A Blog I Like: Haft of the Spear

Michael Tanji brings a perspective forged in years of intelligence work and a successful stint protecting information in the financial sector.  He is a well published author who focuses on national security issues and is also a thought leader in the computer security domain.

At Haft of the Spear he writes primarily about technology related/enabled national security issues, which includes a heavy dose of information warfare. 

Read HOTS at: http://haftofthespear.com/

Next week I write about Nicholas Carr and his Rough Type blog.

A Blog I Like: Devost.net

Matt Devost has been a thought leader in information technology, cyber warfare, counter terrorism and security training for over a decade.  He has built successful companies, taught warriors security, helped protect industry and taught (and still teaches) information warfare at Georgetown university.

Through history great thoughts have come from leaders who work at the intersection of multiple domains of practice and Matt continues to demonstrate his thought leadership at is blog.  As proof let me mention his winning of NDU’s Sun Tzu infrormation warfare essay contest in 1996. The article he co-authored titled “Information Terrorism: Can You Trust Your Toaster?” remains a classic thought piece that should be read by every IT professional and military strategist today.

Read that article and Matt’s more recent thoughts at: http://blog.devost.net/

Next week I write about Mike Tanji and Haft of the Speer.

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.

What if you could show key Social Media/Web2.0 sites in one graphic?

Overdrive is a company that specializes in helping others leverage the social media landscape.  They produced a great graphic that gives at least a high level overview of the key social media and web2.0 world.  Click on the image here for a larger view download the PDF here: Download social-media-map.pdf (1330.3K)

I really like this graphic for a couple reasons.  One is that like many other people I long for ways that can help me visualize and grasp things in this fast moving space.  I know this does not capture all the social media sites and I know the categories are not as clean as depicted here.  But still it is GREAT context and will be helpful to me in explaining to others some of the fast moving cloud based services out there (note to overdrive: please find room to add a section on cloud services, like cloud based office automation).  

Another key reason I like this is it proves Overdrive's assertion that they are a company that can demystify online tools and help companies leverage these capabilities.  The fact that they are letting any blogger anywhere post this graphic on their site is proof that they understand how these things work.  Companies who want to make it in social spaces should give first then receive later.

How did I find this cool graphic?  Friends at Facebook sent it to me.  I found this cool social media reference through a cool social media site.

Three Events of Federal CTO Interest: Will You Be At These?

FYI, in case your schedule will allow us to connect in person I wanted
to update you on a few events I plan on being at over the next few
weeks.

The Advanced Technical Intelligence Association TECHINT conference will
be held 9-11 Dec 2008.  This conference focuses on the technical
dimensions of intelligence, and has a theme of "integrated
performance."  The theme refers to the need to integrate capabilities
from all the agencies engaged in national security to better perform in
meeting our national security challenges.   On 9 Dec I'll be speaking
at a panel on the real and growing threat in cyber space.  There will
be no blogging or tweeting from the conference.  But if you are going
to be there please drop me a note and lets connect in person there.  
For info see http://masint.org 

The AFCEA Solutions conference on Cyberspace will be held 10-11 Dec
2008 at the Ronald Reagan Center in DC.  This conference will be
focusing on the challenges and solutions of cyberspace related to
national security.  Speakers include Secretary of Homeland Security the
Honorable Michael Chertoff, The Deputy Secretary of Defense the
Honorable Gordon England, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks
and Information Integration the Honorable John Grimes, Ms. Melissa
Hathaway, senior adviser and cyber coordination executive for the
Director of National Intelligence, LTG Keith Alexander, Director of the
National Security Agency, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Information and Identity Assurance Mr. Bob Lentz and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Information Management Mr. David Wennergren. 
I'll be speaking on a panel on Wednesday at 1530 on formulating a
common response.  

• This unclas conference follows a model that AFCEA has been using for
  several similar events.  They are actively seeking ways to enhance the
  value of these conferences by leveraging more Web2.0 capabilities
  before, during and after the formal presentations.  Blogging and
  tweeting from the conference is encouraged. You can visit the site at: www.afceasolutions.org/group 
  For the event schedule and program details can be found online here: www.afceasolutions.org

The US Army Intelligence Warfighting Summit will be held 15-17 Dec
2008.  This one will also be a conference where blogging and use of
twitter is not appropriate due to the sensitivity of info discussed. 
However, I would appreciate knowing if you will be going so we can
connect there in person.  Speakers will include the most senior Army
intelligence leadership, plus Vice Admiral Bob Murrett from NGA, LTG
Alexander from NSA, and Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems.  For more
on the event see: http://www.ncsi.com/iws08/index.shtml 

So, if you are going to any of these please let me know.  

And please follow me on Twitter so I can send you a few bursts from the AFCEA conference.  I'm at http://www.twitter.com/bobgourley 

Cheers.

Wall Street Crisis, Enterprise Technology and Cloud Computing

I just read a great overview on "The Tech Fallout from the Wall Street Crisis" posted by Rich Miller at the Data Center Knowledge site.   Here are four of the six key points Rich makes:

• North American financial companies will slash their IT spending
  27.3 percent to $17.6 billion next year, down from $24.2 billion in
  2007, according to updated projectionsfrom
  the Tabb Group, which tracks technology on Wall Street. The vast
  majority of that decline will be spending reductions due to the
  failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill
  Lynch, Tabb predicted.

Is Your CTO Making You Stupid?

Nicholas Carr writes in ways that makes people think.  I really enjoyed reading his latest in the Atlantic titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"  This article covers some rather significant trends that IT is pushing into the global social fabric.  The changes he talks about are disturbing.  They are infecting people like a fast spreading disease. 

There is a chance you are suffering some of these symptoms yourself, so by all means read the article. 

Or if your attention span is going, here is how Nicholas Carr describes the symptoms : 

" Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. "

I hope you dive deep into the Carr article for more details, but if you have the disease yourself you might not.  So here is a gist of key points:

• Google and others have made research simple and fast and easy.

• Almost all data can come into your head via your browser.

• People read fewer (or no) books.

• People are loosing the ability to read and retain info from long articles.

• The Internet, through your browser, is the medium of choice.  Newspapers and print are on the out.  TV is heading out fast.

• We also write through the web, and that is changing the way we think.

• We too frequently are relying on computers to mediate our understanding of the world.

What do we do with this cautionary info?  One immediate think all of us should do is remember to carve out time in the day, every day, to read, write and think.

But if you are an enterprise technologist you should also consider what this means for you and your organization.  Some ideas:

• The systems you are designing, developing and fielding to your workforce may serve your workforce better if their interfaces are more intuitive and less textual.  People will want to interface with enterprise systems they way they interface with the Internet (present your applications through browsers and summarize results and seek rapid human feedback on what they like or don't like about the results).

• To the greatest extent possible, build systems that present fast results.

• And present information in ways that let humans interact with it.

• And present information in ways that ensure the humans are in charge of the process and in charge of assessing the relevance of results.

• Don't stop innovating. 

• Stay on the net yourself so you can track where it is going.

• Get engaged in social media (if you are not already).  That means Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Twitter (especially Twitter– it really changes your mind).

• Translate those many lessons into the enterprise technology you field.

If you can do that and if you can stay focused on the mission all your users will thank you, and in many ways I think you will be helping make your organization smarter.  If you don't do that then the odds are great that you will just be part of the noise.   You may even be contributing to making your organzation stupid. 

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions on that topic?

The greatest new technologies (and great drama too!)

I like technology and I like drama.   These are two of the greatest of human creations.  And they can be even more interesting when combined.

There
has been some real drama in the West Coast tech scene the past few
weeks, heating up to a boil in the last few days, and about to come to
a head tomorrow.

The story is this:

- Two great expos for high tech startups are the DEMO conference and the TechCrunch50.

- DEMOfall08 will be in San Diego.   According to their website, Chris
Shipley has been around the globe gathering info on the best new
technologies and has brought them into one place for this conference. 
72 new digital technology products from 11 countries will be
introduced.  A record crowd of over 800 have registered already.   This
looks like an awesome conference and I can't wait to read about the
presentations and study the companies.  I'm sure I'll find candidates
for my own list of top disruptive technologies from what I read from
this conference. For more info see:   http://demo.com

- TechCrunch50 is Sep 8-10 in San Francisco.   It has a goal of
bringing the best start-ups and launching them in front influential VC,
corporations and the press.  Many companies also give demos.  It seems
to be about twice the size as the Demo conference, about 1700
attendees are expected.   Between the two conferences this appears to
be the one with more VC and big company attendance, but I am only
basing that on a review of the website.   The website, by the way,
shows an incredible panel of experts.  These are really the greats in
the community.  Experts judging at TechCrunch include Marc Andreessen,
Marc Benioff, Dan Farber, Bradley Horowitz, Joi Ito, Tim O'Reilly, and
Robert Scoble, to name a few.   Here too, I'm sure I'll find companies
that need to be on my early warning screen of disruptive IT.   For more
on TechCrunch, see:  http://techcrunch50.com

So now you see the drama?  How could these two great conferences end up being held at exactly the same time? 

The way this started, as far as I can tell, was captured in an April blog post from Henry Blodgete.  He said, I quote:

Now that TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis have scheduled their
TechCrunch50 start-up celebration conference at the same time as IDG's
DEMO start-up celebration conference, the allegations are flying:

Who moved whose conference to kill who.
Who ripped off who.
Who's screwing who.
Who's greedy, mercenary, abusive…
Etc.

The drama really heated up a few weeks ago when the long running
tension was written about by the New York Times.   An article by Brad Stone put it this way:

Demo, a 17-year-old conference franchise owned by the technology
publisher IDG, has served as the springboard for hit products like the
Palm Pilot and the TiVo digital video recorder. In San Diego during the
second week of September, 70 start-ups will pay $18,500 each to make a
six-minute presentation to a crowd of investors, journalists and
others. To Michael Arrington, the elbow-throwing, supercilious founder of
the popular Silicon Valley blog TechCrunch, Demo’s business model
amounts to “payola.”

From that article, leaders and associates of both Demo and TechCrunch began exchanging heated posts and interviews.  

Here is one from Michael Arrington titled "Everyone Needs To Calm Down" 
Mr. Arrington asks folks to chill, but calls the Demo conference
unethical.   I guess I like the way he says what he thinks.  But I
don't think his post will calm anything down!

Here is one from Chris Shipley who says she has had it with the shoddy
reporting, invective and arrogance that has attended most of the
commentary.  The following are some quotes from her post at: http://guidewiregroup.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/shoddy-reporting-invective-and-arrogance-yeah-i-want-some-of-that/

QUOTE:

When in a twitter I bemoaned the lack of original reporting (only one
reporter (cnet) and exactly zero bloggers writing this week about this
silly DEMO v TechCrunch episode actually contacted me), the infamous
blogger Robert Scoble suggested that if I'd blog my opinion, he'd link
to it. Does that mean that a perspective only exists or matters if it's
expressed in a blog post? Or that Robert's just moving too fast to do
any investigation outside his narrow medium?

Scoble's not the only guy living in the rarefied air of the
echo-chamber. Sarah Lacy, who works for the much-respected
Businessweek.com, conducted a five-minute video interview with TC50's
Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis, during which the two leveled the
usual slander. Did Lacy fire one tough question at the two? Did this
journalist call me or the DEMO organization to get a response to
serious accusations? Um, the answer to that would be "no."

In fact, a few weeks ago, when Mike Arrington wrote an
assumption-based and error-filled story that demanded an apology from
the DEMO organization for a comment that was clearly not made by or on
behalf of anyone at DEMO, Lacy picked up the story and wrote with
righteous indignation that slander was the highest insult that could be
leveled against a journalist. Did she call me or DEMO before posting
her story? Again no.

UNQUOTE

So, what's my take on all that?

It is my intent to follow, from afar, both conferences, and review all
I can read out of both.  I'll make my own assessments on which hot new
technologies are of interest to me, and I'll try hard to help my
associates, friends and readers know my opinion by updating my blog
here.  Stay tuned to my list of disruptive IT:  http://www.ctovision.com/disruptive-technology-list.html

And I'll also keep tracking the drama.