A big speech to a big crowd: the "defense track" at the annual ESRI users' mega-conference in San Diego
Thomas Barnett
Dateline: SWA flights from San Diego to Indy via Las Vegas, 26 July 2005
ESRI brought me to San Diego this week to address a plenary session of the defense track at their annual users conference, so big at roughly 20,000 attendees that the San Diego convention center plans its capacity limits largely around this annual conference-the biggest one it hosts each year (and if you know anything about SD, this town is built around hosting national conferences like no other city save Phoenix or Orlando).
And no, I can't remember what the acronym ESRI stands for, other than the company is the global leader in GIS, or geospatial information systems (geez, I hope I got that one right). Anyway, their core technology is all about mapping information across geographies of all sorts, so the marriage of my vision (the new map) and their way of presenting and organizing information is just about perfect.
The key players in bringing me to this huge conference were ESRI's John Day and John Young. Day saw the CSPAN brief last December and asked Young, the former CIO of the CIA and a former senior player in the National Intelligence Council, to check me out as well. Both were sold on what I am trying to do, so I met with them earlier this year. For a company that specializes in "big pictures," they saw me as the perfect horizontal thinker for a conference that's largely focused on technology and applications.
They were right. Day and Young gave me a very privileged spot: the morning plenary of the defense track, meaning about 1500-to-2000 professionals from through the national intelligence community and associated private-sector industry. I spoke in a huge room that was set up to accommodate 6k, so we roped off two-thirds of the seats. To my amazement, the other third was awfully filled up, with a standing-room audience in the back that never bled off, even as I went over my budgeted time (although a mad dash to the bathrooms ensued when I signed off on the presentation after 90 minutes).
BTW, this was first time I ever spoke in a space so large that I had a serious stadium-like echo effect with the sound system. Unreal. Not as hard as all that simultaneous translation stuff coming back at you through audience headphones (the multinational crowd at the Central Command's special ops symposium last month), but still, it was very hard to tune out. I mean, when you hear someone repeating every word you say and his voice is exactly like your own, your brain simply wants to stop and listen, it's so G.D. mesmerizing! Hard not to start slurring, like during the reverbing cellphone conversation, but I did okay. I just pretended I was like my wife or kids listening to me playing a DVD of some brief of mine at home: I just started ignoring what I was saying. Lost my grip a couple of times, but it was a useful mental exercise and a lesson for future appearances.
I took about 10 minutes of questions and then held court for about 50 minutes more with a follow-on crowd that came up to me and wanted more, despite the next track of sessions beginning elsewhere. Now more than ever ESRI's senior defense guys want me for an early November conference in San Antonio that's not as big in size but packs a lot more policy influence. Previously, they had offered me a slot on Halloween, and this father of four told them "no way." Now, as I realize my book tour will be still in fairly full swing at that time, I told them they needed to package up the appearance as a book promotion to satisfy Putnam. Young said it was easily done, so I'm hoping it will work out. I'm really eager to continue the dialogue and relationship with ESRI. Their stuff is really amazing and I want to be associated with it. As I build up the bonds with Enterra, I think a lot of good synergy is possible.
Money to be made? Damn straight. But even more important to me is the potential to shape some huge private-sector-driven technology rule-set resets that continue to unfold post-9/11. What America does, both in the defense sector and in the financial sector (and boy, are those two sectors more interdependent with each passing day) will set standards for the rest of the world, so to me, this is God's work -- serious SysAdmin work -- and I'm looking to play the same thought leadership role in the market as I believe I have carved out for myself in the military, pushing that military-market nexus for all the good I know it can and will achieve in the years ahead-no matter what we call this conflict/struggle/war/clash.
So I left San Diego more psyched than ever about the road ahead. It can't just be all books and articles and blogs for this vision to succeed and take root. You have to play on all relevant levels -- and you have to avoid any speaking engagements on Halloween if you want to play dad to all relevant children.
So I try to remember the responsibilities across all 360 degrees of my life.
Still, between BFA and the continuing draw of PNM, between the speeches and articles, between the alliance with Enterra and the possibilities of new ties with big players like Oak Ridge National Lab and ESRI, and between the successful move (so far) to Indy and the proceeding house construction, I need to get down on my knees more often in church and thank somebody beyond my lucky stars for all that's been granted me in the past 12 months.
On a smaller note, so much happier to return on SWA than the flights out on American. Far more crowded and some delays again today going through Las Vegas (where you can gamble your last money away at the airport before you fly off!), but definitely a more relaxed atmosphere for me. Southwest just feels like my home in the sky, creature of habit that I am. Cuisine sucks though, but at least it's still free. Yesterday I scored a great feast from Panda Express in Ohare. Today it's the Snack Pack from Southwest -- a diet of crackers and bits that only my five -- year-old and toddler could love. Still, one-hour-delay out of Las Vegas today on SWA earns a free beer, whereas several hours of delay on American yesterday earned me nothing more than the right to buy a snack pack for $3. That's how glad I was to find some good Asian at Ohare.
Also good about living in Indy: the much shorter flight back from West coast means I caught a 3pm flight and actually got out of San Diego. When you fly to RI, you have to leave around 1pm.
On a related note, I can't believe how good the memory foam king has been to sleep on in the new apartment (we didn't break it out until we moved it on Saturday night). Just two nights of sleep on it, but I kid you not -- no antihistamines required since because the sense of drowsiness during the day evaporates despite the high allergy environment right now. Also wake up with a superior sense of muscle and skeletal relaxation and recovery in my sleep-no kinks whatsoever. Having this equivalent of a TempurPedic built custom at a mom-and-pop mattress manufacturer in Fall River before we left was a brilliant choice by my spouse. Half the cost of the high-advertising-quotient TempurPedic, which tries to convince you that it is somehow the only "approved by NASA" memory foam mattress peddler in the universe (really, does anyone wait on NASA's opinion for beds?).
Am I feeling good right now? Like everything is coming together? Yes, and it sure beats the sense of "life out of balance" that was most of the previoius two months. You know, I don't think I've ever disliked my spouse or kids more than at points during this entire move process. And yet, I don't know if we're ever collectively taken so many opportunities to tell one another how much we love each other than during this entire move process. Yes, moving is stress personified, and it feels great to have it behind me, but like all difficult things it taught me more than the easier parts of life."
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