Background slides re: grand bargain proposal

Drew these up as a way of putting my head in the right space before we attempted the first drafts of the proposal.

Super-empowering effort: finishing the Technology Trends page on the Wikistrat model

Sweet mother of God what an effort!  Worst case on the previous ones (Political, Security, Social-Demographics, Sustainability) were two days (working DEEP into the night), but this one took three days when all said and done. Naturally came in "heaviest" at 5700-words (norm is 5200).  

Why such a challenge?  I'm not a hard scientist nor technologist. My interests lie primarily with how technology can send the planet down this path or that.  So I had to spend a lot more time thinking about my "six packs" (major trends and major forecasts and the 2 risks = 2 opportunities + 2 dependencies).  No attempt to cover the vast universe of technology, just trying to pick out the quarterback, left offensive tackle, number one receiver, strong outside linebacker, cover cornerback and free safety (yes, I have a West Coast bias after all these years)--you know, the key players that determine the team's overall prospects, or the ones you hope are all All-Pro caliber (as Rodgers, Clifton, Jennings, Matthews, Woodson and Collins all are!).  

Then there was this weird challenge of capturing regional trends. How in God's name do you do that? Well, you read a lot of UN reports that track things like R&D spending as percent of GDP, world share in scientific papers, innovation rankings, levels of communications network penetration, patents, and so on.  And what you discover is that educational systems and business risk-tolerance mean all, but connectivity is fast relieving the extreme imbalance (Core is responsible for 95% of all technology/science/innovation, while one-third-of-humanity that is Gap is basically half-Israel and everybody else).  

Then there's the drill down on individual countries, like what's up with technology in Turkey today?  Turns out there's a UN report with a chapter on Turkey.  Here you notice things like Iran could be Turkey overnight if . . . the place wasn't run so badly.

I have to admit, despite the teeth-pulling nature of the effort, it was a lot of fun to investigate and write.  I now feel myself to be superempowered on technology trends, like I just woofed down a Powerbar and a venti Latte!  I know I didn't get every tiny detail/interpretation right, but that's the beauty of the collaborative, online wiki-based venue: corrections and adjustments and expansions will be forthcoming from all the best kind of appropriate thinkers.  

More broadly, the whole point of this exercise is to create an intellectual, collaborative space where people truly interested in thinking systematically about the future are forced/encouraged by the horizontal layout to do so, and not just jump - day-in and day-out - along that one-damn-thing-after-another stream-of-MSM-stories consciousness, where your biases tend to crowd out what should be your analysis because there's too much to wade through and you lack the larger framework for assembling all the pieces.  

Left to your own devices, you're John Nash frantically stringing yarn between stories stapled to your shed wall and babbling to yourself about how it all comes together.

Or you walk yourself out of that shed, log on to Wikistrat, and join the party.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to think systematically about the world and its future as one big interlocking puzzle.  I mean, I spend TIME!  I can't help it; it's just how my mind thinks - as in, my first thoughts in the morning and my last ones as I drift off to sleep.  I even dream this stuff - and enjoy doing so.

But even here on the blog, with all my central data-system managing efforts, I'm constantly reduced to searching my online brain - frantically - on a regular basis to try and remember what it was that I came across that triggered this inter-connecting thought.  Simply put, the diary doesn't do it.  

But Wikistrat's model strikes me as excitingly close to the ideal: it's like this ultimately scalable space of whiteboards where I can draw out, in infinitely connecting expressions, my host of global/regional/national/sub & transnational scenarios and keep them updated, the sum intellectual effect of which is that I'm constantly prompted to think not just systematically across time but systematically across domains - i.e., not just go long but go wide.  

And I'm finding that a very pleasant sensation, like I'm working out daily and my muscle mass is building.

Yes I know this exclamation is self-serving, but as someone who's into his creativity above all else, this is what lights my engine.

The Disney rasta hat

Last time we went to Disney was, like the previous two trips, over New Year's.  Just the six of us then. Anyway, it was New Year's Day itself and we're in Epcot, and it's frickin' freezing, so I'm buying these four-fingered Mickey gloves cause we's suffering for some hand coverings.

Somewhere along the line we pick up this Disney rasta hat that's pretty popular.  I think it's officially a Goofy hat for some reason (that queer movie with his kids?).  Knit-style head-covering cap with over-the-ear-flaps with ties, but the draw is the neon rasta lengths that extend from the top.  I can't remember who gets it, but we bring it home and I think to myself, nobody is ever going to wear that . . . so distinctly Jamaican get-up.

Flash forward three years (?) and we have two girls from Ethiopia, which has its own, deep, strange, worth-researching historical-cultural-all-sorts-of-things link to Jamaica.

And it turns out my now-youngest, Abebu, who lacks her older sister's long locks, simply loves this hat and wears it ALL THE TIME.

I come up tonight from the basement and I notice it in the hallway, telling me she got up to go to the bathroom because when I chased her to bed tonight, she was wearing it.  

And it's so totally her in so many appropriate ways, that it just makes me laugh at the end of a shitty year that's just gotten a whole lot shittier lately.

So you remember to appreciate your kids.  Stuff and situations and challenges, they come and go, but your family--done right--stays on.  It is a primal connection, whether you're a plank-holder or just three months on the squad. Doesn't matter. You're in all the way.

And they bring you so many delights, that it makes everything else worthwhile--or just bearable.

"It ain't bragging if you can do it" -- Critt Jarvis

See the comment below in the evangelicals-in-Brazil post, as it started with some feedback on my recent talk at Monterey:

Tom - Great feedback from a couple buddies of mine at NPS two weeks ago regarding your presentation. If they weren't on the edge of their seats listening, you had them on the floor laughing with your unique wit.

Yes, I've still got it.

Enterra client Conair wins prestigious supply chain industry award recognition

Conair, Enterra Solutions' foundational client in the consumer products/supply-chain management area, was cited for Outstanding Achievement in the Dick Clark Supply Chain Award category by the leading industry journal Consumer Goods Technology at their annual awards dinner a few days back.

This is what the citation read:

Named in honor of the supply chain visionary, this award is presented to a consumer goods firm for excellence in executing improvements in supply or demand planning, warehouse management, transportation management, S&OP processes or supply chain network design.

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT

Conair Corporation: Conair co-developed a compliance management system with Enterra Solutions, using new "learning rules" software, that allows it to identify in advance shipments to retail customers that are at "at risk" of not being compliant with shipping rules. This allows Conair to proactively avoid penalty charges and, if they are unavoidable, it then tracks all of the details necessary to dispute a penalty charge. It is now offered to the CPG industry as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution on a subscription basis.

Click here for the announcement at Consumer Goods Technology magazine.

This is what Conair Global CIO John Harding said upon accepting the award:

We at Conair are honored to accept this award and certainly to be recognized in this category. It would be remiss of me not to point out all of the team members who supported this effort. John Mayorek, people from our compliance management team, and, most importantly, our software development partners Enterra Solutions. This system is considered innovative because Enterra Solutions has this proprietary, rules-based technology that senses changes in data, applies rules, and identifies conflicts with our supply chain partners. It is definitely helping us partner with our retailer customers as well as improving our productivity. This is the first of a series of predictive, analytic products that we are working on with Enterra. Finally, the good news is that these applications are actually available to all consumer goods manufacturers. Enterra Solutions is selling these as software-as-a-service offerings – so please see Enterra Solutions.

Naturally, we at Enterra are ecstatic about this recognition.

A really special time at Monterey

I had a wonderful time at the Naval Postgraduate School, speaking there as part of the Secretary of Navy Lecture Series.

Flew much of Monday to get there--all American.  Small plane to Ohare, then biggie to LA, then Eagle to Monterey.  Got there around 5pm, picked up by Navy enlisted and we hit a Chinese takeout before my hotel--that historic old Del Monte place last rebuilt during Prohibition (many stories there, I am told).  Big suite of rooms, all with, like, 14-foot ceilings.  Watched MNF and yoga'd the kinks out of my back.

Tuesday up to breakfast in basement cafeteria (pretty good), then day of intense writing in the room, broken up by a long interview with Bill Powell of Time on a piece he's working on WRT China.  Finished up writing, worked the brief some (to include working in some of the Israel-strikes-Iran scenario stuff from a past Wikistrat drill).  Picked up by female USN officer and we walk over to the gigantic auditorium they've got.  I mean . . . BIIG!  Like a 1,000 seater with high galleries left and right and a wide and very deep main section with easy to walk up steps (which I did a lot on both aisles, as the stage was too cramped and distant and I like getting up in people's faces so they can really see me).  Projector was solid, with a gorgeous rendering of blues, which works for my stuff.  Sound on the lavalier was spectacularly crisp, which I love, because the more nuanced the sound, the more you can modulate and work your voice--from everything short of stage whispers to serious booms.  Integrated sound on Mac was good too--very clean.  Only catch?  I go up about 30 yards on either side and I risked losing the RF clicker, so I had to watch that a bit and adjust.

BTW, I would love a shot of that auditorium, if anyone has got one.

Anyway, after AV check, whisked to meet retired 3-star Dan Oliver, who I did remember from the 90s at CNA or somewhere in my Naval War College travels.  We had nice chat in his office.  He told me the students nominate the speaker series and then there's this big drill of debating the choices and voting on them in some manner.  They had tried to get me a couple years back, but we couldn't swing it.  This year worked, although we failed to make a SF (Pacific Club?) invite happen on the same trip, which was too bad, because it is a haul. But real point: you don't come unless you're a strong student choice.

After the chat, my nominator escorted me over to the haul and then intro'd me while I miked up in back of theater, walking all the way down to the floor in front of the stage so I could click my book images while he recited them.  

Then I plunged in.  Supposed to talk 60 and went more like 90-95, but didn't lose anybody.  Place was about 80% full, so say 800.  Military officers from all over world (more on that in second).  

I started pretty well--a bit funnier than usual off the bat, but what really got me going was the huge space, the big crowd and their strong responsiveness.  This was one of those audiences that you live for--the one that reminds you why you do this, why this career matters to you, and what your ultimate impact is.

I did only 30 "white" slides (white backgrounds--my substantive ones), so 30 in 90 showed I was really luxuriating in the material (norm is 2 mins per white slide), so I was pulling out every good line in the warehouse because this was a really fun, responsive, engaged, quick-to-laugh-hard audience.  And because it was military and global, I could be my usual politically incorrect self--offending 360 degrees--and keep them with me throughout, because that military sense of humor, well, it's a hard one to explain.  While leaning to the conservative side, these people have seen the world like nobody else in America (ditto for the foreign officers relative to their own populations), so their ability to laugh at things is really a lot more flexible than your average US crowd, and I love to cross lines.

Anyway, it was a memorable 90 for me.  I was really grooving in that unconscious way I get when I'm firing on all cylinders and birthing 1-2 or more keepers (which I never write down; I simply remember when they're good) over the show.  It truly is my drug of choice.

After I finished, we did probably 25 minutes of questions from the audience, getting us to about five pm (I started at 3pm).  Then a student leader gives me the ceremonial mug (more on that) and the command coin (very cool with engraving of old Del Monte hotel on one side and shield of school on other).

After the cavernous room clears, I go maybe another solid hour doing Q&A with those who want more (starts with about 30 and gets down to 4-5).  Here's the cool bit: I talk about the south-v-north Sudan vote during the brief (on tip of my tongue because I made the upcoming vote one of my "Six Degrees of Integration" small-entries in the sample Wikistrat "CoreGap" weekly that we'll debut--for free--next Monday).  So during the small group Q&A/signings, this African officer in green comes up and asks me a follow-on on the Sudan vote.  I notice the letters on his shoulder board:  SPLA, as in Sudan People's Liberation Army, or the South's legacy force from the long civil war, now clearly set to step into role as military of soon-to-be independent South Sudan--with this guy already studying at the Naval Postgrad School!).  That was a head-turner all right.

Of those 4-5, 3 are set to take me downstairs for drinks (to christen the mug) at the Trident student bar (pictured above, and notice all the pale mugs hanging from ceiling).  Turns out you get a mug as student, sign it on bottom, and then it's kept on the ceiling for you for your entire stint--taken down when you come in for your use and put back up til the next time, using these funky wooden sticks with basket-like tops.  I put my mug aside and had a nice Grey Goose martini instead.  I sat with my two hosts (faculty) and my nominating student and we shucked peanuts and had ours drinks for about an hour. Then another hour of talk over dinner.  Then they split and a crew of about 8 Civil Affairs officers descend, including one who knows my stuff forwards and backwards and has briefed it during SysAdmin stints basically everywhere the US mil has gone over the past 15 years (late Balkans forward).  We smoked a few cigarettes and they drank beers out of their mugs while I went non-alcoholic the rest of the night (I went with seltzer after the martini, cause I'm battling a broken eardrum on the right that's frequently infected--I will dispense with a quick repair of my 30-year-old eardrum grafting at UW-Madison with a revision tympanoplasty just before Xmas with my beloved ENT surgeon here).  That went from about 7pm to 1030. I signed many of the mugs and the maven's T-shirt.

The discussion with these guys and one gal was just amazing--the kind of feedback somebody like me needs to hear every six months or so to keep up the spirits and the drive.  Also a huge data dump on SysAdmin experiences (Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan) and some serious talk about how to get my stuff more widely distributed (where I brought up the emerging Wikistrat model), so hopefully we get something going there down the road, because I always love interacting with the CA crowd.  They are my tribe within the military, both within the Army and Marines proper and inside the SOF community.  Again, it just revitalizes to spend time with them, so I went as late as I could go, knowing I was flying 0-dark-30 in the ayem.

And yes, after talking heavily from about 2:00 til 10:30, with one drink and three cigs, my throat was pretty damn sore.

Flights back sucked, but I worked a lot anyway.  Monterey puddle-jumper had mechanical, so paid cab ride to SFO, which was pretty as rides go.  Then San Fran (leaving the World Series behind!) to Dallas, where I'm talking to Steve DeAngelis at 8pm local and he's like, "I'm on this plane getting set to leave Dallas!" (some of Enterra's medical work) and I'm like, "I'm inside the terminal!  Wave back at me!"  Total accident, of course, but weird.  I would have freaked if I'd bumped into him accidentally in the head or something.  That would have been so trippy.

Late flight to Indy from Dallas gets me home after midnight.  I write to chill a bit.  Read "John Adams" the last leg (so very good).

One last reminder to me:  this CA guy who knew my stuff forwards and backwards, was going on about all his favorite books and he mentions this fabulous "Ruling by Waves" and after I hear about it for 10 minutes, I'm sending myself an email on my Android so I don't forget.  I say, "Who's the author?" and it's an old Harvard classmate, Debora Spar, now a college president at a big liberal arts icon out east.  I was really ashamed I didn't know of the book, because I always liked Debora a ton back then (very collegial in a very competitive environment and sharp as tack) and I was just stunned I missed hearing about this book, which works so well with my own stuff.

So I promise now to get it and read it and probably write something on it, because it sounds right up my frontier-integrating ally.  Like my books, it seems to be read in the CA community.

Anyway, I gotta crash.

Clubbing at the Del Monte (old school)

I got here last night before it got dark, and my Navy host took me to get some takeout before locking me up on base for the night. This is where I'm staying (a postcard of its third incarnation in 1926--see below).  The place has a Twenties sense of grandeur alright.  It's just been navalized and governmentized somewhat over the decades--sort of an over-the-top-BOQ (Bachelors & Officers Quarters).  Rooms are cavernous and I've got a suite.

Club Del Monte is an art deco jewel set amongst 25 acres of sprawling lawns dotted with oak, cypress and pine. Originally built in 1880 as the grand Hotel Del Monte, it was destroyed twice by fire and rebuilt. The present imposing structure (which is the 1926 incarnation) resembles a Spanish-Moorish fortress. It remained an elegant hotel until 1951, when it was acquired for the Navy's Naval Postgraduate School.

At this point, only a small section (on the pic, the first wing to the right as you enter the front) seems to be hotel rooms anymore.  Otherwise the rest appears to have been cannabilized into all manner of offices, schools of this and that, and so on--like any giant base facility.  Still, the sheer physicality of the place cannot be denied.

No proper desk in my suite (weird), so my work day sees me hunched over a side table.  Works because I've been doing the yoga lately (also good for the big mushy bed here, the kind that usually messes with my back).

If Mountain Runner is interested, then we can get together after my talk late this afternoon.  I'm usually pretty chatty after a talk.

The loss of a personal mentor and eminent defense thinker

An old friend, mentor, frequent boss, and co-author, Dr. Gary Federici died recently.

Here is his obit via the Washington Post:

FEDERICI GARY A. FEDERICI, Ph.D. Dr. Gary A. Federici passed away October 20th after a brief illness. He was born in Wareham, MA, on July 28, 1950. Gary was the son of Bernice E. Federici of Wareham, and graduated from Bishop Stang High School, in North Dartmouth. He received his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from U of Mass Lowell, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from Syracuse University. Dr. Federici was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Information Operations and Space in September 2004. In his role, Dr. Federici served as the principal advisor for space-related acquisition matters along with related business enterprise acquisition programs and information technology and resources management. In that capacity he provided acquisition guidance, oversight, and policy expertise for both the Navy and Marine Corps planning and programming staffs to ensure acquisition programs remained viable in funding of requirements, schedule and performance to reduce acquisition volatility. Over a 30-year period, Dr. Federici played a substantial role in shaping Navy policy on space and in developing tactical applications of C4ISR and space systems. He was instrumental in moving national security space systems products into mainstream naval operations, and in encouraging the Navy to participate fully in the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and other national security space and intelligence activities. In 2003, the Secretary of the Navy awarded him the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. The Director, National Reconnaissance Office/Under Secretary of the Air Force awarded him the NRO Medal of Distinguished Service in 2004. Dr. Federici received the Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal posthumously from the Secretary of the Navy. In addition to his mother, Bernice, Gary is survived by his cousin Diana L. Sosnowski (Tead), his uncle David F. Barry and numerous loving family members, friends and co-workers. There will be a mass at St. Patrick's Church at 82 High Street in Wareham, MA, on October 30, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. followed by a burial service and reception. Remembrances in Gary's name may be made to the American Heart Association . A Navy memorial service in the Washington, DC area will be held on December 10, 2010.

When I first met Gary at the Center for Naval Analyses in the early 1990s, he was this wonderfully mysterious figure who spent most of his time elsewhere in unnamed and unmentionable activities (i.e., working for NRO before its existence was acknowledged). Gary had a wonderful sense of humor, and was an amazing banterer. He always greeted the same mock-serious way, lowering his head and intoning deeply in his distinctive Cape Cod accent, "DOC-tor Bar-NETT!"  I would always reply, "DOC-tor FED-e-ri-ci!" and then we'd chuckle.  Gary was always self-deprecating about coming from what he saw as humble roots (I believe his people were in cranberries), and he liked that I came from a small town in Nowhere Wisconsin.  So I guess he always liked to celebrate, in that small way, our high academic achievements, as if it still tickled--daily--to consider how far he'd come.

Gary was a huge mentor to me, teaching me untold things about the defense bureaucracy.  He was more intelligent and knowledgable about the Pentagon bureaucracy (factions, wings, movements, etc.) than anybody I've ever met.  Gary's genius was in producing great work--in the movie sense.  He'd assemble the right mix of stars, shape the story and the sponsor's expectations, and then manage it all deftly from his desk, where he rarely sat because he tended to be in perpetual schmoozing motion.  Gary rarely wrote much himself and yet every sentence in every document ever created under him bore some light touch of his.  He was always saying, "You know, I was thinking, we need to get something in the piece about . . .."  

Gary was a social animal of the highest order, and he worked a room with the best.  You always felt better about yourself--no matter the moment--after interacting with him.  He had that glorious, loving touch--a generosity of spirit that is truly rare in the world.  You couldn't help but smile whenever you saw Gary, because he would almost always grin when he saw you--and chuckle like it was a game. Spotting him in elevators and doing our "Dr." drill was a highlight of many of my days at CNA.

Gary simply fascinated me from day one almost two decades ago, and it delighted me to no end to have a short F2F with him in his Pentagon office this summer, and later a nice long lunch at the SECNAV mess. 

Gary's illness and passing were relatively sudden, meaning nobody saw this coming.

I will miss Gary's voice most of all, and especially his personal advice to me regarding my creativity.  Rarely a day goes by when I don't consider his very wise words.  My favorite moments with Gary were actually over the phone. When I worked with him in the mid-1990s on a series of IT-related CNA research docs (to include a fabulous two-week stint with him in Panama for a SOUTHCOM classified intell exercise and two week-long stints out in Hawaii for PACOM command post exercises), he would often call me on Sunday mornings and we'd talk for a couple of hours about . . . just about everything.  I loved his accent, and I love hearing it echo in my RI-born son Jerry's voice today.  It almost always makes me laugh and think of Gary.

For my memory, what I wrote with and for Gary at CNA:

• Information Warfare Training in Tempo Brave 96:  The Dog That Did Not Bark, by Gary A. Federici and Thomas P.M. Barnett, CNA Annotated Briefing 96-106, March 1997, Center for Naval Analyses.

• Digital Weave:  Future Trends in Navigation, Telecommunications, and Computing, by Thomas P.M. Barnett and Pat A. Pentland, CNA Annotated Briefing 98-52, June 1998, Center for Naval Analyses.

• Global Alternative Futures and the NRO, unattributed [but done by me anonymously while a Naval War College professor], CNA Working Paper 99-772, June 1999, Center for Naval Analyses.

• Moving Military Space Past the Peer Competitor Paradigm:  Is Space a Mission, a Medium or the Message? G.A. Federici (Editor) [I wrote it anonymously again], CNA Professional Paper 549, November 1999, Center for Naval Analyses.

• The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare:  A Devil's Advocate Looks at Global 98, by Thomas P.M. Barnett, CNA Occasional Paper, September 1998, Center for Naval Analyses. [this became the later Proceedings article, easily the most influential thing I had ever written up to that point].

When Gary and I met this last summer, he said he still pulled these docs out in his work in the Pentagon and used them, a notion that made us both laugh hard over our navy bean soup.

For me, Gary was legitimately one of those guys where I can say, I wouldn't be where I am today if he hadn't entered my life.  I genuinely loved him like a brother, as did my incredibly discerning wife (whom he'd chat up to no end if he caught me out of the house one of those Sunday mornings, as Vonne spent several years working on the Cape).  

Gary will be greatly missed from our lives.  Just one of the coolest guys I've ever come across.

Monday the blog moves to Wikistrat

It'll be transparent to you all, and the blog will continue in much the same way as it is now.  I'll just be devoting more and more of my irrepressible analytical efforts (as longtime readers know, I've tried to repress them on a regular basis!) to Wikistrat products, which I'm excited to help develop. As I'm currently working with my editor, Mark Warren, to go to market with "The Emily Updates" book, I don't have the outlet of working a new volume on globalization/US foreign policy/international relations and Wikistrat gives me a relationship where I can put those inescapable energies to some use.  That's also why I'm getting my security clearance re-established almost six years after I gave it up at the Naval War College.

Unless I pick this sort of focus for the blog, I just wouldn't know what to do with all the information I get from tracking the media and all the ideas that result, and I'm just not ready to retire that part of my brain.  It's simply too much of who I am.  But as my decision a while back to stop the heavy volume indicated, after six-and-a-half years of blogging (this is post 12,006), I needed either to decide and integrate these analytical efforts more formally into my work or to set it aside.  Fortunately for me, Wikistrat saw an opportunity in that decision-point and so we'll see how this collaboration evolves.

Again, it was time for me to find some larger home for the blog and my larger body of work versus doing this all by myself as the proverbial one-armed paperhanger.  Now that Enterra has matured to the point where we're no longer in the evangelical mode and I'm back to the level of effort I had in my first 2-3 years with the company, I need to reacquaint myself with a lot of subjects where I've maintained the minimum  of currency to write but not the maximum possible for deeper exploration as I see fit--or simply get excited enough to pursue.  

And I think moving the blog to Wikistrat will help me do that.

So see you there next Monday.

Last call . . .

Future cheesehead.  The team needs all the support it can muster right now.  Hell, Abebu may need to suit up for Miami.

We undid Metsu's corn rows (quite the task) and discovered Whitney Houston underneath.  We're experimenting with letting her grow out and play with various clips, etc. But I love it wild like this.  The scrape on her left check:  Metsu tried to match big sister Vonne Mei's jumping off the playset swings and wiped out. What impressed me was that she already seeks to emulate and impress Vonne Mei.

And yes, before I get emails, we do have Disney wear that features the African-American "princess" from "The Princess and the Frog."

You make-a da blog . . . you make-a da too much!

Since I cut down on the blog flow, my monthly readership (unique visitors) went up by a third to north of 50,000.

The number used to stick at around 39-40,000.  Now it's at 53-54,000 and it keeps climbing.

Less is good.

The canon--almost completed

Wanted to organize all my publications by decade (see Canon above in top navigation bar), and pretty much got it done and up to date for now at 376 publications.  I know I'm missing a few, but it was nice to get it all down on one place, especially integrating the stuff that was never public release.

Now just need to work on the video archives, the audio archives, and press pieces.

Going on BBC World Service's "World Have Your Say" radio broadcast today at 1pm EST

Subject is Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Liu Xiaobo and the West's growing fear of China in general.

Go here to listen live.

The podcast can later be found here.

The big-flow blog will return, as part of a larger offering

Right now negotiating with the Israeli start-up Wikistrat (click here to download their brochure) to have them host my blog as part of an exciting new offering we're collectively working on. For now, the outlines of the plan are such that I will continue to offer a free blog version (with a flow not too far off what I'm offering now) and a subscription-based big-flow blog (to include an additional periodic flow of meta-analyses on globalization's trends, turns, etc.).  The larger goal is to create an online offering for individuals and enterprises alike that leverages Wikistrat's platform, meaning the content flow is but one traditional aspect of what we are crafting in terms of online strategic planning tools.  You know my old bit about wanting to replicate my skills in the next generation?  Well, this will be the primary outreach tool: a place where you can come and gain access to a super-scenarioized model of how globalization works and evolves, where you can create your own scenarios and pathways and shocks-to-the-system and explore them to your heart's content, interacting with me and other analysts.  

What excites me about this venture?  This isn't the traditional black-box approach, where you turn over your particulars to a consultancy and they draw upon their expertise back at the shop and then crank you answers that you cannot trace in logic (beyond what is shared).  This will be a place where the very underlying technology will be shared with you, and where your intellectual forays will be pursued in collaboration with strategic thinkers, meaning, at the end of the day, a real transfer of both technology and intellect is obtained. 

I believe that the great outsourcing of strategic planning that corporations pursued in the 1980s, creating the rise of mainline business/strategic consultancies since then, is over and in the process of being reversed (insourced).  I think the globalization landscape is just too complex and every-changing for companies, government agencies, etc., NOT to have that skill set within their organizations.

And I think my collaboration with Wikistrat (an experiment just beginning) will provide the human-capacity-building that a host of companies, educational facilities, public agencies will find compelling--far more so in the rising/emerging markets, where the need is greatest.

And so I am very excited to begin this adventure, putting the blog to more focused use.

Conair talking at big supply-chain management conference about Enterra's solutions

This is an image snapshot of Jon Harding, Global CIO for Conair Corporation, in a taped presentation, talking about how the Enterra Supply Chain Assurance Platform (ESCAPE™) is helping save a substantial percentage of Conair's revenue previously lost in retailer charge back fines and penalties while increasing customer service.

Go here to Enterra's site for the video.  A day-one recap of the big San Diego-based CSCMP (council of supply chain management professionals) conference by Supply Chain Digest's ed-in-chief Dan Gilmore with commentator Jim Barnes (also find that video here and go to 9:20 for the segment) saw Barnes quip that if Enterra's solution "can crack the Wal-Mart nut, they've got a goldmine there." Steve's blog comment to that was:

This informal industry validation proves what we believed all along: Enterra's ESCAPE™ offering provides our clients a real, sustainable supply chain solution.

Needless to say, we're ecstatic about this kind of testimonial being showcased in such a big industry setting, especially from such a demanding customer like Conair, which is famous in the industry for its efficiency- and cost-seeking behavior.  When somebody like that speaks on your behalf, professionals listen.

Steve spoke earlier at the day on the convention about Enterra's work.

For a webinar on Enterra's work on reducing retailer fines for missed shipments, etc., for consumer products companies like Conair, go here.

The graphics from Steve's post that provided an overview of the first module in the ESCAPE™ series and the second one we're working on.  We really think this stuff will revolutionize certain aspect of supply chain management--and industry professionals are starting to agree!

Less absolutely, a deep reduction in flow/change in philosophy and a redirect to Twitter

Two triggers for yesterday's declaration:

1) interview with Canadian journalist (Globe and Mail; nice guy) where I found myself, as always, defending the SysAdmin concept from its usual caricatures (all military, all US or at best all West, and all public spending).  And you know, I just get tired of repeating myself after seven years, reminding everyone that I said from the start: more civil than mil, more USG than DOD, more rest-of-world than just US or West, and--duh!--overwhelming private-sector funded.  So what does Afghanistan tell us about Canada's future choices with its military?  It tells us that the West and the US in particular still myopically chooses to view the SysAdmin task as overwhelmingly military-centric, DoD-centric, NATO-centric, USG-centric, and official developmental aid-centric, and guess what? None of that, even piled on top of itself, constitutes a quorum for Afghanistan. The only package that works there will be heavy on Indians, Iranians, Turks, Russians and Chinese--in addition to the Pakistanis.  It will involve those countries building and defending networks and markets. Victory won't involve the creation of a democracy--at least not one we'd recognize any time soon. Instead, as usual, given our vast costs sunk thanks to our stubborn unilateralism and government-firstism, we'll view any such outcome along the lines of "We fought the war, but the X won!"  It's a stupid and petty mindset and eventually enough frustration with outcomes will drive it out of us, but such change tends to come generationally--go figure.  Anyway, I go on a long riff with this guy and I wonder why I'm still making these arguments in broadcast fashion to an audience that's apparently unready for it, when there are so many private-sector actors and non-US governments moving down this path with a vengeance--meaning better clients.  Why not run with them and pull back from this evangelical path here in the States, somewhat embodied in the time-intensive blog?

[As a side-rant, let me skewer the inane stupidity that says, "Barnett's SysAdmin concept was doomed from the start" by pointing you in the direction of Africa, where SysAdmin "forces" and "functions" are in evident display all over the place.  And guess what?  The vast majority of the work is being done by non-military, private-sector-funded non-Westerners, and IT WORKS JUST FINE DUMBASS!  But sure, if you want to reduce that force/function in all its complexity and breadth within globalization's advance to a small-unit operation in some remote Afghanistan valley and ask the question, What was Barnett thinking when he said a bunch of US Marines with guns could somehow "connect" Afghanistan to the world?  Then yes, all my vision was completely invalidated by that one apocryphal firefight!  Meanwhile, while you stare at your most American of belly-buttons, globalization continues to penetrate the Gap with stunning speed and integrating effect--and never the twain shall conceptually meet.  But understand this, I don't sell theory; I sell observed reality, which I name.  You can wallow in your caricatures and claim my defeat, and I will shake my head at your complete inability to read what I write and hear what I say--in every single brief I've ever delivered.

But I regress . . .]

2) As I move down this path, I run into days where I find the blogging requirement crowds out too much good personal and professional stuff.  Today I spent a long block of time thinking through cyber governance issues and it was great.  If I have the blog on the usual high-volume sked, that's impossible, as is a certain amount of parenting. Plus, after seven years of being in the evangelical mode, I simply want to move on.

Still, I like the site that I've built, and I like having a place to centralize certain things in terms of presentation and archiving.  I also want to put certain things out there regularly, like announcing latest columns and posts at Esquire and other stuff I write and publish.  Then there's always that simple desire to express myself and to record, diary-style, certain things I do (like a planned trip to China in October).

So I know I'm going to finally cave into my wife on the time-lost-to-the-blog complaint (there's the two new kids impact), especially since my career evolution (different role at Enterra as it matures and thus wider network of activities, which was my norm until a couple of years ago) demands both more focus and concentrated efforts and involves a lot of partners who are, as I stated yesterday, not much interested in this broadcast mode but desire more exclusive content more exclusively delivered.  And when I realize that my most circulated stuff on the Web is what I write for WPR and Esquire, then why maintain the blog at such a high level?  Simply put, it strikes me an outdated model:  I started it as pure analytical diary and it became too much the formal presentation as the field was quickly crowded by mainstream venues re-establishing their natural hierarchy (so every mag now has a blog and most bloggers of note operate within organized structures).

[Second side rant:  Why did I talk myself or let myself get talked into this pathway of formalizing the blog? Too many people complaining that I didn't take myself or my legacy seriously enough, which I think I do in my formal writings.  I just don't think I should have to adhere to that level of formality here.  I didn't in the beginning, and I'd like to go back to that and screw all the references and some of the visuals and instead go back to the analytic diary and pure self-therapy of writing for release.  Too many times in recent months I've found myself staring at the blog entry screen, saying to myself, "Type something profound, damn it!"  And you know what?  As soon as you say that you're doomed to be boring and trite and predictable. Plus it takes so long.]

So the question becomes, why not drop out from the old model and go to something more relaxed--as in, write what I want when I want, and shift the quick-and-dirty recording of semi-interesting articles via Twitter, where the lack of visual requirements and the restrictions on text length guarantees a modicum of effort and no more?

And so that is what I will do, and I'll see how that goes.  What I know is this: I don't want to fill this space like I used to.  I find myself needing to retreat mentally from that level of broadcasting/sharing.  I've spent 7 years doing the evangelic thing and it's been fun, but having done it, I will admit to a certain level of boredom with it--the usual seven-year-itch that seems to regularly relocate me in a geographic sense (from Wisconsin to New England to mid-Atlantic to New England back to the Midwest and now plotting a return to the mid-Atlantic).  I'm about seven years having left my job at the Naval War College (I really left in 2001 when I went to OSD, then again in 2003 when I left OSD, and finally--truly--in 2005, so let's split the difference) and I can feel the reinvention coming, which corresponds nicely to Enterra's nifty maturation and settlement into three core areas of exploitation (healthcare, supply-chain management of consumer products, and supplier-chain management of complex sustainment efforts in the defense sector).  So as things are simultaneously settling down and expanding and blowing up, I find that natural itch to reinvent and recast and rebalance.

And so that is the way it will be:  irregular posts here on stuff I really, truly, absolutely want to archive, with the rest going via Twitter, where I will limit myself--poetically--to as few syllables as possible (I thought I did pretty well today).  I will continue the archiving of formal pubs, along with their announcements here, and I will likely archive travel and other special stuff.

But I will abandon the volume standard that I settled into (totally self-imposed) and let the rest migrate to Twitter (the pointing dog stuff).  That just doesn't interest me like it used to; been there, done that--done. Plus, when I compare my original posts from the spring of 2004 to now, I realize that, back then, I mostly riffed and made scant reference to MSM materials (just using them as launching points), and now the bulk of my text are excerpts, which feels like I'm playing fact checker. [Another triggering realization: I had a lot of fun riffing on that Andy Krepinevich piece recently, but I hardly go long like that any more in the blog; instead, I spend too much time cataloguing--and reminding--and watching what I say.  But again, what gets reposted mostly is the more careful, edited stuff I write on WPR and Esquire, so why not go back to the casual standard here--as in, I write-for-myself-so-f@3k-off!  Because that stuff I can write very fast when I choose to, meaning no real burden.

Anyway, I had long feared/hoped this would happen when I finished the Great Trilogy, and that day has finally arrived.

So I kill the formal blog and reclaim the diary, my debt to society and history fulfilled in the dead-tree Trilogy.

But yeah, I will still rant mostly about globalization, because it's the most interesting thing I know.

Hiatus for now, decisions to follow

I'm going to shut down this blog for the foreseeable future.

My career and workload have evolved significantly since the recession hit, and I just find that I can't justify the time and effort required to keep the blog running.  Other opportunities/responsibilities beckon, and that array doesn't value/support this endeavor, so while I've enjoyed it, this is simply an adjustment I need to make.

I will keep the site up for now.

I will continue to keep writing at places that can pay.  I just realize that I've come to the end of a career model that says I can play LoneWolf@eponymous.com and make that work.  A bit sad, as it's been fun, but as someone who hates to repeat himself and loves to always move onto the next experience/model, I likewise enjoy the pressure to reinvent myself.  I just can't move down that path while simultaneously maintaining the old one--not enough hours in the day. And while I will always do the reading and thinking, the market I'm encountering wants my content tailored and exclusive, and I simply have to respect and match that trend, as there are family responsibilities to be met.

The first test missed it

Both girls have tapeworms.

As they say in the sitcom world: . . .  and hilarity ensues.

Well, at least their bizarre food intake levels make sense now.  For a while there, I half-expected Sally Struthers to walk into my kitchen one night, turn to the camera and plead, "Won't you spend just a few extra dollars and feed them just a little bit more?"  I mean, these two eat like their lives depend on it, and now we know they were eating for themselves and maybe a dozen or two inside friends.

Bad days to follow with giant pills, but these too shall pass--literally.

Had to go with the gag pic; the real stuff is just too godawfully gross.

So, to sum up, when we got them they had: 1) bronchitis 2) ear infections 3) giardia 4) hepatitis A, and 4) tapeworms.

And people wonder why your average kid in Africa might not summon up all the mental strength required to score as high as their northern brethren on IQ tests.  Well, if you spent that much of your body's energy every day fighting that array of stuff, you'd have less power to your brain too.  It's as simple as that.

I have to tell you, these are two tough little kids.

Girl (nickname), interrupted

From the girls' front:  third round of antibiotics seems to do the trick on Abebu's stubborn ear infection.

Both are now on a lengthy round of a specific antibiotic compound to kill the specific giardia (small intestine infection caused by parasites discovered in secondary tests--the first test missed these apparently) they suffer from.  A lot of their bad times struck us as gut related, so Vonne insisted on rerunning the tests and--sure enough--they both clearly had it.

With the help of these antibiotics, then, all of that is settling down reasonably over time.

The English is coming, but they still speak to each other a lot in Sidama, their local southern Ethiopia tongue. We know that capacity gives the pair a lot of mutual comforting in their new and somewhat confusing lives (they will often talk each other to sleep at night), and it'll be sad to see it go and be replaced, even as we'll readily welcome the easier communications. But the language is so obscure (less than 2m speakers) and there are no language training assets beyond a fairly crude english-amharic-sidamo dictionary we picked up in Awassa, that we don't see how we can preserve much of anything (language is a muscle, you use it or you lose it). Still, they delight in picking up the english because they like the feeling of making their ideas and feelings known.

The relations with our three other kids is going amazingly well. Hardly nirvana, but like Billy Preston or Eric Clapton sitting in with the quarrelsome Beatles, everybody is suddenly on their best behavior because it's like we've got these permanent house guests. Everybody is trying so hard to get along. But it is stressful in a macro sense. Everybody likewise feels like they're putting out as much as possible and limits are frequently reached, but little traditions are emerging in spots--here and there. We may not have any lyrics yet, but melodies are appearing. We escape the house regularly, but only is small spurts with the girls, who find all such trips simultaneously exciting and very intimidating. Everybody we meet is fascinated by them and showers them with attention, which they like but are simultaneously overwhelmed by. Still, as the GI issues disappear, the tendency to retreat into dark moods likewise lessens. I think the giardia left the girls with only the thinnest veneer of good spirits that was easily disrupted. As their health solidifies, you can see the resiliency expand exponentially.

One tidbit:  when we got the girls, they had dark lines across their otherwise good-looking teeth (almost no sugar in their diet and a decent amount of calcium judging by their love of yogurt).  The cause of the dark lines:  using twigs to clean the teeth.  As we use regular toothbrushes, those lines quickly disappeared and their teeth look good (special trips to the special peds dentist await, and we expect some trouble but hopefully not too much).  Better yet, no gum bleeding, so compared to Vonne Mei coming from China, this is looking pretty good for now.

The trick of this new family (and yeah, it does suddenly feel like a new family with Emily off to college and near-twin girls roaming the house) is this:  while plenty smart, introducing the pair into our home is suddenly like having a pair of babies thrown into the scrum:  they need a lot of care and you have to translate their needs, but their capacity for mischief is way out of proportion. These are "babies" who can open doors and exit the house and take off down the street if the mood hits.  So we scramble to set up the rules by which we collectively monitor them even as we know everything will evolve quite rapidly--i.e., they'll "grow up" into their actual ages in a matter of weeks and months, not months and years.  

Fortunately, Kev, Jerry and Vonne Mei have all elevated their game considerably in response, which has been a joy to watch.  Kev is suddenly the eldest now that Em is gone and he's stepped into that role with surprising grace.  Jerry has always been a great older brother and is experienced with taking somebody in under his wing. And Vonne Mei is suddenly no longer the baby but the supervising older sister.  Meanwhile, the cats are all taking a pass on this for now.

So like any family crisis (and while this is all good, it does make sense to adopt a crisis mindset which promotes the notion of rapidly changing conditions, rules and outcomes), this involves a lot of intense parenting, or concentrated, precedent-setting, with-lotsa-downstream-impact interactions.  And these are exhausting for everybody.  Days seem to go on forever.  We can't believe they've only been here three weeks, because it seems like forever.  Again, all very exciting but likewise all very exhausting. You find yourself allowing more slack in the system because--yeah--we're in crisis mode and so we let some things slide so we can concentrate on others.  But likewise, you find yourself feeling the need to make special efforts with the "incumbent" children, or the "vets" forced to take in the "rookies."  So a lot of bonding experiences whether you want them or not; you simply find yourself bumping into them.

Decisions flow in rapid succession . . .

One clear casualty is the notion of nicknaming Abebu "Abby." Because Metsuwat is going as Metsu, Abby just seems too Americanized--too out of the blue for our (now) third brown-eyed girl (Vonne Mei still owns the top bunk on that score). Everybody likes calling her Abebu (ah-BAY-boo) and the only person who employs a nickname is Metsu herself, who calls her little sister Abu (ah-BOO) much of the time.

So Abby is retired and Abu emerges.  And everybody seems pretty good with that.

We've finally set new birthdays for the girls, discarding the loose estimates we were provided by the orphanage in Awassa (their two b-days were suspiciously close to the day they entered the orphanage).  Metsu will be 4 in late October (my aunt's birthday--she too was adopted) and Abu will be 3 next February--my mom's birthday. We wanted to connect each of the girls to strong women in our lives.

These birthdays will be legally set when we re-adopt the girls in US courts, and then they'll populate their officials records (US birth certificates, SSNs, passports, etc.).

UPDATING FRIDAY 6PM:  just-in test results said that both girls had hepatitis-A as well, now finished.  So when we took custody, they both were with upper-respiratory infections, ear-infected, Hep-A and giardia--and still they were awfully lovable most of the time, even if they were cranky as hell overnight and were terrors on the toilet.

I speak @ California State U-San Marcos on 9/24

Find the announcement here at California State University-San Marcos

Global Trade Symposium: Strategy for the Tumultuous 21st Century

~ CSUSM Partners with San Diego WORLD TRADE CENTER for Unique Event ~

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Download Release - PDF)

August 25, 2010

Global Trade Symposium will discuss the future of global competition and what it means for businesses and organizations.

Who: “Competitors are emerging from more countries,” explains Camille Schuster, Professor of Marketing for California State University San Marcos. “Compliance issues are stressing IT capabilities. Experts are saying companies need to engage in collaboration. With so much change most companies have all they can do to react to the marketing challenges. Thus, I think it would benefit us all to spend a morning at CSUSM to consider the future – the trends, the new pressure points, the new opportunities, the coming challenges – and engage in a discussion of how to prepare to ride the waves of change.”
 

Speakers:
 

Thomas P.M. Barnett, is the New York Times-bestselling author of “The Pentagon’s New Map, Blueprint for Action” and “Great Powers: America and the World after Bush”. He is a nationally known public speaker who's been profiled on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal. He is in high demand within government circles as a forecaster of global conflict and an expert of military transformation, as well as within corporate circles as a management consultant and conference presenter on issues relating to international security and economic globalization. Barnett will speak on 2025: A Future Worth Creating.
 

Ralph Jacobson, is the Global Consumer Products Industry Marketing Executive for IBM. He is responsible for marketing IBM Consumer Products Industry Solutions to clients in areas including business strategy, operations and the consumer experience. Ralph has worked in The CP and Retail Industries for thirty years. For more than a decade, Ralph has consulted to more than one-hundred clients around the globe, from Shanghai to Saudi Arabia. Jacobson will speak on Global Hunger: Distribution and Safety.

Sponsors:
North County Transit District
Sony Corporation of America

What: This half-day symposium will outline the challenges we face today in the global marketplace with new global competitors, political strains, major economic swings, and increasing customer demands. Speakers will address the question of how to create a successful strategy to navigate the dynamic marketplace, and what global completion means for your business and organization.

When: Friday, September 24, 2010
8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
Attendees will enjoy a continental breakfast and are invited to attend a book signing at the conclusion of the symposium.
 
Where: California State University San Marcos, McMahan House, 333 S. Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, CA 92096

For more information and/or to register for the “Global Trade Symposium”, visit www.csusm.edu/el/gts or call (760) 750-4020. Registration fees for San Diego WORLD TRADE CENTER (WTC) Members is $75 and $95 for Non-WTC Members.
        
Directions & Parking
CSUSM is located at 333 S. Twin Oaks Valley Road in San Marcos. For more information or directions to the campus, visit http://www.csusm.edu/guide. Parking is available in campus lots for an additional fee.