Evil Geniuses Teach How (NOT) To Use PowerPoint (YouTube via Danger Room)

Wired magazine's excellent blog, Danger Room takes another look at the use of PowerPoint in the US military. While the entire article is worth reading (Danger Room has covered the relationship between PPT and the military extensively), the video embedded below is priceless...

Intelligence Analyst "Words To Live By" -- #3 (SurveyMonkey.com)

This is the third of 10 surveys I intend to conduct to determine which are the "best" quotes, sayings and words of wisdom for intelligence analysts.

If you want more detail on why I am doing this, see the previous post.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Voting on the first two lists is still open:
List 1
List 2

The current frontrunners from the second list include (with the percentage representing the percent of respondents who said move it up the list):

"Describing a past event is not intelligence analysis; it is history. True intelligence analysis is always predictive." Robert Clark (68%)
"If you don't make any mistakes in life, you don't accomplish anything." -- Aikido Master Ken Ota (65%)
"Always bring something to write with and on." -- Numerous (54%)

All other entries are currently below 50%.

Reviewers Needed For Visual Analytics Science And Technology (VAST) 2011 Challenge (PNNL)

The National Visualization and Analytics Center at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in coordination with the IEEE sponsors a visual analytics challenge each year at the IEEE conference for students and researchers.  

 

In order to judge the output from the participants, the challenge organizers asks for analysts to participate as reviewers of the submissions.  Kris Cook, who is on the contest committee, has asked me to put the word out that the contest needs reviewers for this year’s challenge.  

 

This is an unpaid, all volunteer effort to assist a non-profit sponsored contest.  Kris’ note to me is reproduced below with additional links.  If you are interested in participating or have any additional questions, please contact her directly.  

 

For what it is worth, taking a look at the VAST entries is a very interesting and rewarding way to learn what is happening in the world of visual analytics.

Begin Text of Note: 

Once again, we are in need of analysts to help us review submissions to the Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Challenge.  The goal of the VAST Challenge is for teams to design intuitive new visualizations that support analysis of complex data sets.

We are soliciting reviewers for three mini-challenges and a Grand Challenge.
•    Mini-Challenge 1 challenges participants to develop tools to characterize the spread of an epidemic using the geospatial and micro-blogging data provided
•    Mini-Challenge 2 challenges participants to create cyber security situational awareness visualizations to identify events of interest in a collection of computer network logs
•    Mini-Challenge 3 challenges participants to create visual analytics tools to support investigation into criminal activity.
•    The Grand Challenge asks participants to look across all Mini-Challenge data to provide visual insights into an over-arching scenario.
More specific information about the tasks may be found at http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/localphp/hcil/vast11/index.php/.

As a reviewer you would be responsible for viewing 3-4 submissions. Each submission consists of:
•    Documents of several pages in length describing the software and how it was used in solving the mini challenge.
•    Screen shots of the software in use on the data
•    Video showing an example of the analytic process used by the team.  
Submissions will be available for review by July 2nd and reviews must be returned no later than COB July 15th.  All review materials will be accessible over the internet. Reviews will be conducted using the Precision Conference web-based reviewing system. Reviewers will be registered in the Precision Conference system and will submit their reviews using Precision Conference web pages.

If you are interested in reviewing please send e-mail to kris.cook at pnnl.gov no later than June 22nd.  Please indicate which mini challenge you would be most interested in reviewing.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Intelligence Analyst "Words To Live By" -- #2 (SurveyMonkey.com)

This is the second of 10 surveys I intend to conduct to determine which are the "best" quotes, sayings and words of wisdom for intelligence analysts.

If you want more detail on why I am doing this, see the previous post.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

If you haven't had a chance to vote on the first list you can find it here (voting is still open).

The current frontrunners from the first list include (with the percentage representing the percent of respondents who said move it up the list):

"Always be aware that what you know and believe can taint your perception of what really is." -- Bill Russell (84%)
"What is your source?" -- Numerous (67%)
"Chance favors the prepared mind." -- Louis Pasteur (61%)
"Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain." -- Carl von Clausewitz (58%)
"If you always do what you aways did, you'll always get what you always got." -- Steve Gottlieb (58%)

All other entries are currently below 50%.

Intelligence Analyst "Words To Live By" (SurveyMonkey.com)

Last week, I asked for intelligence professionals from the business, law enforcement and national security intelligence communities to send me quotes, sayings and other "words of wisdom" that they have found useful over the years. My hope was to be able to put together a short list that would be helpful for intelligence analysts everywhere, students and professionals alike.

Over 100 emails and nearly 1000 responses later, I think I can legitimately say that my request has been answered. Many thanks to all who submitted something!

Now comes the genuinely hard part of figuring out which of these quotes ought to be at the top of the list. Rather than just pick the ones I liked, I thought I would ask the same people -- you -- who made the suggestions.

The short survey below is just one of 10 (each with 10 quotes, so 100 total) that I intend to publish over the next several weeks. I am not asking which quotes are best or worst (I know that this is next to impossible given the large number of very good quotes); I am only asking which ones should be moved closer to the top of the list and which ones should be moved closer to the bottom of the list. Assuming I get enough responses, the truly best quotes should rise to the top of the aggregated results.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

It is also legitimate to ask, of the nearly 1000 quotes I received, how did I downselect to the 100 I intend to survey? I looked for a couple of things. First, they needed to be general. The quote should arguably apply to intelligence professionals in any of the sub-disciplines of intelligence.

Second, the quote needed to be fairly short. There were several excellent lengthy entries that I hated to exclude but I felt that they fell more into the categories of "essay" or "story" than "saying".

Third, I focused primarily (but not exclusively) on intelligence analysis. I teach intelligence analysis and I want to create this list primarily to help my students and other students (young and old) of intelligence analysis.

My intent, once I have the results of the survey, is to take the top 52 quotes and have them printed on a deck of playing cards -- that's right, the "Intelligence Analyst's Deck of Cards".

We received a small unrestricted grant from a private donor a few months ago (yes, my academic friends, they do exist...) with the vague instructions to do something to improve analysis. This money should be enough to get a small print run completed through our Mercyhurst College Institute For Intelligence Studies Press.

Once they are printed, we will send out free copies to anyone who submitted an entry (whether it made it onto the cards or not). If there are any copies remaining after that, they will go on sale at our bookstore where whatever money we make will be donated to support the activities of our three student intelligence clubs here on campus.

Thanks again to all and please take a second to fill out the surveys as they get published!