All news, All about Intellipedia!

I had the pleasure of speaking with Andrea Baker recently about Intellipedia and all the great things she is doing.

We talked about:

• how she got started in the IC and Intellipedia and was recruited by Don Burke
• how Intellipedia makes blogs and a-space better
• a-space and that it is not a facebook for spies (yes, its for networking, but also sharing information, sharing rss feeds)
• a world without intellipedia?
• metrics
• the future of intellipdeia - she wants bots!
• volunteer gardeners
• focusing on management chain buy in
• DNI being supportive of Intellipedia
• Webcams in the Intelligence Community!
• how people were scared of computers, email and intellipedia
• second life sucking (ok, she didn't say that exactly...)
• discussing intellipedia on change.gov
• Obama's Intellipedia account

Listen in!

Download the interview!

BTW, here's Andrea's bio:
Andrea Baker served in the United States Army from 1994-1998 as a Signals Intelligence Analyst and an Arabic Linguist. Following her military service in the Army, Andrea became a career consultant for the Federal Government, supporting the CIA, DIA, NSA, NOAA, and the Pentagon. Andrea's background originally started in web design, graphics and web development and has transitioned from development and design over the years from multimedia design, technical lead, and project manager. In 2005, Andrea noticed the growing social web on the Internet and saw the future of how this could be applied to business and Government. Andrea joined Navstar, Inc. in 2006 as the Director of Technology. Under this role Andrea has helped their customers utilize Enterprise 2.0 tools effectively. She specializes in the user community advocacy and application developer liaison, through tools like wikis, blogs, and other social web tools.

About Navstar:
Navstar’s Mission is to provide Information Technology Services and Innovative Enterprise Consulting Solutions to our customers. We accomplish this by delivering quality services on time and within budget while meeting and exceeding our customer’s expectations.

Navstar highlights:

• Headquarters Falls Church, Virginia
• 48 Employees
• WBE Certification
• 6.5 million Revenue 2007
• Averaging 40% growth 4 years in a row
• Cleared Facility
• 2006, 2007 Washington Business Journal, listed as Top 25 Small Technology Companies
• Diversity Business Awards 2007, Top Woman Owned Businesses in Virginia ranked 14 out of 100 awardees

Tags: andreabaker, intellipedia, intelligence community, a-space, gardener, don burke, sean dennehy, wikipedia, webcam, collaboration, information sharing, change.gov, obama, second life, rss feed sharing

Posted by eMarv at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems like it was only a month or so that I wrote about Bureaupedia. Why Techipedia now? It's not like DOD didn't know. (I've added emphasis and comments to some excerpts below.)

Continue reading "Say it ain't so, John! - DOD jumps on wiki bandwagon - Techipedia! aahh!" »

Posted by eMarv at 03:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I just saw Steve Radick's post about Bureaupedia and he was generally in agreement. Why duplicate efforts?

Check out his post (and at least comment on his post, if you don't comment on mine :):

Your Organizationopedia - Make it Stop!! | Social Media Strategery

Tags: buraeupedia, intellipedia, fbiwiki, steve radick, your organizationopedia

Posted by eMarv at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had the great opportunity to speak with Chris Rasmussen, Social Software Knowledge Manager and Trainer, US Intelligence Community, or in other words, one of the pioneers of the Intellipedia and social media movement in the Intelligence Community and the United States government, in general. (His full bio is below.)

We spoke about how he became involved with Intellipedia, the past, present and potential future of Intellipedia, virtual worlds, global collaboration, open source intelligence, mashups (can I call it "intellimashing" :) and purple intelligence. Don't know what purple intelligence is? Well, then you should listen below:

Download the interview!

Chris Rasmussen Bio
Mr. Chris Rasmussen is a social software knowledge manager and trainer within the US Intelligence Community (IC).  Mr. Rasmussen believes that lightweight and inexpensive "social software" tools such as Intellipedia (wiki), blogs, tag|connect (social bookmarking service), widgets, mashups, etc. provide a transparent and effective way to exchange knowledge over the IC enterprise.  These tools, in agency-neutral space, have considerable advantages over exceedingly complex databases and applications often with opaque data access layers isolated within agency footprints.

Mr. Rasmussen is the founder and lead instructor of NGA Social Software 101, which teaches how to use Web 2.0 tools to create and aggregate transparent, agency-neutral, topical knowledge.  The training plan for this course has been modeled by many law enforcement, military, and intelligence organizations.

In addition to social software, Mr. Rasmussen argues for the increased use of podcasts/vodcasts and videogame-based learning for knowledge transfer across the IC enterprise.  Mr. Rasmussen is also an evangelist for the increased use of "open source intelligence"- that gleaned from public documents, databases, blogs, videos, radio broadcasts, newspapers and discussion boards-within the IC.

Mr. Rasmussen holds a BA in History and Masters in National Security Studies.  He was selected as one the "Federal 100" by Federal Computer Week in 2008.  This award is giving to top executives from government, industry and academia that had the greatest impact on the government information systems community.

A special thanks to NGA Public Affairs Office for putting this interview together.

By the way, comments and questions are my new best friends, so please post any comments you may have. Thanks for adding a new friend! :)

Tags: chrisrasmussen, intellipedia, nga, interview, intelligence community, purple intelligence, intellimashing, mashups, social media, collaboration, information sharing, virtual worlds, second life, ivideo, tagconnect, social software, wikipedia, open source intelligence, osint

Posted by eMarv at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Why is it news that Google sells to the Intelligence Community? Would it be news if Google sold servers or donated (for that matter) to a group that is looking to end world poverty?

Or are they just piggybacking on Intellipedia's success (not that Google needs it)?

Or could it be just opportunistic PR for Google. Personally, I think it's the latter since I doubt that Google only recently started pursuing government work. 

It also helps to have a CIA Intellipedia expert, like Sean Dennehy, comment about Intellipedia in the same article (though he does not necessarily endorse Google). It adds to Google's credibility (again not that they need it).  

Don't get me wrong, I like Google. I just wanted to point out their cleverness! :) Looks like their innovation does end in the server room! ;-)

Posted by eMarv at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This doesn't have anything to do with Intellipedia, but it could have implications on the future of the IC... and its probable use of Second Life, for example.

I came across this NASA MMO sources sought notice on FBO and thought it was interesting. I also found the NASA MMO website. (Download a PDF version of the RFI.)

Anyone interested in teaming up ? :)

Blogged with Flock

Tags: intellipedia, nasa mmo, fed biz opps, nasa, mmo, rfi, intelligence community future, virtual worlds, second life

Posted by eMarv at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I came across a post on the MAZZ-INT blog on AFCEA's website. It appears that he went to the Analytic Transformation conference (that I really wanted to go to :) and from what he wrote, it appears that he has seen this before to some extent. Not the specific technologies that are being used in Intel 2.0 (e.g. Intellipedia and A-Space), but the thought processes behind them. And he notes the following at the end of his post:

Going back to the future, it is worth remembering those CMS [what some think of as the predecessor to the DNI] IC collaboration conferences showed, and the 9-11 and WMD commissions found, that IT tools and DCIDs don’t naturally lead to collaboration or intelligence sharing. The captain in Cool Hand Luke learning that he could not mandate communication should be a cautionary tale for the IC on this journey to transform analysis.

My advice to the IC is this: get the tools discussed in Chicago to transform analysis through collaboration and intelligence sharing in place quickly, but do not expect this behavior to be commonplace until the community leadership models it, values it, and incentivizes it.

In his post and words, I see skeptical optimism in his words. They are the words of someone who has seen and heard this before but is hopeful that this time it will be different.

So the real question to the entire community is: What is going to be different about this time around?

Anyone care to elaborate or speculate?

One note, based on Jesse Wilson's comments regarding General Cartwright, I think some leaders are already modeling and valuing "it." Now let's see if they incentivize it!

Posted by eMarv at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just saw this on InformationWeek's website where Dr. Wertheimer explains A-Space further:

In December, the DNI will launch A-Space, a portal that will eventually include everything from wikis, blogs, social networking and personalization to RSS feeds, collaborative Web-based word processing, mash-ups, and content tagging all built atop an underlying services-oriented architecture.

A-Space will begin life as a portal that includes a Web-based word processing tool akin to Google Docs, a wiki-based intelligence community encyclopedia known as Intellipedia [self-referencing link, I gotta get links somehow :) ] and access to three "huge, terabyte databases" of current raw intel for analysts to sift through. It'll be scaled for 10,000 users at day one. By the end of 2008, the DNI hopes to bring in other resources like intelligence blogs, social networking capabilities akin to a Facebook for spooks, secure Web-based e-mail, better search functionality, and much more.

So the reality is that true social networking capabilities will not be available until 2008. That's disappointing... More on this later (if I remember), I really need to get some sleep. (It's 4AM.)

BTW, I suggest that you read the entire article. One particularly curious thing I found: "The DNI has even been in talks with IBM about how to put 3-D gaming to work to do analytical problem solving."

Why only IBM, why aren't they talking to MMOGs?

Posted by eMarv at 02:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that blind friend requests are necessarily a bad thing (after all I do accept practically all friend requests on LinkedIn)... I'm pretty sure there probably won't be too many SPAM profiles on it...

Anyways, I must say that I have some mixed feelings about A-Space (maybe because I'm not on it...). On the positive note, I think it is great that the Intelligence Community is expanding its thinking on need to share/write to release vs need to know/write to captivity. I think that A-Space could really enable folks to come closer together online while they are disbursed throughout. And the more people know each, the easier it is for them to share information with their friends.

Actually thinking about this further, this could help enable the Intelligence Community to become more disbursed (so that many agencies do not have to be so close to DC), which in turn could have many other effects including movement of jobs away from DC and (since I'm in real estate, I have to think about real estate) a potentially greater flattening of real estate values in the DC area (maybe I'll write a post about this on the real estate blog). But I'm getting ahead of myself, back to A-Space...

Rethinking my original mixed feelings, I don't think there is anything incredibly negative about it. Sure, people will have to learn a new system, but guess what, this system has not been created for the backwards-thinkers that purely think that "Loose Lips Sink Ships" because in reality loose lips among friends with the same access and that are generally working together for a better world is a good thing. Other arguments against may be: "I already have soooo much to do, now you're giving me another place to check for stuff." My rebuff to that would be, firstly, (if A-Space is like outside social networks), it will not necessarily be a place to create content... ooops... I reread the FT.com article and noticed the following (probably from Dr. Wertheimer's comments):

A-Space will be equipped with web-based email and software that recommends areas of interest to the user just like Amazon suggests books to its customers. The site will also allow users to create and modify documents, and determine user privileges, in a similar fashion to Google Documents.

So actually this could be a competitor for Intellipedia, but I sure hope it isn't. I don't think folks need another place to create items of interest. So the "another place to check" argument could be valid. I wonder how they will address that...

Looking at the rest of the extract above, I think that the Amazon-like recommendations could be helpful. However, I think that the true value of a social network is in connecting people because others can find out about people they don't know through their interests, past experiences, etc and then connect with them.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the community adopts A-Space and what percentage of the community will actually create a profile on A-Space so that they can reach critical mass because a social network without a good percentage (maybe in the Intel Community, that's 50% or so) of members is worthless. All they would be doing is connecting with people they know.  

So we'll see what happens...

BTW, I think I'd like to attend the conference that Dr. Fingar referred to in the article:

In September, the DNI and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a public-private intelligence group, will hold a conference to enlist support and ideas from the private sector and academia.

Found it on the INSA site, costs $695 for non-government non-INSA members, 5-day conference held in Chicago (9/4-9/6), online and in DC (10/11). 

One final thought, I wonder what role the Program Manager of the Information Sharing Environment played, if any, in the implementation of A-Space and for that matter Intellipedia and the IC del.icio.us equivalent. It says on their website that they are "responsible for information across the federal government..." But they haven't had a press release since April 2007.

BTW, I first found out about A-Space on the TechDirt Blog. And saw the article they referenced on FT.com.

Posted by eMarv at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Blogs and wikis are the PRESENT and the near future!

I think that eventually voice recording, search and retreival will play a larger part of our lives. We are already starting to see it with podcasts, but as it becomes easier and easier to post, search and retrieve voice, we will start seeing more and more podcasts or vlogs (voice logs) instead of regular old web 2.0 blogs. :) Maybe web 3.0 or 4.0 is where voice rules. We'll see. I wonder how voice could work with wikis though... Imagine hearing an article from multiple people. It wouldn't be pretty... ;-)

While I'm pondering, something else that I think will be the future of spying (which I have previously mentioned) is virtual worlds like Second Life. I actually think that virtual worlds will eventually (in 10 years or so) become a part of all of our lives.

But I digress (maybe because I haven't posted to any of the blogs in a while, busy on vacation and trying to buy as-is investment property :), what does this have to do with Intellipedia? Nothing exactly, but it does have to do with improving the Intel Community.

My hope is that eventually all "good" (I know, I know, what's good?) intel organizations around the world will work together. So I leave you with this question, what can we do to enable that kind of collaboration?

BTW, here's the link to the ZDNet Government Blog post. 

Posted by eMarv at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)