Dateline: Same Holiday Inn as last night, outside BWI Airport, Baltimore MD, 29 Sept

Boy, that's a real old SNL reference!

Long day with much to tell, but too tired. Spent money with US Air Force strategic planners in Pentagon discussing their future wargame strategies for capturing the real tasks ahead not just for the Leviathan force, but for the Sys Admin one as well. The Air Force remains, as always, my most receptive audience. There is a good story to tell on this interaction, but it deserve some real time and effort to spell it out, so I'll do it tomorrow sometime. There's an admission of error involved on my part, so you want to do it right.

Spent afternoon giving the brief at a sort of a midcareer "university" for intelligence community officials, a workshop series that's run for them by a special private contractor somewhere in proverbial Northern Virginia. A very interesting audience with very good questions. I enjoyed the interaction immensely and felt recharged intellectually as I headed out the door.

In all, the day told me that I do my best learning when I get the chance to really vet my stuff with wide-ranging audiences. I took so much in during the past two days, I really need several quiet hours in my office to figure out what it all means. Based just on what I got yesterday from the J-5 people, or specifically from one very sharp Navy SEAL, I spent about 90 minutes this morning adding all sorts of new graphics to a number of existing slides, making points that I now realize remain unclear in both the brief and PNM.

I know I get a lot of interesting feedback by vetting stuff here, but there's nothing like F2F with serious practictioners to move the many piles of ideas in your head. Frankly, nothing replaces a live audience and the fear/thrill factor it generates deep within this inveterate performer. TV just doesn't compare, despite the richness.

That's a point my buddy Art Cebrowski always likes to make: there is a trade-off between reach and richness: you go for one and you tend to sacrifice the other. That's why I don't think I could live on either just briefs or just books. I need both. I need the richness to replenish, and the reach to feel the impact.

Nuf said. Lights out.

No stories to blog today, but see that I managed to post yesterday's blog and its accompanying host of articles.