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)

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)

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 referred to the INSA Analytic Tansformation conference in a previous post and a friend sent me a link to the INSA Analytic Transformation presentations in video. (Thanks friend!)

I haven't had a chance to watch them yet, but feel free to take a look at them and post your thoughts and comments (good or bad) here. 

The one that might be interesting is: A-Space: Bringing Web 2.0 to IC Collaboration by Robert Cardillo

I'm listening to it and one interesting stat is that 61% of employees at DIA have been at DIA under 5 years. Interesting!

Another quote (which is kinda scary, but true) is "we don't know what we know." 

One question that was presented was curious: "What tests have been done to demonstrate the utility of A-Space?" 

My answer: how can you really test a social network? You can test its features, but the most important part of social software is the people that will on the network. A social network could have the greatest features in the world, but if noone uses it, it's worthless.

another question presented to Mr. Cardillo: "Do you see a place for a Second Life-like concept in the IC?"

his answer: "That's where these people have these fictitious lives on the Net. I don't think so, I hope not."

my answer: He probably doesn't really know what it is so he may have been a little premature in stating that he doesn't think especially since Sean Dennehy, the CIA's Chief of Intellipedia development, recently was in FCW article:

Dennehy added that some users are asking for a virtual world for the intelligence community similar to Second Life.

“I think it is a no-brainer,” he said. “We could use it for training and other things.”

Hey if the CDC has Hygeia Philo, the virtual public health worker in the "virtual CDC" (in Second Life), why can't the IC have virtual workers?

An even better reason why the US Intelligence Community should be on Second Life is here. Scary... The US IC may need to speak with their Aussie counterparts...

Posted by eMarv at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | 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)