Washington D.C – Julie Fredrickson

I may have had one of the best days of my life yesterday. I want to get into a preposterous amount of detail as every single element of the day was peak Washington D.C.

I hung out with a long time friend with whom I have a shared passion (we are a special kind of economics nerd), we walked all over, toured several spaces your average citizen only sees on television. And if you are a nerd you really care where day Bretton Woods was signed.

It was my first time seeing some of those spaces and I felt very privileged. Nothing fires patriotism quite like seeing those who serve the nation.

I finished the day above the city watching the sunset on the Washington Monument while airplanes and helicopters ferried people of great importance than I in and out of the city.

It almost made me want to consider public service. But as my friend reminded me that it’s not all this glamorous. My Sunday was almost surely the very best the city has to offer.

Perfect weather, perfect company, perfectly cooked steak (from 6666 ranch so shoutout to my Taylor Sheridan homies), I even had on a perfect spring dress.

I will be in our nation’s capital next week for a gathering called the Hill and Valley Forum. It’s been ongoing for a few years but I am not someone with a lot of exposure to Washington and wasn’t sure I should pitch myself when the forum describes itself as such.

We host public discussions, panels, and published dialogues that highlight leading voices at the intersection of technology, security, and geopolitics.

Perhaps it’s silly not to think of myself as a leading voice in technology but I don’t know much about security (or its cousin defense) and my commentary on geopolitics is for fun on Twitter.

However, having seen others fail where I have succeeded, in passing successful bipartisan artificial intelligence policy I thought this year I should throw my cap in the thing. It’s not a nice feather having successfully brought the right to compute campaign from citizenry to policy to law in Montana.

It is now succeeding at the national level as states like New Hampshire have passed it in their house and well respected bipartisan policy organizations like ALEC have recommended it as policy.

My husband made a pilgrimage to our capital as the gentleman from Montana to testify before Congress last spring. I was very proud of him. I suspect he is easily as proud of my work on compute policy.

So if you’d like to meet some real Americans (8 wasn’t aware we had fake ones) and are in Washington D.C. drop us a line. I’m hoping to do a little meetup maybe on Monday but not all of my in groups will each other so maybe I’ll do more than one.

But wherever happens I’m excited to share time with other patriotic Americans who do the hard work of making sure we are governed well.