Early Thoughts From a Long Week

I am still sorting out my notes from a very busy trip. I did a good job filling time, as I hope will be evident when people see just how many stories the trip generates on the blog. It is very interesting meeting so many people in person I had previously only knew because I had traded emails with them. In many ways, I think I am viewed as a novelty. This trip, at least in regards to most of my appointments, it was about what I am doing more than what I am saying. I also managed to stumble through my engagements without revealing any secrets, which I was worried about. I decided it was better to be confident generically, even if it meant sounding arrogant, than to do any demonstrations for free.

Thursday was a busy day, highlighted by meeting two people in particular. First was Mackenzie Eaglen at Heritage, who might be one of the most published yet 'least well known publicly' analysts on naval affairs in the entire think tank community. I had a bit of fun calling her the "13 carrier gal", although at least she makes a better case for her number of carriers than the Navy does! The other interesting person in my meetings that day was LT Anastacia Thorsson of the US Coast Guard, who has the pretty cool official title of "blogger." Drinks with Matt Armstrong and other great but "shall remain anonymous" folks that night was very productive.

My most memorable experience Thursday was morning coffee at 7am in a conference room at CSBA with Bob Work, Dakota Wood, Martin Murphy, and Jan van Tol. Two hours with that bunch and as you might imagine, I was very tuned into everything around me the rest of the day.

There are a number of ways to look at the Congressional hearing Thursday, but I am left with three impressions.

1) Gold plated warships as a fleet constitution strategy is directly aligned with political policy. Want a different shipbuilding strategy, change the political policy first.

2) The House Armed Services Committee is loaded with rookies. Gene Taylor, who I love, had a bad day because he was not ready for Dr. Thompson, who is underpaid and very good at what he does. Rep Taylor and/or Rep Akin tried to do something really smart by putting some fresh faces on the panel, but they were let down in a big way by the Congressional rookies on their subcommittee.

3) I thought the big winner was the Navy.

All of these points, and more, are addressed over at USNI, where I spent all Thursday afternoon (great time). Bill Miller allowed me to take some old Proceedings issues he had laying around, including the 1899 edition with two very interesting articles from the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt. Interesting that his speech printed in that Proceedings could almost be given today without edit.

That night I met with Tal Malven and others who shall remain anonymous. If you don't know, Tal is professor of Naval Architecture at the Naval Academy, and over beers he showed me his model collection of CVN-21 alternatives that didn't make the cut (see picture above). Beer tastes better when you chat with some people, the beer was very good on Thursday night.

Might be of interest to some, but there were Mids out in Annapolis Thursday night until 11pm. New commandant has brought a new policy. I think this is a good change. I was thought it was interesting that Mids never apparently ever go to the naval institute. My impression was there is so much history there available that the mids are either ignorant about, or don't care about.

Friday I ended up being in meetings from 8am to 6pm, all of which were private. My only regret was that dinner with family didn't work out, but I will say one thing. If you ever stay at the Army/Navy club in DC, the library in that hotel is easily one of the best kept secrets in that town. I know, sounds like geek stuff, but don't knock it until you try it.

Saturday was Government 2.0 Camp at Georgetown. Very interesting. I actually found a Navy PAO there, a civilian, who is working with the MSC. The Air Force has a social media strategy which I'll discuss when they release some new stuff this week. There were some other interesting things discussed, but social media in government is a long way from reality.

I realized three things Saturday:

1) Jack Holt is the man.
2) Addressing IT challenges is the long term solution, not the short term problem.
3) The really smart people in the groups have never managed a major government project before, meaning the social media consultants need technical consultants.

I was able to finish Thomas Ricks book The Gamble while on the trip. That is a really damn good book.

Finally, it is interesting to talk about social media as if I'm some sort of evangelist, because I'm really not. I write a blog. I know how to build online communities, but I think social media is only for organizations that know what they want. While I can help a company answer those questions, I can't answer those questions for a company.

A lot of people kept wondering "how do you do it at all hours of the day and night." Uhm, I don't actually... I do wake up in the middle of the night to inspect some scripts that I usually schedule, but I'm not up all night and working all day as it looks. For example, it is 6pm on Sunday and this post is scheduled to run at 6am on Monday. That is why everything looks like it runs in the middle of the night, I schedule it to go at that time. If I send an email to you in the middle of the night, it is because I am up actually doing some work, not blogging (in IT, we do maintenance in the middle of the night so we don't disrupt services during business hours). I don't sleep like normal people, although it still comes in at about 6-7 hours a night like everyone else.

I have tons and tons of stuff, but I also have lots of catch up so it will take a bit to get back to normal.