Social Media and the National Security Professional

This is an update of an article I published last August in Social Computing Magazine (a great enterprise Web2.0 site edited by Dion Hinchcliffe).   A key goal of this piece has been to encourage more in the national security world to use capabilities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, and of course Twitter.  If you know someone you would like to encourage to use these sites please feel free to lift from this.  If you know of other sites or capabilities that deserve this sort of tutorial please let me know.

Another key goal of this paper is to enhance the security of our nation, and my thesis is that by getting more senior thought leaders into these web2.0 capabilities we can do just that. 

Social Media and National Security Professionals

24 January 2009

Bob Gourley

Social
Media is a term used to encompass a wide range of technologies used to
enhance shared meaning among participants.  When properly used, Social
Media capabilities also address the information explosion we are all
experiencing.   Social Media includes weblogs, wikis, email, instant
messaging, tagging and broadcast text. Popular social media services
include such familiar names as AIM, TypePad, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter and Plaxo.

This note captures some tips and techniques for the use of social media focused on national security professionals.

First,
for context and background, let me start with the analogy of
traditional media and it’s still significant contribution to dialog in
the national security space.  Great thinkers with something to say
frequently author an editorial submission to news outlets.  Examples
abound, but as a reference let me point out the thought provoking piece
by Mark Lowenthal in the 25 May 2008 Washington Post titled “The Real Intelligence Failure? Spineless Spies.” 
Here one of the more elegant writers in the intelligence community laid
out his personal views and made a contribution to the dialog on the
intelligence community.   This type of article is of value in helping
us collectively think through some key issues.  The article also
underscores that the explosion of social media does not eliminate the
need and value for authoritative voices.

Now let’s discuss how new media helps the dialog.

With
new media, you do not have to be one of the leaders of the national
security domain to publish your thoughts.  You can establish your own
blog.  There are many services that do this. The most popular ones are Moveable Type and TypePad.  I like them both and have used both.  If you are just starting out I recommend you sign up with TypePad.  You can have a blog up in minutes, and with a little more time
you can have your own domain and a blog configured with your own
design.  Having a blog does not mean you are automatically an expert,
but when you have something to say you will have a path to say it.

Part
of the power of new media is that capabilities like blogs give more
people an ability to inject ideas into the dialog, and in many national
security issues more brains with more ideas can be a significant
enhancement to the dialog.  But new media gives even more benefits. 
New media gives others an ability to discover and comment on your
thoughts.  For example, blogs all come with rich commenting and
moderating features so others can share thoughts and endorse, critique,
or add to your original post.  This provides a way to highlight good
ideas from social media.

New media is also known for speed.  The
instant your thought is published you can have it provided to others
via RSS feeds, by e-mail push, and by alerts to Twitter, a micro
blogging site which is also being used by a growing number of national
security professionals.

To see how Twitter works, visit my site at http://www.twitter.com/bobgourley
.  You will see a series of small posts made by me.  Some were
automatically created when I posted to my blog.  Others were either
sent in from my cell phone while I’m on the road or from my computer at
home.    If you desire to “follow” me on twitter all you have to do is
sign up for a Twitter account and click the “follow” button.  Then you
can read those micro posts whenever they are made.  You can also find
other national security professionals to follow on Twitter, and they
will be able to find you as well. For example, from my page, look for
the graphic that shows Lewis Shepherd and click on his head.  You will
see his Twitter site. Or if you don’t remember what Lewis looks like
can click on the list of people I follow and find him there.  
Following feeds like this will keep you informed of key meetings,
conferences and events and of course blog posts.   Producing your own
Twitter feed will provide you with a way to contribute to the dialog.

Another tool of increasing use by people in this discipline is LinkedIn.  This is a site that lets users add a bio or resume and then helps
them manage their social network.  LinkedIn lets you connect to others
on the site who you know.  You can help out people you know who might
need to meet someone you know and vice versa. This site is very helpful
in learning a bit more about people before you meet with them and in
staying in touch with people when they change positions. LinkedIn also provides simple ways to communicate with others, either all at once or direct person to person and I frequently hear from other CTOs via this path.  How do you
get started with LinkedIn?  Sign up for an account, fill in as much of
your bio as you are comfortable sharing, and follow the instructions to
find people you already know and connect with them. 

A site with a different but somewhat related functionality is Plaxo
and I also recommend you create an account there.  Plaxo specializes in
contact management.  You can keep your entire address book there. 
You can also synchronize Plaxo and LinkedIn so if one of your contacts
changes their information in LinkedIn it will update Plaxo.
Additionally, you can have your blog and your Twitter feed
automatically update Plaxo (many readers in the national security space
prefer to read blogs via Plaxo).   The way to get started here is to
log into Plaxo, create an account and upload your address book to it by
following your instructions.  Is that safe?  It is at least as safe as
having your address book on your own computer.  I’ve never had any
problems doing that.

Another key social media site is Facebook. 
A growing number of national security experts are using Facebook to
stay in touch with friends and associates.   It is also a good method
for communicating. You can send private messages to Facebook users and
can also send open messages to them by writing on their “wall”.  You
can configure Facebook to display your latest blog posts and twitter
feeds.   You can join up with Facebook from their site, and then
Facebook’s “friend finder” will help you find the right people to
connect to.

Now let’s continue our discussion on the article Mark
Lowenthal published.  In this case, if you had an opinion on his
content you could post a note at the Washington Post website, and I
noticed many did.  Because the Post is an old media powerhouse they
seem to publish most comments, which has the benefit of letting you see
a spectrum of thoughts.   You can also post comments in your own
blog.   I published my thoughts on Mark’s piece here. 
My blog automatically sent word to Twitter, Facebook and Plaxo when I
did.  It also automatically pinged some key blog search engines so they
could access my content.  Another friend of mine in the community
posted his views on his blog.  Other friends on Twitter began dialog
with me via that channel.  And other associates began an e-mail dialog
with me on the issues raised by Mark.   So within a matter of minutes
wide swaths of people were engaged in collaboration and discussion on
the topics Mark noted.

Perhaps the greatest power of new media,
however, is when it is used to accelerate new ideas that were not
identified by one of the greats like Mark.  For example, I recently
read a Twitter post from a thought leader in this new space named
Jeffrey Carr (see his Twitter Feed at http://www.twitter.com/jeffreycarr)   
He posted a short comment about a blog entry he wrote and said it
included “3D imaging and Virtual Earth – mind blowing video http://bit.ly/3SxtdA
”   His Twitter post alerted me and I checked out his blog and yes, he
was right.  I saw a YouTube video that was absolutely mind blowing and
of direct relevance to others in the national security space.  And the
video, frankly, could change things more dramatically and in a more
positive way that Mark Lowenthal’s well thought out piece ever could
(Jeffrey you rock!). So I’ll be blogging about Jeffrey and will be
talking about the capability he highlighted when I attend a major
intelligence conference next month.  Jeffrey’s other readers in the
national security space will also be considering the significance of
his posting and the result will likely be an acceleration of a
capability into the fabric of the national security apparatus, thanks
to social media.

Another example of the power of social media for
national security professionals is in coordinating action and
participation prior to conferences.  How do you decide which
conferences to attend?  I try to pulse experts to see who else is
going.  Once I make up my mind I let everyone I network with know I’ll
be there so they can advise me of their intentions and so we can
arrange side bar meetings as required. This is all so simple in the
world of social media like Twitter, Plaxo and Blogs.

So a key
benefit of Social Media for national security planners is to accelerate
good ideas, whether they be good ideas for policy or good ideas for
technology.  Social Media can also be leveraged to address the
information explosion by enabling people to enlist the capability of
others to seek out and bring the right information to your attention. 
These others can be crowds, random individuals, fields of experts or
trusted friends.  Which of these you leverage can vary from subject to
subject or task to task.

Is there a dark side for national
security?  What are the risks of social media?  Perhaps the greatest
risks are that we not fully engage in the power of these tools,
especially when adversaries are not constraining themselves.   But
there are risks to mitigate in our use of new media.  These include
risks to the confidentiality of ongoing operations and in some cases
risks to personal security.  By identifying these risks and taking
steps to address them now we can accelerate the use of new media faster
through the community.

I have personally encountered several
other examples, but it seems we have just scratched the surface on the
benefit of these capabilities to our nation’s security.  New thinkers
are pioneering paths that are already helping the nation come to grips
with some significant issues. With more participation by thinkers like
you the contributions of social media will likely grow in importance.  
So please, if you have not started engaging in social media sites yet,
jump in now.

Bob Gourley
http://ctovision.com

CTOvision.com and Facebook Connect: A Request

Movable Type recently announced an exciting new way for blogs like CTOvision.com to leverage the Facebook Connect API.  I’ve just integrated these capabilities into my blog and have deployed a Facebook application page to act as the hub for these features. I would greatly appreciate it if you would test this out and give me some feedback.

Background:  The Facebook Connect API lets users share their information with third party websites and applications.  Users can dynamically connect their identity information in ways that respect their privacy choices.  Basic profile info, photos and information can be shared.  The current version of this capability offers more trusted authentication, better ways to stay in touch with friends and family, and stronger, more dynamic privacy.    Movable Type has provided plugins and integration guidance to enable blogs like CTOvision.com to leverage these capabilities.

Potential Benefits:  When you log into the CTOvision.com site using your Facebook account, you get the full features of a CTOvision.com account without having to create a new login. If you choose, your Facebook profile name and picture can automatically be shared with this and other Movable Type blogs.  And you will be able to see which other friends of yours are commenting on this site.   Additionally, when you comment, you will have the option of having your comments posted to your Facebook wall. 

The Request:  I would really appreciate it if you would help me test out these features on this site.  Please try logging into CTOvision.com with your Facebook account and after you do, leave a comment on this post.   If you share your comment on your Facebook page that would be appreciated too. 

Please let me know if you have any suggestions/comments/thoughts on ways this can be better integrated into the site. 

A look ahead: Some technology developments to expect in 2009

2008 was a year of rapid changes for Chief Technology Officers.  We should expect 2009 to move even faster.  Where will the biggest trends take us?  I offer some considerations below.  Please
look these over and give me your thoughts.   Push back if you have
disagreement.

First, my overall advice for CTOs in 2009… Just like the new thin interfaces you will be testing in your lab… be flexible.   Now here are some more thoughts on what's in store for CTO s in 2009:

• Here is a no-brainer: Increasingly CTOs will leverage social media to
  collaborate.  Things are moving so fast that we all like to network to
  seek help on big things and to get advanced warning on what is coming
  next.  More of us will be on Twitter, in Facebook, and writing blogs. 
  And this is a good thing.

• "Mashups" will still be very
  important as an enterprise objective in 2009 (and beyond).   And the
  company that will help accelerate them into the federal enterprise is
  JackBe.  They do things in a way that enterprise CTO s like.  They build
  in connections to governance, security, identity management.  And they
  play well with the entire ecosystem so you don't have to rework all
  legacy just to use them.  Of course web2.0 will remain a key trend, but mashups takes web2.0 to a new, more mission-oriented level and for enterprise players the mission is what is important.

• An approach we will all learn to love and follow is "context
  accumulation".   This very important term was coined by Jeff Jonas, and
  I think Jeff is going to have all of us moving out on that in the next
  12 months.   If you agree, visit his blog and by all means help others
  understand why this is really the only way we humans stand a chance of
  surviving/thriving in the onslaught of data.

• Federal acquisition of IT will still be criticized for all the
  reasons it always has been.  But there will also be an acceleration of
  a dramatic positive change brought about because of open source
  software and a new appreciation that IT acquisition processes
  (RFI/RFP/FAR/DFAR based purchases) do not apply to software that is
  free.  Free software is not being bought, it is being used, for free. 
  The whole reason the FAR exists is to ensure when the taxpayer's money
  gets spent it gets spent wisely.  When things are free the FAR has less
  applicability.  Services for open source are being bought and since
  that uses government money of course the taxpayers will continued to be
  served by the same FAR-type processes that are meant to ensure open
  competition, but that is not for free open source software, that is for
  services to configure and manage the software.

• Will this be the year of enterprise security?  We have been banking on that for a long long time.  We know the answers on how to make enterprises more secure.  There is a great recap of some of the most important components of security in the CSIS report.  But there are many more things that can be done as well. My goal, as captured here, is to improve security by two orders of magnitude within the next 24 months. 

• Netbooks, Thin Clients and Cloud Computing will accelerate
  throughout the technology landscape, especially inside the federal
  government.  These trends in both devices and the cloud components are directly related and are also benefiting from the global, unstoppable trend toward open computing
  (open software and open standards).  One to watch in this area:  Sun
  Microsystems.   But also track the dynamics of the netbooks providers. 
  Dell will get serious about netbooks, but Acer will continue to grow
  market share.

• A key accelerator of Cloud Computing has been the powerful technologies of virtualization, especially those of VMware.  Open source and other virtualization capabilities are coming fast too.  Trend to watch in 2009 is the arrival of higher order, more elagant capabilities to manage virtualizaiton accross large enterprises.  VMware and Opsware (HP) will continue to evolve to do this, but Appistry, Vizioncore, Xsigo and Sun (and others?) are coming fast.    
• Increasingly leaders will recognize that concepts of operation that
  require humans to tag and create metadata are sub-optimized.  When busy
  people are tasked with burdensome tagging operations they too
  frequently become tempted to cut corners and rush the process.  Over
  time, meta data generated this way just becomes meta crap.  This
  growing recognition in the federal space will sweep in new technologies
  and new approaches to discovery of content.  One to watch to solve this
  issue:  Endeca, because of their approach to visualizing information and enabling human to computer iterative examination of data. 

  

• Flexible computers will arrive in production this year for early
  adopters and many CTOs will use them in labs to assess applicability
  for massive deployment in the coming years.   These flexible computers
  are the ultimate thin clients.   Backends/servers/architectures
  developed for the cloud perfectly suit ultra thin, flexible computing
  devices. For more on this hot topic, start at the site of the Flexible Display Center at ASU.

• Collaboration will increasingly be seen as the means to link human
  brains together.   Collaboration tools that are stand alone stovepipes
  will be a thing of the past.  Users will collaborate using the entire
  technology environment:  voice, video, data, whiteboard, chat,
  application sharing, info discovery will increasingly be integrated
  into a single fabric.  Key players here:  Adobe, Microsoft and Cisco.

• In a big change for how money is moved in major enterprises, the CIO
  will be given responsibility for the energy budget.  This will encourage
  CIOs to modernize to conserve energy, since money saved from energy
  costs can be invested back in modern IT.  This will be a very virtuous
  cycle, that saves money for organizations, saves energy, and modernizes
  IT.   

• In a stunning turn, IPv6 will be rapidly adopted, not by enterprises,
  but in homes.  The major home communications provider that delivers
  full IPv6 to home environments (and to cell phones) will have an incredible advantage over
  competitors and will dominate.  The many rich features of IPv6
  delivered to consumers will finally push enterprises everywhere to move
  out on IPv6. 

• In 2009, as in every year prior and for most into the future, there
  will continue to be bad people using technology to do bad things. 
  Enterprises will move to protect info, but bad guys will keep moving to
  get the data.   And the use of social networking tools by terrorists
  will likely grow.  This is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm not
  personally sure what can be done to mitigate the use of advanced
  technology by bad people, other than to say that we good people need to
  work together more to stop them, and my hope is that we can keep 2009
  safe and secure.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?  Please let me know what you think.

Update on Federal Cloud Computing

My last several briefings, including one yesterday at the FIAC, have addressed some of the dramatic changes underway in the IT world.   That briefing is attached here: Download FIACGourleyBrief.pdf

The conference had a focus on information assurance, computer security, network security and Chief Information Assurance Officers (CISO) in the federal space.   So I not only updated my briefing with the latest tech trends but changed it to focus on lessons learned from industry on compliance monitoring and automation of remediation and related topics.

Social Media and Web2.0 for National Security Planners

Over the last couple weeks I sent several friends and associates a draft article I was working up on Web2.0 for National Security Planners.  I enjoyed pulling that together, since it helped me convince myself that the right thing to do is to get more senior US strategists engaged in Social Media.  There are some real security concerns there and we dont' want all our national security efforts exposed to all our adversaries on the Internet.  But use can be made of these tools and the risks there can be mitigated so the overall benefit to the country will far outweigh the risks. 

One of the folks I sent it to was Dion Hinchcliffe, President and CTO of HInchcliffe & Company (see http://hinchcliffeandco.com ).   Dion has long been a very collegial person with an open/collaborative work style.  I met him several years ago when he was giving a presentation to my old community on the then new concept of Web2.0 and have been very glad to be connected with him since.   Dion read the article and published it in his Social Computing Magazine (see http://socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=578 ), and I am very appreciative of him getting the word out on that.

Another online associate is Helen Thompson of AFCEA.  Helen is herself a great contributor to the dialog on national defense.  She just published an article titled "Reconciling Collaboration and Security in the Social Media Space (see http://www.afcea.org/signal/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=1680&print=yes ).   In it she references my article and underscores the point I make about social media tools being a good way to accelerate good idea.

The current draft of the article is at:  http://www.ctovision.com/social-media-national-security.html

Please check it out and let me know your thoughts/input/suggestions.

Day Two of the Synergy Conference

Today's sessions were an interesting mix of professionals from throughout the community.  Some of the most interesting dialog was on organizational models of senior staffs.  

For many years military strategists have pondered the best model for ops intel integration on senior staffs.  The introduction to the argument generally mentions that the dominate structure today is like Napoleon's staff.  Those who advocate keeping this model and those who advocate merging ops and intelligence into the same organization generally share the same goal of support to the mission and support to operational decisions. 

Among COCOMs it was SOCOM that first began advocating for and then
changing their staff to ensure tight organizational coupling and then
integration of ops and intel, and they were successful, perhaps because
of their mission orientation and leadership of seniors on their staff. 
But I also have to point out that over time their organizational model
actually returned to something that Napoleon would recognize today, and
there is a strong intelligence function on the SOCOM staff.    STRATCOM
has also been a command famous for forward thinking and adjusting to
accomplish new missions assigned to them.   Tremendous progress in
modernizing old command constructs was made over the last several
years.   A key lesson learned from that, however, is that many of the
steps taken had the unintended consequence of lessoning the ability of
intelligence to support the mission, and no one wants operational
commanders to be served with sub optimized intelligence.

The
good news is STRATCOM has seen that and is taking steps "to return the
J2 position to the importance it once had" (see yesterday's post). I
should also point out that on the CENTCOM staff, which is coordinating
and executing some of the most critically important operations the
nation is conducing today, there is a very strong J2 function.  Ops and
intel are functionally integrated at CENTCOM but it is a strong J2 that
ensures the integration, not  experimental approaches to organization. 
At CENTCOM, like at other operational staffs, the commander would never
give up his J2.  That position is critical to victory in the most
important theater of operations.

Many organizations integrate ops and intelligence and do it well.   For example, JSOC or CIA.  Both are very operational organizations with very key intelligence missions, and both have long had and integrated ops/intel way of working. 

We heard today of the SOUTHCOM model.  There may be some great reasons for change there.  They operate and plan for operations in a theater that is unique for many reasons.  I don't have enough info to judge what they are doing, but I hope they are learning lessons from folks like General Ennis and SOCOM and CENTCOM and STRATCOM.   

The highlight of the day, and maybe of the entire conference, was a panel and discussion the presentation on Web2.0 and enterprise services.   The panel was moderated by Mr. Sean Dennehy, Intellipedia and Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist in the Directorate of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency.  His panelists included Mr. Drew Herrick, Deputy Technical Executive, Office of the Americas, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Mr. Scott Yaroschuk, lead for Emerging Technologies/Collaboration for the Joint Staff J6, and Mr. John Hale, Chief of Solutions Delivery for the Intelink Management Office (which some now call the Intelligence Community Enterprise Solutions (ICES). 

Sean provided a great overview of some of the Web2.0 capabilities the community is working with today, including:

    * One of a suite of Web 2.0 tools including:
          o Intellipedia for aggregation
          o Intelink blogs for communication
          o Tag|Connect (similar to the Internet's del.icio.us) for organization
          o Inteldocs (a document management system for file sharing community-wide)
          o Gallery (similar to the Internet's flickr)
          o iVideo (similar to YouTube)
          o Intelink Instant Messaging (IIM)
          o Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Although as a technologist I really appreciated his discussion of capabilities.  Perhaps more important lesson was his capturing of three core principles for social software in the Enterprise.  Three he lists are:

   1.  Work at broadest audience possible
   2. Think topically, not organizationally
   3. Replace existing business processes

Although Sean graciously credits ongoing Enterprise 2.0 academic studies with helping to codify these principles, I could tell he was speaking from the heart about them and the anecdotes he mentioned underscoring their importance.

Scott Yaroschuk continued to build on the presentation with real world examples of the use of these tools to improve and replace existing business processes on the joint staff.  This change to business process is the greatest benefit of these Web2.0 tools.   Drew Herrick provided example after example of communities of people coming together to solve hard challenges using these new tools, and every example underscored the key lessons Sean mentioned at the beginning of the presentation.

John Hale then led a standing-room only crowd through an in-depth examination of each of the Web2.0 tools provided by ICES.   These capabilities are really changing the way things are done in the federal space. 

Other presentations this day included a briefing/status report on the Secure Enterprise Datavault by Ms. Kristin O'Keefe of Army G2.   The SED will be the first accredited mulit-level secure data repository for use throughout the DoD and the IC. 

There were many other presentations today and many technology demos.  I'll blog more on them later

How to use the CTOvision site

The following are some power user tips for making the most out of the CTOvision.com blog. 

1) Fresh content is always on the main page at http://ctovision.com, but previous content is organized into five key sections which you can navigate to by use of the "Sections" menu on the left column.  The sections are:

• CTO Interest
• Cyber War
• The Future
• Enterprise IT
• Web 2.0

2) You can use/consume/syndicate our content by use of our RSS and Atom feeds.  More info is available here: http://www.ctovision.com/syndicating-ctovision-con.html  That page has a link to  "Subscribe in a reader."  That will take you to a feedburner site of CTOvision content that can be consumed in almost any reader or Web service.

3) At the top left of the blog is an e-mail sign up box.  This will
subscribe your e-mail address to receive a note each time a post is
made to CTOvision.com 

4) Every page of the CTOvision site has a news ticker along the left column.  This automatically defaults to display news with the term CTO in the feed.  But you can click other buttons listed there to automatically display news of some of the greatest powerhouse IT firms.

5) Every post on the site has a rating where users can click on a number of stars to give some feedback on the value of the post.   Your votes here are very much appreciated.   Directly under the rating stars for the post you will see a list of suggested reading that is automatically generated by the "Outbrain" service that CTOvision uses.   Outbrain selects those sites based on article content and how you have voted, so they should be of interest.

6) To make maximum use of the CTOvision site, consider connecting to me via Twitter.  Every page on the site has a link at the top right column that says "Follow Me on Twitter."  Or click this link.

7) The site also has a search box, powered by Google.  This is the best way to get to deep, buried content.

8) Other features include a list of the top blogs of interest to the Chief Technology Officer and a list of sites of some of the great thought leaders in our community.

9) There are many pages of independent content relevant to the CTO that can be found through search.  A list of these pages can be found in the lower left column.

10) Every post has a link to comments for the post.  This user contributed content is frequently the most important content.  Please visit it to review the postings of others and please leave your own thoughts if you can contribute to the dialog.  Posts also have an ability to let you easily share to Facebook and del.icio.us and Digg.

Thanks for reading the site.  If you know of a chief technology officer who could benefit from the dialog on CTOvision.com, please forward this note along.

The National Security Implications of Free 3D in a Browser

Jeffrey Carr sent a short broadcast via Twitter the other day: “

New post on 3D imaging and Virtual Earth – mind blowing video http://bit.ly/3SxtdA “  

Jeffrey was blogging about a capability shown in the short clip below:

As you watch that, keep in mind that what you are seeing is a capability that can run on any PC that can run Internet Explorer (which is just about all of them).
The clip shows a capability that Microsoft’s Caligari toolset “TrueSpace” has to build high resolution 3D models then upload them into Virtual Earth.

Currently national security planners, as well as others with mission needs for geospatial information, have many choices for solutions.  But most good solutions require loading specialized software on the workstation.  This includes, of course, Google Earth.   Google also provides 3D creation capabilities with Sketch-Up.  And that is a powerful combination.  But the need to load programs on workstations and move data to workstations complicates enterprise IT solutions.  Additionally, Google Earth is reportedly not accurate in elevation measurements.   Now the new capability shown in the YouTube clip indicates a solution that can give highly accurate 3D models to planners everywhere, and it can do that without having to instal large stand alone apps on workstations and without having to move large datasets to the workstation.    

A use case:  Imagine a USMC team preparing for an evacuation of a group of citizens.  They shift into their Rapid Response Planning Process (R2P2) and move out.   Although this process ensures all available information is used and can accomodate information from external sources, the urgency of the mission means it will proceed no matter what.   No one involved is going to waste time trying to download new software programs or test applications or risk breaking systems that are working well.  New data is fine, but new software is not needed.   This 3D model that runs in a browser could be of tremendous use at times like this.  If the data is there, models can be presented to the planning team and they can visually walk through buildings before their mission.  The models can be provided from locations far away or from local data if available.  And they can be presented on any computer with a browser.   

That is just one use case.  Many more can be brainstormed by planners, and I’d recommend this dialog get underway soon.  But there is actually another meta-point to make.   Consider the fact that this dialog can start much earlier in the process because of new web2.0 capabilities.  Thanks to Jeffrey’s micro-blogging on Twitter and the Google YouTube posting on his Blog, the national security community has some early warning on things we should be thinking through.  

My recommendation:  If you haven’t done so already… sign up for Twitter.  If you’d like to see some good feeds to follow start here.  

Special Request: Collaboration Tool Survey

With the help of vizu.com I have just created an online survey I’d appreciate you taking a quick look at.  The survey is located at this link:   http://www.ctovision.com/collaboration-tool-survey.html  and is also, for now, along the lower right hand column of the CTOvision blog.  You can enter your responses either place for a look at results. 

The point of the survey is to get a quick feel for collaboration tools that CTOvision readers use.  I don’t know what results to expect, but if there are conclusions of note I’ll blog about them here.  

Thanks in advance

Bob

Blackberry and Google Contacts Synchronization

Some tips for those who need to synchronize Blackberry and Google contacts: 

- There is not a single easy way, at this point.  In the near term you can expect a small sync system either provided by Google or Blackberry, and I would guess that would be out about the same time as the Blackberry Bold, but that is just speculation.  

- Make use of Plaxo.  Tell Plaxo to use Google Contacts as a sync point (it is just one way sync for now, Plaxo pulls your Google contacts).   Plaxo can sync with many systems, but for some reason it is just one way with Google.