes last year is Carly Fiorina, chief executive of Hewlett Packard.

The rest of the CEOs are members of Bush's Information Technology Advisory Council (ITAC), which the Texas governor formed in July 1999 to provide him with advice on tech issues -- and campaign contributions.

IBM's Gerstner does not appear to have been a member, but he wrote checks overwhelmingly to Republican candidates during the last two years.

Of course, not all technology execs backed Bush during the campaign. As the November election date neared, both campaigns released lists of hundreds of executives who had endorsed them.

Industry leaders such as Loud Cloud's Marc Andreessen, Yahoo's Jerry Yang, Kim Polese of Marimba, and Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson met frequently with Vice President Al Gore. John Doerr and Bill Joy wrote op-eds supporting the Democratic candidate.

And -- no surprise here -- not one of them is scheduled to be at the Austin confab.

Also conspicuous by his absence was Microsoft exec Bob Herbold, a highly visible member of Bush's ITAC. A Republican source close to the Bush transition said Herbold's appearance might look inappropriate because of the ongoing antitrust suit against Microsoft, which Bush has mildly criticized in the past.

Many of the ITAC members who will be at the meeting were generous with their pocketbooks.