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Disruptive IT

The Twilight of Network-Centric Warfare

Highly respected writer and industry analyst Loren B. Thompson has just penned an opinion piece on recent changes in the Pentagon related to how DoD does IT.  The piece, titled “The Twilight of Network-Centric Warfare” is worth a full read by anyone in the IT business, in or out of government.

Dr. Thompson argues that the recent directive by secretary of defense Gates spelling out his intention to reorganize and eliminate the senior staff overseeing department networks and information integration (ASD NII) and moves at the same time to eliminate J6’s marked the end of the network centric era.

The meat of Thompson’s article reads:

When a Defense Business Board task force recommended last month that the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) eliminate its networking and information integration secretariat, it signaled just how far from grace the notion of network-centric warfare has fallen. The secretariat was established at the tail-end of the dot.com boom to coordinate the joint force’s migration from industrial-age warfare into the era of information warfare. Proponents of network-centric warfare believed new information technologies were so powerful that they could overthrow traditional warfighting concepts if backed up with appropriate military doctrine and organizations. OSD’s office of networks and information integration — NII for short — was supposed to shepherd this vision into reality by overseeing a raft of multi-billion-dollar investment projects.

A decade later, nobody talks about military transformation anymore, and joint initiatives begun under its banner such as the Transformational Communications Satellite and Future Combat System are fading memories. Service-level projects like the Navy’s Next-Generation Enterprise Network increasingly look like wasteful efforts to re-invent the wheel — efforts that are doomed to be canceled as Washington turns to deficit reduction and military budgets shrink. So what went wrong? How is it possible for every policymaker in the five-sided building to embrace a common vision of information-age warfare at the beginning of a decade, and for it all to be forgotten by decade’s end?

The first thing that went wrong was that threats evolved differently than military planners expected. The authors of network-centric warfare thought that the joint force was in the midst of a prolonged “strategic pause” when the decade began, after which some new peer or near-peer adversary would emerge. That pause ended unexpectedly on 9-11, and America suddenly found itself facing a very different kind of danger. Networks and information technology have certainly proven useful in dealing with elusive new adversaries, but so far they haven’t proven to be the winning weapon that visionaries expected. It turns out that all those networks the Pentagon was planning are just conduits, and that what matters more for victory is the accuracy and completeness of the information moving through the networks.

The second problem that proponents did not see coming was that the new technology itself might become a source of weakness. Planners implicitly assumed that if the Pentagon invested heavily enough in cutting-edge networks and information applications, it could leverage the warfighting potential of the new technology while staying comfortably ahead of other countries with similar ideas. Well, it hasn’t worked out that way. We now know that everybody from the Taliban to Mexican drug cartels can benefit from the reach and richness of wideband networks. Even worse, they can tap into our own networks, as China proves on a daily basis. So the military has had to launch a crash program to prevent its gee-whiz networks from being used against it (incidentally, the Navy is inexplicably trying to replace the one big network that so far has proven largely immune to hostile penetrations, in order to implement a more “advanced” architecture).

I think I should add some commentary from a CTO perspective.

  • As far as I can tell, this reorganization is not because a concept fell from grace.  The reorganization seems to be designed to save money by reducing staff overhead.  Although I personally don’t agree that this is a smart move, the functions are being organized into other places (both at OSD and DISA) and there are high expectations that IT will continue to be enhanced and modernized in the department.

  • Very few believed that new IT programs would give us an ability so powerful that IT would overthrow traditional militaries.  There has always been a “lunatic fringe” of folks who thought like that, but the mainstream always saw IT as a critical enabler. The folks I know who see the benefit of new operational constructs leveraging network-centric-warfare still know that real war is still a very bloody, boots-on-the-ground activity.

  • Although the title “NII” was born out of a reorganziation.  Its functions existed before as ASD C3I.  Its functions will continue in the future in the new organization.  This is an important point.

  • It is certainly true that network-centric concepts made significant contributions to success in conflict.  The functions of NII helped that occur.  Those functions will still enhance the use of IT in the department in the future, just in a different organization.  But it is true that threats evolved differently than military planners expected.  Can you tell me what is new about that?  We have to continue planning, of course, but should not be surprised when we are surprised (how is that for some deep national security guidance?)

  • It is not accurate to say that proponents of net centric warfare did not see that IT itself could be a weakness.  This accusation is just unfounded.  But the fact is IT is changing the military and will continue to do so, even though it has weaknesses.

Those are just some thoughts.

By the way, I’m not sure I support this move, I worry that it will be harder to continue the efficient and effective continuous improvement of IT in the Services and Joint world because of this.  But as an outsider and a fan of big enterprise IT folks, I’ll be pulling for the folks who have the mission and I really hope this works out well.

For more on this topic see our reporting on National Security and Technology and at:

My Thoughts on the Washingtonian Tech Titans List

I was a bit puzzled when I found out I made the “Washington’s Tech Titans” list assembled by Washingtonian Magazine.   Why in the world would they put me on that list?  Well, it is certainly good press and I’m definitely honored that they would consider me.   Here is what they wrote:

“Bob Gourley, founder and CTO, Crucial Point. As former CTO of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a prolific blogger at his site, CTOvision.com, Gourley is a respected connector and thinker on government tech issues.”

My consultancy Crucial Point LLC serves some great people and great firms and I wonder if any of them grabbed the ear of author Garrett Graff? Or maybe Garrett found my through my blog or my use of Twitter?  I’ll have to corner Garrett at the upcoming reception and and see if he can shed some light on this.

I can think of 1000 folks who are my tech mentors and leaders and visionaries who should be given this credit.  If the criteria is the amount of tech influence in DC an uncountable number have more than me.   So I have to admit there must be a flaw in the process that put me in the pages of Washingtonian (but please Garrett, don’t remove me from your list!).

But one thing is for sure.  Now that they put me in the company of those great techies I’m finding it very motivating.  I really am honored to be on that list, and that makes me want to work even harder to make a difference in the DC tech world.   I have always, like most other human beings, taken great pleasure in working on things bigger than myself, and now this is even more encouragement to keep that up.

Another way to think of this is the succinctly put statement by Tim O’Reilly that we need to “Work on Stuff That Matters.”

So, I might never know how I got on the Washingtonian’s Tech Titan’s list and I’m the first to say I’m really undeserving.   But I do know this.  It is going to motivate me to keep pressing ahead where ever I think I can make a difference.

Other CTOvision Awards and Recognition:

Discussion with Justin Rattner of Intel

This post is a follow-on to my previous report on the 21 April 2009 Xeon 5500 kickoff event hosted by Intel corporation (see: Intel’s New Chip ).   My previous post talked about the new “Intelligent Processors” being fielded by Intel.  With this post I want to provide a bit more information on a key presenter there, Justin Rattner.

You can find background on Justin from two credible sources, his official bio at Intel and a Wikipedia entry on him.

It turns out  Justin works for a pretty cool company.  While talking with Justin and Nigel Ballard (Intel’s Federal Marketing Manager) I mentioned that I run a blog focused on technologists and they invited me to attend a small session with members of the press (this is another great reason to run a blog, you can elbow your way into all sorts of places!).

Some of what I learned from this session with Justin follow:

The new Nehalem chip may very likely change the security game.  We got hints of that at the presentation earlier in the day when he talked about the enhanced ability to support encryption on the chip.  When we were able to ask follow-on questions he underscored something that many of us in the profession have come to realize—encryption is just one of many capabilities that must be brought to bear against the threat.  The best approach is a defense in depth approach.

As part of a defense in depth approach, the new management capabilities of Nehalem provides an ability to watch what is going on in the processor.  Little chips on the processor watch the big chips on the processor.  That enables review of the code that is executing.

When fully taken advantage of, this capability will significantly mitigate the ability of bad guys or malicious code to install and run root kits, for example.  No anti-virus capability can detect a well masked rootkit.  None of the OS guys can do this.  It must be done on the chipset.  The management module on the new Nehalem chip can provide that ability.  It can scan memory and watch processes and compare against known valid code and take action.  In Justin’s words:  “It has become painfully obvious that none of the current defenses are adequate.”  A stand alone management system that can command other processor components is a fundamental solution that will change the game.

I asked Justin one of my favorite questions about Moore’s law.  We all know no mere mortal should ever try to predict its death, but it is time to predict its loss of relevance, I believe.   Afterall, the performance statistics provided by Justin in his opening session showed dramatic, exponential performance enhancements that are far greater than the Moore’s law driven increase in number of transistors on a chip over time.  So I asked Justin to comment.  I asked, if Intel is blowing past the performance predictions of Moore’s law, isn’t Moore’s law less relevant?  Shouldn’t some sort of “Core’s Law” be cited instead, where the number of cores double every two years?  Isn’t that a better predictor of performance?

Justin’s comment: Intel has now realized that Moore’s law is no longer about performance.  Moore’s law is remarkable in terms of predicting the number of transistors, but the number of transistors it takes to increase performance count has grown geometrically.  In general, a 2x increase in performance might require a 4x increase in transistors.  Smarter design is required.  Smarter design, like multi-core and multi-thread gives dramatic increase in performance and many other benefits as well, including an ability to manage thermal and power budget on the chip, or adding virtualization support on the chip.  Doing things like this requires transistors, but it also enhances overall performance.

I asked Justin about the internal tensions between people who are both consumers of tech and high tech workers. As consumers they are receiving more and more capabilities, from handhelds to desktops to cloud services.  Then they go to work and as enterprise workers they are served with sub standard IT.  He knows this tension well and knows it is occurring everywhere, but sees big gains being made in servers available to enterprises and believes now is the moment to upgrade to provide increase enterprise capability to workers.  He believes in establishing private clouds, but also realistically knows public clouds will be with us forever.

I asked Justin about the handheld market.  There are over 3.3 billion active cell phone subscriber accounts, for example, and only 1.2 billion PCs.   Justin was clear in this:  Intel recognizes this market and is coming.  Expect their continued pursuit of a wide range of consumer products, building on success of their Atom chip and netbooks.   Look for Intel moving faster into embedded computing.  Opportunities are expected to “explode” in digital signage, automobiles, healthcare, and personal ecommerce.

I asked about Twitter.  It is in use by many folks at Intel, and there are internal collaborative tools and social media inside the corporation.  It seemed clear that they are not designing chips by 140 character Twitter micro-blog bursts, but they are enhancing internal coordination and cooperation.  And that is good for all of us IT users.

Overall I found Justin to be a world class tech leader and I felt honored to be in the same room with a person who is changing the world in such a huge way.  Thanks Justin for the time.

Enhancing Security and Functionality At The Same Time

Have you ever been pulled into the false debate over how much IT spending should be spent on security? Some folks point to a rule of thumb that goes something like “ten percent of the IT budget should be applied to security.”  That old school formula may well be part of the reason we got into the mess we are currently in.  It contributes to thoughts that lead you to think security can be separated.  By some other ways of thinking, 100% of the budget goes to security and functionality and that is the calculus.

Really, security is about ensuring information confidentiality, availability and integrity. And those constructs are totally connected to functionality of IT.   We recommend you try whenever possible to use the term security and functionality in the same context just to underscore that point.

For example, the goal we continually push regarding security in the federal space is not just one dealing with security.  We put it this way:  “Security and functionality of all federal IT will be increased by two orders of magnitude in the next 24 months.”  Putting the goal this ways also underscores that it is not security vs. functionality.  Both need to increase.

This goal also cries out for the need for metrics in security and functionality.  For functionality there are many customer focused survey methods that can help collect the right metrics.  For security, I think one metric stands out above all others:  Detected unauthorized intrusions.  There are many other important metrics for other dimensions of the security problem, but that one is key.  So, a goal that expects both security and functionality of federal enterprise IT to improve by two orders of magnitude will expect customer survey satisfaction to go through the roof, and will expect detected intrusions to drop significantly.  If there were 50,000 detected intrusions in 2008, there should be less than 5000 in 2010.

That is a dramatic goal.  What makes me think it is achievable?  In part the dramatic action being put in place today in the federal space.  And in part by dramatic new technologies and approaches like private clouds and thin client computing and enhanced identity management and authorization methods.  But of more importance and more relevance than all of that, in my opinion, is the coordinated action and leadership underway by CIOs and CISOs and the security  experts in the federal space today.

As evidence of this incredible positive action I’d like to bring your attention to a release by a Consortium of US Federal Cybersecurity Experts on Consensus Audit Guidelines.  Details of this effort are at http://www.sans.org/cag/

The Consensus Audit Guidelines provide the twenty most important controls and metrics for effective cyber defense and continuous FISMA compliance.   These controls and metrics include:

Critical Controls Subject to Automated Measurement and Validation:

  1. Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Hardware.
  2. Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Software.
  3. Secure Configurations for Hardware and Software on Laptops, Workstations, and Servers.
  4. Secure Configurations of Network Devices Such as Firewalls and Routers.
  5. Boundary Defense
  6. Maintenance and Analysis of Complete Security Audit Logs
  7. Application Software Security
  8. Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges
  9. Controlled Access Based On Need to Know
  10. Continuous Vulnerability Testing and Remediation
  11. Dormant Account Monitoring and Control
  12. Anti-Malware Defenses
  13. Limitation and Control of Ports, Protocols and Services
  14. Wireless Device Control
  15. Data Leakage Protection

Additional Critical Controls (not directly supported by automated measurement and validation):

  1. Secure Network Engineering
  2. Red Team Exercises
  3. Incident Response Capability
  4. Data Recovery Capability
  5. Security Skills Assessment and Training to Fill Gaps

The site at http://www.sans.org/cag provides more details on each, including detailed descriptions of the controls, how to implement them, how to measure them, and how to continuously improve them.   The site also spells out the fact that this is a work in progress and processes are in place to ensure this great effort remains relevant and maximizes our ability to protect ourselves.

What should CTOs think about this guidance?  We should most strongly endorse it. Appropriate implementation of these controls will reduce unauthorized intrusions in any enterprise.

The deeply respected community leader Alan Paller said it this way:

“This is the best example of risk-based security I have ever seen,” said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute.  “The team that was  brought together represents the nation’s most complete understanding of the risk faced by our systems. In the past cybersecurity was driven by people who had no clue of how the attacks are carried out. They created an illusion of security. The CAG will turn that illusion to reality.”

Please give these controls a read, and please help get them into the hands of the security and functionality professionals in your enterprise.

Looking for other research topics? Browse our reports directory here. Would you like to task us with research on these or other topics? As A CTOlabs Pro subscriber you may use our “Ask The CTO” section and let us know what we can do for you.

 

CTOs, Global Cyberwar and Our Collective Future

Ccis If you are a technologist, please take a moment to download the PDF of the report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity.  This report, titled Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency, is the best proclamation of the challenges of cyber I have read.  It is also a roadmap that will help any trying to navigate these very tough issues.

I’ve been involved in things cyber for a long time.  My deepest
involvement began in December 1998, almost 10 years ago to the day.  In all that time I’ve seen lots of studies and lots of papers and many treatments of the issues.  But I’ve never seen one that captures the complexities and the need for specific actions as well as this one.

I’d really recommend you read every word, if you want to be considered literate in this field.   But if it will be a little while till you get to it, here are some key points:

The three major findings are:  1) Cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the U.S., 2) Decisions and actins must respect privacy and civil liberties, and 3) only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international  aspects of cybersecurity will make us more secure.

The report makes a few points about the Bush Administration’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI).  In general the give credit to that initiative, and call it good.  I agree, it is a great activity I’ve previously written about that is led by one of the most effective people in government today and has done great work.  But as the commission points out, the work of the CNCI is good but not sufficient.

The biggest shock for me in this study:  The amount of funding on R&D for cyber security.  I have been looking into the many activities underway, and maybe that look made me deceive myself into thinking it was a well funded effort.  According to the commission, however, they estimate that the total R&D funding in the federal government for cybersecurity is about $300million.  Less than two-tenths of one percent of the total federal R&D.

The report has a great section on identity management.

I am convinced the organizational approaches outlined in the study are the right ones as well.  There is only one place in our government where we can lead solutions to this challenge.  Where is that?  Hey read the report!

What else do I recommend CTOs do besides read the report?  I think one way we can all help the cybersecurity effort is to think through which standards bodies are the most important to engage with regarding security.

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

The Future of Cyberspace Security: The Law of The Rodeo

This is an update of my now annual assessment of the future of technology associated with good and evil in cyberspace which was first posted here.

Cyberspace is our interconnected information technology.

Predictions of the future of technology are increasingly starting to sound like science fiction, with powerful computing grids giving incredible computational power to users and with autonomous robots becoming closer and closer to being in our daily lives vice just in computer science departments. Infotech, nanotech and biotech are fueling each other and each of those three dominate fields are generating more and more benefits that impact the other, propelling us even faster into a new world.   Depending on your point of view the increasing pace of science and technology can be good or bad.  As for me, I’m an optimist, and I know we humans will find a way to ensure technology serves our best interests.

But a sad fact of the human condition is that bad people will likely be with us long into the future.  And sometimes good people can be tempted to do bad things, so we really need to engineer solutions that
keep the bad guys from benefiting from technology and keep those who can sometimes be tempted from giving in to their darker side.

So is is possible to engineer perfectly secure systems?  Consider the law of the rodeo:  “There’s not a horse that’s never been rode, and not a rider that’s never been throwed.”  I like the analogy since it reminds us that all computer evil can be mitigated.  But it always fights back.  Good and evil will continue a fast paced rodeo dance long into the future.

To engineer secure systems for the future we need to continually assess where we are and what the near term future holds for our technologies.  Here is a couple short predictions that could be useful
in this discussion.

  • Remote power is here today and will soon be widely distributed.  This will allow small power consumption devices (like keyboards, mice, bluetooth headsets, hearing aides, small sensors) to be provided power by RF energy.

– Power generation from motion is almost ready for prime time.  This will allow devices to gain energy from vibrations, like the vibrations in a bridge when a car passes over it, or the vibrations in a wall of a
building when the wind blows past it, or the vibrations caused by a person’s movement through the day.

– Communication capability (bandwidth) between fixed facilities will increase 1000 fold over the next five years. Cellular systems are on a dramatic improvement slope.  My view: AT&T seems to lead in speed this year.  Verizon will probably lead next year.

– More users will be on the net.  There are about 1.3Billion PC’s connected to the Internet today.  There are about 3.3Billion active cell phone subscriber accounts today.  Those numbers will grow.

– Storage, especially flash storage technologies, is decreasing in price so much we can afford to store data anywhere on almost anything.

– Chips are being designed in ways that actually beat the old Moore’s Law projections.  This is being done by placing many cores on one chip.  Very high data rate capabilities are being connected directly to the cores on these chips.

– RFID is becoming so widespread we can place devices on everything that allows devices to report back what they are and what they are for and where they have been.

– All this capabilities are being networked together, including increasingly direct device to device connections via capabilities provided by enhanced protocols (especially IPv6).

– Consumer devices, especially consumer communication devices, are becoming increasingly capable.  What used to be called a cell phone is now a phone/video recorder/video editor/entertainment/mobile office device with location aware data (GPS).

– Web2.0 and Social networking sites/tools such as Facebook will expand till one day 100% of the population will have active, up to date, authoratative online profiles.

– Cloud computing capabilities are not only being delivered to companies, but to end users.  Google leads the pack in this space, but Microsoft and Adobe are up and comers.

There are many other elements of the future relevant to security discussions, but the projections above lead to some interesting conclusions on their own.   So lets think through some of the impacts
of the above.

– Bad actors who want to exploit systems will increasingly not have to worry about them being powered off.  They will be on all the time.

– Bad actors will increasinly be able to expoit social systems to gather data pre-attack.  However, the powerful trust models of social networks may offer a counter to some of these attacks.

– Many paths into devices will be available for unauthorized users to exploit.   And if they are compromised by people or code that intend on generating denial of service attacks, huge amounts of bandwidth will exist for them to attack from.

– When a bad actor gets through defenses into data stores, they will likely find a wide range of data to exploit, since it is becoming so easy and low cost for us to store everything.

– Having things networked together means it can be easier to penetrate a target by finding one weak link that is connected to the infrastructure.

– Areas of people’s lives they once thought private, especially their cell phones and the data on their cell phones, are increasingly becoming attractive targets to hackers.

What is needed in an environment like this?  I can’t pretend to know all the solutions but here are a few points I support:

– Enhanced firewalls and intrusion detection devices.

– Better configuration control, for all devices.  When a device is out of configuration is must be brought back into compliance immediately.

– Better laws and treaties concerning cyberspace. Deterrence policies by governments.

– More attention to standards and to industry organizations (including supply chain quality  organizations) is a must.

– Better training and education for all (I mean ALL) humans connected to the grid.

– Better, continuous upgraded anti-virus solutions.

– Automated response to attacks.

– Enhanced, easier to use encryption.

– Enhanced, more secure identity and authorization technologies.

More Reading:

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

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 organization stupid.

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions on that topic?

More items of interest from CTOvision

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:

And I’ll also keep tracking the drama.

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