My week with USGIF was one of the
most informative, unique and exciting weeks of my life. I entered the week excited to learn about US
intelligence and defense, and after a week with the Geospatial Intelligence
community, I know that “GEOINT” is so much more then just those two
aspects. Anything ranging from farming,
to military to natural disaster relief falls under the umbrella of geospatial
intelligence. On Monday we were given a presentation
on GEOINT and the roles it plays as well as the role of USGIF by Max Baber,
over the next few days we were able to see these funtions first hand and meet
some incredible people in the industry.
Tuesday morning we went to NGA, which is the U.S. National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. We met
with a man named Greg Glewwe who gave us a briefing on what NGA does and his
role and operations with NGA. After, we
spoke about how his agency provided direct support to both the Ebola outbreak
and the Nepal Earthquake. With their
technology they were able to create a virtual maps that show areas with a clean
water supply, the nearest hospital, the nearest airport and various other
useful locations. After NGA we met with
Director Joe Fontanella and a team of his engineers/analysts for
briefings. They spoke about some of their
projects, which included water supplies, inland waterways and environmental
initiatives. This is the first time we
were able to see the broad outreach of capabilities GEOINT provides. Wednesday morning we visited Google’s Reston
office. Google is an incredible company
with a truly unique business model. We
met with Michele Weslander-Quaid and two other employees. They spoke about the culture Google has
always had and some of the practices they have.
While Google does not play a huge role in the direction of the
intelligence field, they offer the largest open source setting on the
Internet. The information that is
accessible through Google is essentially an endless stream of data that is free
for the world to access. Next, we drove
into DC to meet with Melinda Laituri.
Professor Laituri is a professor at Colorado State University and is in
DC for a full year for a fellowship. She
is researching for the US State Department focusing on human geography. In addition to speaking to us about GEOINT, she
stressed the importance of networking and communication in any field of
employment, but especially in the DC area.
We returned to USGIF that evening in order to attend their innovation
task force. Representatives from
companies such as HumanGeo, Thermopylae, esri and many other companies within
the industry spoke about their company and its capabilities as well as what
they plan on doing with the technology they posses. We were able to speak with a woman named Jessica
King who offered us a little more insight into her company, HumanGeo. They are able to collect human data based on
social media, Internet posts and other variables in order to produce “activity
based intelligence” in any given region.
Thursday morning we visited a company called Pixia. I was incredibly impressed with Pixia and the
capabilities they posses to have a large impact on the future of Geospatial
intelligence. We had a fascinating
conversation with their Director of Technology, Ian Heffernan who gave us
in-depth descriptions and demonstrations on some of their programs. Pixia’s goal is to unify the GEOINT community
by providing a database of information that can be accessed by certain branches
of the defense community. We finished
the day by visiting the Udvar-Hazy museum and seeing important GEOINT items
such as the SR-71, the Corona Satellite and SRTM.
This week
was an incredible opportunity to learn more about the GEOINT community and
witness the different factors to what is quickly becoming a GEOINT Revolution
in this country! Dr. Max Baber and Keith
Masback were incredible hosts who organized a fascinating week for us. We were able to first and foremost expand our
knowledge on the different aspects of Geospatial Intelligence while making
connections with people who are distinguished within their field of practice.
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