Wednesday Aneesh Chopra returned to San Francisco to meet with tech leaders and innovators about where we are re: national technology planning since he's now been CTO for several months. An eternal optimist, he spoke with Tim O'Reilly on the Web 2.0 Summit stage at length about the work ahead, wooing the crowd with his positive energy. But the message is clear: he's dedicated to getting things done in Washington.

Last week, the Silicon Valley technology community enjoyed a visit from the first national Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. Aneesh spoke at the Computer History Museum for an event put on by the Churchill Club, along with the Center for Democracy and Technology, and TechNet about the promise of innovation in the new administration.

Here's the full video:

• As has long been rumored, it does seem that DC CTO Vivek Kundra will be headed to the Obama Administration -- but not as "CTO." Not technically, at least. Do the split e-gov-administrator/OSTP-tech-director posts live up to the spirit and intention of Obama's CTO campaign pledges?...
• It's fascinating to watch Organizing for America quickly evolve, and we have some compelling new details on the evolution...
• Also on the OFA tip, we're reading the tea leaves online turf claims to chart the interaction between this new organization, what's left of Obama campaign organization in Chicago, and the Democratic Party...
• WhiteHouse.gov made about four-fifths good on their pledge to post legislation online with the recent SCHIP bill...
• And even more.

• A recent Congressional Research Service Report confirmed that what we know for absolute certain about the new federal CTO job doesn't amount to all that much. But Christopher J. Dorobek has some intriguing new reporting that shines much light on the situation. What we've been talking about as the CTO post, writes Dorobek, actually breaks down into two jobs...
• "It's not the Democratic party anymore," says one "highly placed" Democrat. "It's the Obama party." That's one of the more striking bits of Lisa Taddeo's new Esquire profile of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe...
• National Journal's David Herbert makes the case that what's limiting federal agencies' online impact isn't so much the Paperwork Reduction Act and other regulations as it is the challenges of connecting to an audience...
• There's some chatter starting to happen around the idea that the some $9 billion or so in broadband money in the stimulus package is a bad bet...
• And more.

As we keep up the vigil on Barack Obama's naming of a Chief Technology Officer, let's have a look at both what some close watchers want from the first federal CTO and what the gossip on the street says about what the incoming administration has in mind for the job...In congressional meetings on Obama's proposed stimulus package, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor pushed the President-elect to "put the entire contents of the legislation online in a user-friendly way to see how the money is being spent"...There's an interesting under-the-radar online tussle happening around the future of American agriculture and the future of Tom Vilsack...and more.

The conservative online hub Red State has issued a call for the men and women eager to be the next head of the Republican National Convention to come to the site to lay out their vision of the way ahead, including "expanding the GOP's use of technology in the future and...the online apparatus of the RNC"...From Pearl Jam to SEIU to the ACLU, a coalition of progressive voices have gathered to urge President-elect Obama to put the Internet at center stage when he makes his picks for some of the biggest unfilled slots in his administration...The Internet can be friend and foe, as Team Obama is finding out, notes former Hillary Clinton staffer Peter Daou...and more.

Overnight, a new site went up detailing a push by Stanford professor Larry Lessig to petition the Obama-Biden transition to abide by not only the letter of open government principles, but the spirit...California-based David Kralik heads up internet strategy for Newt Gingrich's American Solutions organization, and he's out with a look in the DC Examiner at how America's first CTO -- what he calls the "Chief Transformation Officer" -- should function...In an ABC News opinion piece, the Center for Democracy and Technology Leslie Harris argues that the 'net-fueled political revolution of '08 wouldn't have been possible had the Federal Elections Commission embraced the regulations on online political speech that were bubbling up a few years back...and more.

Letting Us in to the White House; Conventional Wisdom Turns Against CEOs as CTO; Busting Out of the "Finest Prison in the World;" Building the Post-Obama Movement; NASA's Filling CIO Position at the Speed of Light; How Did Times Readers Do in Their Cabinet Bets?; and a good deal more.

Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google and Chairman of the Board of the New America Foundation, spoke earlier today about technology, innovation, the economy, energy, and how they are all linked. Schmidt is on the short list for Obama's CTO, and he is a member of President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, so here's an opportunity to learn a little about how he thinks on these topics, through a transcript from his talk.

During the campaign, presidential hopeful Barack Obama put volunteerism front and center -- quite literally, dedicating valuable home page real estate to, for example, calls for help during Hurricane Gustav. The practice helped to define him as a compassionate "brother's keeper" candidate, and President-elect Obama seems intent on taking with him to the White House; when it comes to the first national CTO, are we not actually talking about a Chief Information Officer -- that is, less a nuts-and-bolts technologist-in-chief and more an executive-minded leader with a vision of how government handles its IT duties; and a good deal more.