OGI Conference: Recommended for enterprise CTOs in the federal space

ogiThe next big Gov2.0 event is the 21-22 July 2009 Open Government & Innovations Conference (OGI).  The list of speakers includes some of the greats from the federal IT scene, including:

  • Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO
  • Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO
  • Tim O’Reilly, Visionary of the Web2.0 movement
  • David Weinberger, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School
  • David Wennergren, ASD NII and DoD CIO
  • Michael Wertheimer, CTO, ODNI
  • Lovisa Williams, Senior Technology Advisor, State Department
  • Robert Carey, CIO, USN
  • Colleen Coggins, Architect, Department of Interior
  • Sean Dennehy, Intellipedia and Enteprise 2.0 Evangelist, CIA
  • Mary Davie, Assistant Commissioner, GSA
  • Debra Fillippi, Information Sharing Executive, DoD
  • Jack Holt, Strategist for Emerging Media, DoD
  • Jeffrey Levy, Director of Web Communications, EPA,
  • Col Robert Morris, US Army

Topic, besides some incredible keynotes, include Web2.0 and National Security, Cross Agency Collaboration, Health IT, Openess and Information Sharing, Citizen Engagement, Transparency, Data Visualization and many others.

I’ll be speaking on a panel at 10:15 on the 21st on the topic of Web2.0 and National Security.  Panelists include Mark Drapeau, a published expert on the topic, Lin Wells, one of the most influential people in the national security space, and Lewis Shepherd of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Government.  I enjoy learning from all these guys and think they will make a good panel.  I’m wondering how they will respond to a new thesis I’m working on: the observation that just because you give Web2.0 tools to people it doesn’t mean they will use them.  We learned a similar lessons with information sharing.  Just because you connect everyone and give them interoperable tools does not mean they will collaborate.  They have to want to collaborate. If that thesis is correct, then giving everyone in the national security community access to web2.0 tools inside their firewall or not, will not mean the culture will change.  Those that want to collaborate and share will make great use of those tools.  Those that don’t want collaborate and share will not.  This means web2.0 will not make a difference for national security till we work some big cultural issues in the community (maybe that is just a blinding flash of the obvious.  Maybe that is a point of this conference).

Please check out the conference at opengovinnovations.com

Cheers,
Bob

About BobGourley

Bob Gourley is Crucial Point LLC’s founder and editor of CTOvision.com. Bob has received industry recognition including Infoworld top CTO award, AFCEA’s meritorious service award, and recognition as one of the top 100 “Tech Titans” in DC by Washingtonian magazine. He was named one of the “Top 25 Most Fascinating Communicators in Government IT.”

  • Dave Lush

    Bob, I agree whole heartedly with your observation about analyst culture and the rate of tool adoption. I have written a few think pieces on this matter because in my view it is one of the most serious problems that we have in the IC today. I have posted some thoughts on this matter on my blog; the specific piece is at http://davelush.typepad.com/extracts_from_the_dis…. Suffice to say here that I believe the problem is largely one for leadership which in my view has thus far generally "caved" to the whims of the analyst community. I have seen numerous situations in which a small handful of right thinking analysts applied new tools with great effectiveness thus proving the worth of the tool but nevertheless the bulk of the analysts still didn't adapt and the leadership didn't lead even tho the benefits of the tool were in essence demonstrated and proven. This is not good!

    Be well! your blog is great!

    Dave Lush

    • http://crucialpointllc.com Bob Gourley

      Dave thanks for the note and for the link.

      Cheers,
      Bob