DoDIIS Technology: A need for better ways to understand and assess

May 25, 2010 By BobGourley

AFRL is a pioneer of advanced DoDIIS Technologies

A great feature of DoDIIS conferences is the expo floor, a place where capabilities from industry, academia and government are demonstrated. For technologists this is like Disneyland. I really enjoy learning capabilities this way. If you want to know the latest from the community this is the place to be. One great booth to visit, if you are here, is AFRL’s. I plan on spending much more time there.

But I have a negative to mention this time around. There is actually too much technology to digest at this year’s conference.

DoDIIS this year has more organizations than ever on the expo floor, and that sounds like a good thing, but it has actually become overwhelming. There are about 400 booths. Imagine trying to spend one hour each at each booth. That would be 400 hours. That is 5 of my normal 80 hour per day work weeks. The point: There is no way a person can dive deep into any of the technologies on the floor.

My intent going in to DoDIIS was to review some of the technologies I encountered here in the CTOvision.com blog. I still might do that. But it has become so overwhelming that I am not sure I can do it justice. Folks who want to know the best of enterprise technology, including the best in disruptive IT, need a better way.

In part that underscores my previous point about the need for a capability like CTOlabs.com I’m going to funnel my tech reviews to that site where I can put technologies into a framework of concepts and trends.
But the overwhelming number of technologies to evaluate also underscores the importance of other ways to discover the best capabilities available for enterprise use. On, like using the arms, legs and eyes of teams like Carahsoft (one of my clients, by the way). You will find links to the greatest of American technology there.
I’ll try to find specific technologies to highlight here, but frankly I’m going to have to spend every spare minute learning and might not have much time to write. I’ll make sure to capture my opinions of the best technologies at CTOlabs.com and will also keep sending some blasts out on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bobgourley

I’m also posting some photos from the conference via my Blackberry and Twitpic. You can see the stream at: http://twitpic.com/photos/bobgourley