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Random Thoughts

Flying ATA

I flew ATA to Chicago and back for the Meshforum conference.

The good:

  • Nice comfortable seats.
  • They let me check in at a kiosk, and choose my seat – and exit rows were an option! I had nice legroom going out.
  • On the way back, I had switched my flight, but I got to the airport very early, and they put me on an earlier flight for no cost, not standby – a real ticket. The nice woman at the desk even offered me the seat behind the empty space where the exit door is – super legroom and a whole row to myself.
  • Midway. It is a lot closer and there’s much less bother and fuss there than O’Hare. There’s even a way to get downtown via the “L” subway.  

The less good:

  • No food. Lots of pretzels and soda, though.
  • Fee for switching my ticket, which had been a $300 round trip restricted fare, to a flight a day earlier – $142. That’s about the price of the one-way for the math-challenged. I think that’s high, even for a same-day switch. They did help me out when I got to the airport early, which did take some of the sting out.
  • Their LGA terminal shared space looks like it was rennovated. In 1969.

Bottom line – I’d use it again.

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meshforum Random Thoughts

Loops

Worldchanging reports that Jamis was caught on Flickr by me. He then took a picture of me reading that article and went to upload the picture. To complete the loop– I took a picture of him uploading the picture of me reading the article about me taking the picture of him. I love this.

 

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meshforum meshforum2005 Random Thoughts

CAPT (Ret.) Linda M. Lewandowski,

CAPT (Ret.) Linda M. Lewandowski, United States Navy

Logistics in the 21st century security environment – really about building large scale organizational change.

Recognition of the complexity and the multi-dimensional global environment.

Distributed Adaptive Operations  – Security – diplomatic – economic – social – and ability to sense across mutiple dimensions and respond.

I’m paying more attention than typing – lots of new ideas for me….

DOD case study – sense and respond logistics – > 1/4 of DOD budget is logistics based. Catalyze transformation to a joint, adaptive logistics capability throughout DOD. Incorporate S&R logistics to allow DOD to gather operational data and evalute the sense and respond concept.

Imbed into DOD corporate DNA.

Ability to change the process was dependent on increasing the speed of command.

 

 

 

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meshforum meshforum2005 Random Thoughts

John Garstka – Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense

John Garstka – Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of DefenseNetwork centric operations and warfare.  Book – Network Centric Warfare.

Transformation  – co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology, new sources of power,  – broad and sustained competitive advantage.

Shift from industrial to information age: cold war containment strategies are not as relevant. Globalization and connectedness . Security = defense + all else. DOD spends more on IT than any organization in the world – but there are also social network and incentive issues which keep orgs stuck in industrial age behavior. What do they have to change to get people unstuck and into the information age response set.

Thomas Barnett– The Pentagon’s New Map (article) The “Mostly Disconnected Gap” – Life in the gap is poor, nasty, short, brutal, solitary.

There is an emergening security environment – catastrophic, disruptive, 2 others…

Transformational goals for Transformed Joint Forces –

There has been an order of magnitude change in key dimensions of warfare. – Domains – shared situational, – social domain  

 situational – cognitive domain

infomation created and shared – information domain  – it is key, but you need to go through the cognitive and social domains  to get the change out.

 strike maneuver protect – physical doman

Part of the difficult in transforming to network centric ops – is a social network problem. People in IT orgs might not understand how to put out the information in way users can understand it. There are key stakeholders that don’t talk with each other. Implementers don’t necessarily understand the creators.

Video– new situational awareness. Networked forces can outfight non-network forces. Slide still looks like major conventional engagements – NCO case studies are on their website. Stryker Brigade Combat Team (BCP JRTC) report -from Iraq. A robust networked force improves information sharing. Info sharing and collaboration enhances the quality of info and shared situational awareness. Sahred situational awareness enables collaboration and self synchronization and enhances speed and sustainability of command – dramatic increase in mission effectiveness.

Stryker Brigade – Change process and structure  – improve effectiveness. DIfference between a light infantry brigade  vs. a Stryker brigade – organic – new capabilities. Differences –

Lt. Inf – Limited interaction by radio –  Stryker – widespread horizontal interaction, collaborate from anywhere.

There is limited bandwidth at the pointy edge of the spear (forward units may have about 14.4kbps capabilities). However, with new tech, commanders get 2x-10 magnitude change in scale of information – much better picture, shared situational awareness, better operational decisions. Win battle for info advantage, improve positions, win battles.

Technology, process, people and organizations.

Analogy – knowing where your company resources are, where your packages, data etc are – better decision making – increase agility – decrease risk.

Conceptual frame work for network centric operations.

Metrics for the quality of this organic information. Case studies help sell the changes. Leaders need to be able to understand benefit and support your case.

Really a fantastic presentation.

Question – terorrists are networked forces – there is a degree of asymetry – small groups can affect large casuaties with non conventional weapons such as cars and improvised mines – how can we out network them?

Ans: You can have 100% info on your own forces, but may have 0% information on enemy. You have to penetrate their networks or capture their info. engage and draw them out, then respond to what they do. Separating the counter insurgents from their social network – benefits of terrorists going away outweighs the status quo.

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meshforum meshforum2005 Random Thoughts

Biological network model

Dr. Eivind Almaas of Notre Dame

Scale free network model – networks continuously expand by addition of nodes, new nodes prefer to link to highly connected nodes. Examples – new web pages, airport links. Model is preferential attachment – you get a power law distribution. Exponent changes when nodes age, when there are costs associated with attachment. Think high school – people want to hang out with the popular people.

In biology – protein networks – nodes are proteins, links are physical interactions. Yeast interactions get power law distribution. Scale free type of network, high clustering. There are different local growth rules that give effective preferential attachment – even though proteins don’t express preference or have desires, etc.

Proteins with lots of neighbors have preferential attachments. You can look at chart and see older proteins gain more connections. Similar curves for (spelling) nematode worms and (spelling) drosophilla (fruit flies).

Metabolic networks, driven by enzymes, have similar power law/scale free distributions.

How does structure influence function? Flux balance analysis – very complex stuff…

The power laws come from the structure of the network – the metabolic network is scale free, and therefore the flux distribution is therefore scale free.

Analogies: larger the network, smaller the core, a collective network effect.