Sofcoast

Signals & Drumbeats: Reaching critical mass for encouraging startups

I found this fascinating quote today:

There is absolutely no reason why startups have to concentrate in one area. Silicon Valley has Stanford and UC Berkeley, two of the top universities in the U.S. if not the world, and it also has the biggest concentration of venture capitalists anywhere in the world. However, Boston has Harvard and MIT. New York has Columbia and NYU. Chicago has Northwestern, the University of Chicago and IIT. Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon and Pitt. Los Angeles has UCLA and USC.Len Feldman, The Feldman File, Mar 2010

You should read the whole article.

Cheers,

John Surmont,

Sofcoast

Thoughtsream: Huffman's Three Principles for data sharing

Todd Huffman stopped by the corporate offices this week for a series of company planning meetings and partner presentations and discussions.  I asked him if I could post his "Three Principles for Data Sharing" outlined by Sean Gorman on the FortiusOne "Off the Map" blog September 2009 post.

Enjoy. 

Based on Todd's work in Afghanistan, he describes the “beer for data” project at the Taj.

The data sharing success boiled down to three basic principles:

1) Create immediate value for anyone contributing data: when users contribute data they should get an immediate return on that investment. In the case of the Afghan pilot that meant getting to see your contributed data on a map of high resolution satellite imagery as soon as you uploaded it. The imagery for Afghanistan was made available by NGA, then tiled and served up by a Fusion Server, graciously donated by Google.

2) Make contributor’s data available back to them with improvements: any data that goes in should be available to download back out again. Further, the data should come back better than when it went in. In the Afghan pilot this meant if you shared data in a spreadsheet format into the platform you could get it back out as KML, shapefile, Atom, JSON, spatialite etc. (Addendum to principle 2 - PDF’s are evil, and make parsing and extracting data into a sharable format complete misery.)

3) Share derivative works back with the data sharing community: urge users who create derivative works, with shared data, to contribute their data products back to the group. In the case of the Afghan pilot researchers were taking the detailed data from the field and feeding it into their sophisticated models and simulations. Researchers would then upload the results into GeoIQ to share the derivative works back with the data sharing community. This meant that agencies and individuals that shared data again got a better product back by contributing. The researchers get better data to feed their models, and a self perpetuating feedback loop is created that sustains increasing data sharing.

While these sound like simple principles, it is amazing how often they are not followed and effective data sharing is blunted. Too often data sharing - especially with government and corporations - is a black hole. Data goes in but never comes back out. Also it is rare to see the positive feedback loops of researchers sharing their work products back with the data sharing community. Too often researchers get wrapped around the axle on their products being proprietary or sensitive. While this can be the case there is huge benefit in feeding results back to gauge their veracity and accuracy. I’ve definitely seen way too many models that look great in the lab and completely fall apart in reality because researchers would not feed results back to the field for verification and error bounding. I’m hoping we’ll have more opportunities to implement these principles in future projects and we can see the success of Todd’s work in Jalalabad duplicated hundreds of times over.

Success!

Today, Sofcoast successfully delivered beta unit 001 to Murray State University.  Sharing a short video clip (below) of todays events which consisted of customer training and acceptance testing.

We flew in the Murray State University Football Stadium parking lot. Weather was light and steady rain, 33 F. Winds were 7-10 mph. (Typical cold and wet winter day in Kentucky.)

Now in private beta, Sofcoast is developing a new product category:  Affordable Stationary Aerial Platforms. 

ASAP XP is a technology component of Sofcoast's FIRST Kit which enables front-line users to rapidly elevate a wide range of equipment for uses such as surveillance, continuity of operations, chemical detection, infrastructure monitoring and other applications for civil, military, government and commercial users.

As a FIRST Kit component, ASAP XP is a patent pending, tethered, lighter than air, inflatable wing that is designed to serve as a platform that can be deployed by two persons to deploy technologies that collect and connect critical users to critical data where and when it matters most.

Sofcoast has invited select private beta customers, beginning with Murray State University, to participate in ASAP XP early user use and evaluations of the system.

Cheers,

John

Founder/CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

Kids do your homework...it works...

Sofcoast's aerial products technical advisor and metanomy.org founder, Coby Leuschke (@cglusky) uses a phrase called "barefoot aero" to describe our team's design style, engineering approach and overall product philosophy.  I think it's an appropriate term that describes bringing science, engineering and Subject Matter Experts (SME's) together to provide front end solutions for front line users to address and remedy tactical and situational awareness gaps they constantly experience, particularly during constraint heavy periods and situations.

One of the primary reasons we've (ultimately) chosen the design path we have (inflatable wing) is to dramatically improve efficiencies across multiple dimensions in order to deliver a highly efficient tactical aerostat system.  Early on in this project, we looked around the market for a "best of breed" or "best in class" tactical aerostat capability that we (being SME's and end users ourselves) would be willing to use on a regular basis.  When we discovered that one didn't exist, we realized (and thereby decided) that we were going to need to build one ourselves and, in doing so, we would need to depart from the typical lighter than air shapes and designs that we were seeing in the marketplace. That's where the term "barefoot aero" comes in.....over time and through trial and error...we've learned to get our math straight, continue to iterate our design, double check our calcs, get out of the building and test, test, test and iterate, iterate, iterate and always stay focused on empirical data and evidence.

After 14 plus months of hard work and incremental progress, today we've achieved several key product performance milestones.  ASAP XP v004.5 was successfully towed behind a pickup truck at 20MPH in snowy and cold conditions with variable winds with gusts up to 8MPH.  The system performed as designed and specified.  

Here are three key lessons I've re-learned or been reminded of throughout this product development process.

Life lesson 1: Be Persistent.  Knowledge, Persistence and willingness to try, fail, try, fail and stay focused are critical in providing you with a basis to drive your product development efforts and team forward and towards success.

Life lesson 2: Confront and own product shortfalls (and dare I say, failure's?) as fast as you can.  Personally and organizationally this is critical and to achieve uncommon results it is imperative to deal with product performance and quality issues as early as possible for as long as it takes.  Thinking and philosophies that allow the product team to compromise or to accept something less than completely nailing your design targets and goals will introduce a mindset of mediocrity.  This is one area that is worth fighting to defend.  Be patient and persist and do your absolute very best.

Life lesson 3:  Kids, if you are reading this, pay close attention to your math and science subjects - it will serve you in life...you may not know how or see it yet...it works.

We're also happy that the system is on track with our lift / drag targets as well as our flight stability targets.   We're also very pleased with a derivative result of reduced drag, which is achieving our target of less than 10 degree catenary (which is typical of traditional blimps and balloons). Translation: Less drag means more altitude with less line payout.

 

We believe that our private beta customers will be delighted with the price/performance mix our product delivers and also believe that there's plenty of room in our product roadmap for continously improving and increasing system performance and capabilities delivery.
 

Cheers,

John

About
Sofcoast develops affordable, game-changing solutions that empower local, national and global entities in the public and private sectors to connect and enable mobile field workers, defend against danger and loss, and restore stability in the event of disaster.

Starting Points....Three2Link

I've had multiple requests to publish video of some sort of three2link prototype demo.  I finally sat down last night and took the first step.  You'll find two video's put together that walk through Three2Link.  Part One is the client (in the hand); Part Two is the Gateway (Web App).

Also, I found it to be very interesting in actually figuring out how put a rig together to capture video from the screen of my mobile phone (blackberry bold 9000).  I'm sure many will ask "why don't you just use some software app?" I've attempted to use umpteen different types of software that ostensibly will do screen capture on the mobile device....none worked very well on the device driving the app... so I had to do it old school....with rubber bands and bubble gum.... The quality should get better, as we either get better at making them, or hire an expert to do it for us.

 

Overview

Sofcoast's Three2Link Software Suite is a software system that enables efficient handheld data organization, GeoSocial search, data management, aggregation and structured data access to widely dispersed and diffused unstructured data. 

Data comes in from handheld devices, is processed on the Three2Link servers, and is distributed to a variety of formats including web browsers, calendars, GIS systems such as Google Earth, and SMS technologies and systems, podcasts, and rich media delivery.

 

 The Three2Link data management perspective is 'frame' and ʻfeedʼ oriented, and the tools are oriented towards navigating live data sets. An example of the benefits of 'feed' and 'frame' based organization is the feed-based search engine, which automatically updates the query with new data. The feed-based search makes it easy to monitor particular areas of interest, bookmarking a particular query result will give the latest results for the query.  A query can be used which selects by user, tags, time-frame, and geospatial range, and automatically generates a variety of data outputs in addition to the HTML on the website. 

·      Three2Link’s WeieDo client provides customizable real-time & store and forward field information collection.

 

·      Three2Link’s Continuous Media Flow transport system provides multi-modal and resilient connectivity for constrained users and usecases.

 

·      Three2Link’s WeieLink gateway and Engine allows users to view, analyze and share structured in-the-field, from-the-hand data in real-time.

 

Video Part One:

Demo of prototype FI tool, which is a customizable mobile software client that enables real-time and store and forward "in the hand" information collection.

 

Three2Link FI Client Beta

Video Part Two:
Demo of  prototype web application and gateway for user interface, data accessing and sharing of structured field information.

Three2Link Web-App and Gateway Demo

ASAP XP Flight Testing

Here's wishing all of our friends, supporters, customers and partners a Happy Holiday Season and a productive and prosperous new year.

Happy Holidays from all of us to you and your family.

PS.,

Check out the some of the latest flight test video's of the ASAP XP we're working on. 

Enjoy!

Thoughtstream: Traveling Light

 The past few weeks have been a very exciting time for our business and as a team we’ve been incredibly active in making new sales both hardware and software.  We had a fantastic meeting with Mike O’Shea and his folks in Coronado, CA.  I also attended portions of the AUVSI User Interoperability Conference in Coronado, CA, which I found to be worthwhile as well.

 

The recurring theme that I keep hearing is the desire for interoperable communications at all times in all situations in all environments.  This is a “heavy” requirement that I remember dealing with back in the early part of my SEAL career. 

 

For the majority of the first ten years of my career, I specialized in communications. In the teams we call SEAL’s with a communication specialty, “SEAL Communicators”. As a SEAL communicator, I found that as technology improved, my life improved.  In the early days of my career the equipment that I carried for my platoon was heavy, complicated with cables everywhere.  On long patrols, it wasn’t unusual for the communicator to be one of the heaviest members of the patrolling element, regardless of the nature of the mission.  I also remember having it drilled into my head as a new guy that there were two situations that were taboo for any SEAL.

 

• Loss of equipment or weapons
• Not being able to effectively communicate or “making comms” while in the field.

 

In one of my first training events as a new guy SEAL we were conducting a “swimmer op”, the point here is that we were in the water.  I was the communicator for this event, therefore I had communications equipment in the water with me. The mission profile was for us to be swimming through pier pilings and crossing some pretty difficult water obstacles to perform the tasks we needed to get done.  Needless to say, as a new guy, my methods for securing the communications equipment to my body were lacking and I lost a radio. 

 

This mistake was minor and I recovered from it, however what I discovered was that I didn’t like drawing the kind of attention to myself that one draws when they lose equipment as a SEAL.  Not a happy time for the new guy. 

Forevermore, I vowed that I would never lose anything ever again.  I also vowed that I would never be “that guy” again.  I wouldn’t be the guy who couldn’t “make comms” either. 

 

So as my career progressed, I developed a bit of a following and reputation as a communicator who “made comms” first time, every time.  Today it might be difficult to imagine having difficulty in establishing communications (“being able to contact someone or have some able to contact you.”) but it really was difficult, believe me.

 

“Making comms” became what amounts to be an obsession of mine.  I was determined to ensure contact and connectivity at all times for my unit, and I was successful.  Even if it required me to rewire a cellphone in the middle of the gulf of mexico and access the private cell network owned by the Shell Oil company….to this day I appreciate the anonymous operator who patched my call through as my team was out of gas drifting out to sea and I was able to establish communications in order to change the location we were extracted because we didn’t have the fuel to make our extract point.

 

For me I learned that communications was truly a lifesaving system.  I also believe that I probably carried a bit more equipment than most other communicators, simply because I was always concerned that I might not have something I might need and for me not being able to establish communications was unacceptable.

 

I’m learning that as technology advances, the burden of being a “strongback” to carry stuff diminishes, but the critical importance of being able to rapidly establish and maintain communications anywhere is even more important.

 

We’ve taken additional steps to target and meet this need with the our latest ASAP design.  This next system, code named “Eager Talent” will be even more disruptive than the previous ASAP X4C design some of you have seen.  We will be unveiling “Eager Talent” in the next couple of months.

 

I’ll leave you with a clue.

 

 

I’ve started to enjoy Cliff Bars quite a bit lately, especially the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut flavor!  While enjoying my tasty treat, I glanced at the back of the package and found some remarks from the founder, Gary Erickson.  I’ll quote what’s on the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut package:

            “While trekking Nepal, I met up with an expedition about to climb Dhaligiri, one of the world’s highest peaks. I figured that with more than 200 porters the expedition must have been traveling with at least 20,000 pounds of stuff Expeditionary climbing takes an enormous amount of energy, equipment, and people, to put just a handful of individuals on top of a mountain.  My friends and I prefer to climb alpine style, we move quickly, carry light packs, and leave no waste behind.  Each campsite is a beautiful destination in itself, not simply a means to an end.  I don’t believe in reaching the top at any cost – in climbing or business.  Clif Bar’s journey resembles alpine climbing.  We try to travel light and are committed to keeping our company, products, people, community, and the earth healthy.”  Gary Erickson, Founder and Owner of Clif Bar & Company.

 

 

With the “Eager Talent” system we are doing much of the “heavy lifting” for our customers in enabling them with a “travel light” capability that moves them closer to establishing and maintaining interoperable communications and information flow at all times in all situations and in all environments.

 

Cheers,

 

John Surmont

Founder, CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

 

Thoughtstream: Low Friction Innovation Redux

Is affordability the new luxury?

One of the core foundational theories that sparked the creation of Sofcoast is that there has been and continues to be massive creation activity in a broad array of areas to include material science, textiles, manufacturing processes, web, computing and mobile tech.  Yet there is a gap in the areas of activity stream integration, human computer communications, human computer interfaces, end-user relevence and affordability.  The way I describe it today is that I'm an adherent to Paretto's principle, check out a previous post where I talk about "Good Enough". 

In one of my previous posts, I introduced my personal philosophy for innovation, titled "Low Friction Innovation"  (I haven't yet discussed my framework for analysis and design called "PIP-C, which I'll do another time.)

In this thoughtstream, I was making observations by drawing parallels with the work that Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt has done in developing his philosophy called theory of constraints, which is a discourse on effectively producing desired outcomes.  For me, innovation is very simply that:  Finding or creating ways, methods, means, techniques or tools to effectively produce outcomes ---- THAT ARE CONTEXTUALLY RELEVANT.

In the course of my studying his philosophy, Dr. Goldratt's point that social inertia can in fact become the largest constraint for groups and organizations to overcome.  Social Inertia is defined on Wikipedia as a term "...used to describe the resistance to change presented by societies or social groups, usually due to habit."

Understandably, there are other approaches to innovation that are critically important.  My point here is that Low Friction Innovation is not new to humanity and only in recent modern history has mankind even had alternative structures (collectively termed by yours truly as "high-friction innovation") to tackle problems.  Obviously, in modern history as societies developed industrialization and now as we're all witnessing, post-industrialization, bigger problems have been solveable as these new structures such as government organizations, militaries, taxation systems, economic and monetary policy, education, industries and of course markets with customers continued to evolve. 

Think about it, people living in caves had very little choice and were faced with tremendous resource constraints other than to simply adapt as best they could.  It's kind of funny to think about how fire, the wheel and a common language are the three most significant innovations of pre-industrialized society, yet to us they seem crude, prehistoric and "totally obvious!". 

Alternatively,  think about the difficulty of putting man on the moon without a commitment to a higher purpose and a willingness to target something with massive (almost unfathomable) friction and constraints like the Apollo Space Program.   This is one of those accomplishments of humankind that rest on thousands of innovations, some of them low-friction and others high-friction and if cost/risk were the driver, Tranquility Base  wouldn't exist.

So, how should society view innovation today and in the future?  Should this be an "either - or" question? or some type of hybridized way of thinking? Perhaps the question is a simple one:  How does social inertia impact our military industrial complex and academic research community?  Does it produce bias towards high-friction innovations?  (I guess I could ask the same question the other way about the structures for financing new ventures and startups as well..)  If so what does this bias mean to all of the constiuents including the most important constituent (in my humble viewpoint) the end-user, followed closely by the taxpayer?

What Social Inertia's are we dealing with in the United States in our socio-economic systems, our politics, financial and economic and our military and defense establishments?

Alternatively, what social inertia's are present in developing societies?  In failed states and 3rd world countries? How does this play out on a global scale?  How does this play out regionally and locally? What is the impact to the Humanitarian Assistance Organizations and Relief Groups?

In his farewell Military Industrial Complex speech in 1960, President Eisenhower provided a warning to the American People of the risks to our society in developing the "armament industry" as he put it....

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry  is new  in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."

Throughout my entire career spanning military service as well as my post-service career, I've had ongoing discussions about this "low friction" or "good enough" philosophy.  In many cases I've proven over and over that this philosophy works in very practical ways and this has provided  me with opportunities to further describe additional advantages and benefits which include reduced cost requirements. (Actually the costs don't disappear, they are simply "transferred" from hardcosts to intangible "soft" costs, i.e., the organization must shift from a "top-down" model to a learning and self-aware knowledge focused organization) which can translate into increased efficiencies across the organization (and as a byproduct, lead to more efficient cost models which equates to "affordable" capabilities) that can be fielded much faster and with increasingly precise relevance for end users. 

Of course my background is with Special Operations Forces, which has been shown to be one of the most economical and cost effective military capabilities in the history of modern warfare, so efficiecient use and deployment of resources to tackle tough problems is kind of in my DNA....

If you'd like a more recent example of someone warning society about the hazards of certain social inertia's inducing painful constraints, look no further than this week. In an October 7th, 2009 article titled "Future Weapons Need to be Adaptable, Cost Less" (Aerospace & Defense News) General James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the United States can no longer afford to "cut out large chunks of its defense budget" for weapons systems that provide "ony a niche capability". 

The most poignant comment made by General Cartwright is that "no matter how good a weapon system is, it has to be affordable, which  flies in the face of most of the entrenched industry experts

Does this mean that  affordability is now the new luxury for a society confronted with constraints ("contractions" or "corrections") not seen since the great depression? Even for Large Defense Programs procurement? Is this an indication of some sort of a shift? 

I'm not sure.

These are my thoughts. I guess they manifest from my own social inertia's, coming from a rural community in Southeastern Kentucky where as they say "pickens are slim", since I was a little boy struggling to find food for my mother and myself, to growing up observing a genius entrepeneur (my grandfather, RL Owens), to my unforgettable experiences as a Navy SEAL to the most challenging experience of my life (no kidding) starting Sofcoast, it's ingrained in me to find or create a solution to whatever problem I'm faced with.  I think most people have this survival instinct, whether they know it or not. 

Sometimes we as people forget that we can accomplish much more than we may think we can.  Sometimes we as people need to produce experiences to remind us of this.

Don't let yourself be what President Theodore Roosevelt called "..those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

Get moving.

This is important because it is at the core of Sofcoast's value system.  Everything Sofcoast stands for is based on the vision that affordability is not a codeword for "small", "cheap","low quality", "sub-par" or a "partial fit".

Affordability means being responsible.  It means making a positive contribution to society and humanity. It means being mindful to maintain a balanced view. It means developing and adhering to a sort of intellectual discipline and "technical frugality" to elegantly design in ways that continuously contribute positively to humanity.

Maybe another excerpt from President Eisenhower's farewell speech might help describe one of the core tenents of Sofcoast's value system as he warns all of us to be careful of impalanced views....

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

Cheers,

John S. Surmont, Sofcoast founder & CEO

Sofcoast develops affordable, game-changing solutions that empower local, national and global entities in the public and private sectors to connect and enable mobile field workers, defend against danger and loss, and restore stability in the event of disaster.

Should reason prevail?

At a time when the United States is faced with contracting GDP and slow growth prospects on the horizon where will funding for entitlement programs such as Veterans Assistance programs, healthcare and social security programs come from?

Perhaps from another entitlement program?

Sharing an article I found on dodbuzz.com that I thought would (once again) speak to the core thesis behind Sofcoast's business approach that reason should prevail when costs count. 
----

By Greg Grant Monday, August 17th, 2009 4:46 pm
Posted in Policy

Speaking to an audience of military veterans, President Barack Obama called for cutting wasteful defense spending and for reforming the way defense industry does business. “Every dollar wasted in our defense budget is a dollar we can’t spend to care for our troops or protect America or prepare for the future,” he said Monday.

Echoing many of the same arguments for defense reform made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Obama criticized a defense establishment that has failed to adapt to the 21st century and remains wedded to Cold War-era doctrine and weapons “better suited to fight the Soviets on the plains of Europe than insurgents in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan.”

He said the QDR “top-to-bottom” strategic review will produce a “new blueprint for the 21st-century military that we need.” Obama then previewed that blueprint: “an Army that is more mobile and expeditionary and missile defenses that protect our troops in the field; a Navy that not only projects power across the oceans but operates nimbly in shallow, coastal waters; an Air Force that dominates the airspace with next-generation aircraft, both manned and unmanned; a Marine Corps that can move ashore more rapidly in more places.”

Obama really let if fly when he talked about the need to reform the “defense establishment,” calling wasteful defense spending an “affront” to the American people and the troops.

“You’ve heard the stories: the indefensible no-bid contracts that cost taxpayers billions and make contractors rich; the special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget; the entrenched lobbyists pushing weapons that even our military says it doesn’t want. The impulse in Washington to protect jobs back home building things we don’t need has a cost that we can’t afford.”

“Think about it. Hundreds of millions of dollars for an alternate second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter — when one reliable engine will do just fine. Nearly $2 billion to buy more F-22 fighter jets — when we can move ahead with a fleet of newer, more affordable aircraft. Tens of billions of dollars to put an anti-missile laser on a fleet of vulnerable 747s. And billions of dollars for a new presidential helicopter.”

“This waste would be unacceptable at any time, but at a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, it’s inexcusable,” Obama said, speaking at the VFW convention in Phoenix, Az.

He vowed to put an end to “no-bid contracts” and to reform procurement so “weapons systems don’t spin out of control.” Obama said he was glad to have Republican Sen. John McCain as a “partner” in his effort to curtail wasteful defense spending.

Using a similar approach the administration has used in its arguments to pass health care reform, Obama singled out “special interests, contractors, and entrenched lobbyists” who oppose changes to the status quo. “They’re putting up a fight. But make no mistake, so are we.” He vowed to cut any weapons program that doesn’t support the troops in the field or underperforms.

The administration clearly sees a future security environment filled with irregular wars along of the Iraq and Afghanistan variety. “In the 21st century, military strength will be measured not only by the weapons our troops carry, but by the languages they speak and the cultures that they understand.”

The word is out - Unmanned Systems are here to stay

I happened across the website DoDBuzz  and saw the youtube video titled "The Flying Half-Kegg" and thought others might enjoy the video.

I ended up finding other video's on youtube about Small Unmanned Aerial Systems. I'm glad that there is open source information, especially video.  This should give people a better understanding of this nascent industry that was birthed through Federal Gov't R&D contracts and is now a critical technology within DoD. Many people like me believe that there are even larger opportunities via Commercial market opportunities...however these sysems (Unmanned Aerial Systems) cannot legally be operated in the United States National Airspace without permission to waive existing federal aviation administration regulations through what's called a certificate of authorization waiver(COA) process.  We've been working with certain Components within the Department of Defense for establishing a COA in Southeastern Kentucky for Small Unmanned Systems operations.  This process can take time.  We've been working on it for about 2 years.  We are still making progress and are confident that the approvals will come in due time. I'll talk about that more another time.

Robotics and unmanned systems are nascent and growing game-changing industries that are going to be important economic engines for the United States and other countries.  I've shared this with others that obtaining Certificate of Authorization Waivers (COA's) for unmanned aerial systems operations can, will and do have a tremendous economic impact to any region it is associated with and should be viewed and considered to be an economic growth engine just like locating a large company with hundred's of employees next to great schools, great power infrastructure, great communities. 

It should also be viewed as an economic incentive for industry.  Imagine being able to locate your technology business next to approved airspace for unmanned systems operations?

For now, I think you'll enjoy some youtube video's about Small Unmanned Aerial Systems.  The Raven is the system that is most widely fielded by the United States Army, which is why you'll see it everywhere.  I've spent lots of time with this system and many other small unmanned aerial systems and consider this system to be the "jeep" of small unmanned aerial systems.

Here's a video about the 152 Battalion, deployed with the 76th BCT in Iraq, who secure logistical convoy routes by flying recon missions with the Raven, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. 

Here's another video that demonstrates the affordability and ease of building your own small unmanned aerial system by integrating commercial off the shelf components that are available (primarily through the RC hobby market). Now, I say this a little bit tongue in cheek because it's not quite that easy (if you want a system that you can depend on when your life depends on it....) The point is a tremendous amount of progress has been made. US Taxpayers have invested heavily in developing these technologies. A promising industry is being born. Promising companies in this industry are now being traded publicly by wall street banks. The technology is advancing. Why aren't more jobs being created?

The problem is that the United States laws that govern Unmanned Aerial Systems operations in the National Airspace System are lagging.  Especially in how the FAA views small unmanned aerial systems and then limits and restricts their legal access and operations in the United States National Airspace System. 

Until very recently the majority of this technology was classified or at least kept very very quiet.  Now with the widening use of general purpose forces to include national guard units (and eventually foreign military sales customers) its becoming easier to inform and educate wider audiences about the profoundly positive impact that Unmanned Systems are having on society. 

In particular and especially small unmanned aerial systems. 

As citizens and taxpayers shouldn't it be our responsibility to ensure that elected officials, political appointee's, law makers and administrators are regulating and enforcing laws that are benefiting humanity and society writ large instead of self-imposing restrictions and limitations with no real argument other than "it's new", "we don't want to take any risks", "let's study it for a decade and then decide".

In an unprecedented time of economic uncertainty when jobs are evaporating and Industries are disappearing, devastating certain regions in the United States, does a "wait and see" approach make sense for such an important young and promising industry?

We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Cheers,
John Surmont
Founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Adm Olsen adds "lost" 5th SOF Truth to doctrine

A post from friend and teammate, Mark Divine's blog.

Posted August 16th, 2009

By Sean D. Naylor - ArmyTimes.com

In a recognition of special operations forces’ reliance on their conventional partners for “enabling” capabilities such as intelligence analysis and engineering, U.S. Special Operations Command head Adm. Eric Olson is rehabilitating a long-lost “truth” that acknowledges the contribution non-special ops forces make to missions.

SOCom and its subordinate commands have long touted four “SOF Truths” that encapsulate the command’s self-image.

These four statements have become enshrined in special operations lore, frequently quoted by special ops officials. But few special operators know that the SOF truths were written by a non-special operator, or that a fifth truth went missing for more than 21 years.

The author of the SOF truths was John Collins, a retired Army colonel who enjoyed a second career in the Congressional Research Service and in 1987 found himself writing a publication titled “United States and Soviet Special Operations” for a House Armed Services Committee subcommittee chaired by Rep. Earl Hutto, D-Fla.

The report “had to do with what special operations are all about,” Collins said. “When we were through, Hutto wrote the forward to this report — I wrote it for him, he signed it. Having gone back through everything I’d done, I came up with the five SOF truths. Those were the tailpiece of what Hutto signed.”

Those “five SOF truths” included the original four, plus a fifth: “Most special operations require non-SOF assistance.”

The details of what happened next are murky, but by 1988 then-Brig. Gen. Dave Baratto, the commander of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N.C., was wrestling with the challenge of how to codify special operations’ unique “operational considerations.”

“SOF was new and it was joint and my job was to try and incorporate those [considerations] across all services,” Baratto said. That led Baratto and his staff to draw up a list of “SOF imperatives” that sought to articulate what made special operations forces different from conventional forces.

The SOF truths “came up as sort of a derivative of that, and I don’t know exactly where they originated … but they sort of went hand in hand with the imperatives,” Baratto said, adding that his staff “may have” picked up the truths from Collins’s ghostwritten introduction signed by Hutto.

But Baratto, who retired as a major general in 1995, remembers discussing the SOF truths “and whether we ought to codify them and embrace them as an institution” with Wayne Downing, the general who took command of Army Special Operations Command in 1991. Downing, who died in 2007, was receptive to the idea, Baratto said.

However, Collins’ fifth bullet about most spec ops missions requiring “non-SOF assistance” made an early exit in the debate.

The first Collins knew of SOCom’s adoption of four of his five truths was in 1993, while he was researching another special ops report, this time for Sens. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Bill Cohen, R-Maine.

“The first stop was Fort Bragg and the Army Special Ops Command,” where Downing was still in charge, Collins said. “And Wayne gives me a dog-and-pony show of slides and ... very proudly he pops up a slide with the ‘SOF Truths’ on it — four of them.

“I said, ‘I think they’re great — I wrote ’em.’ ”

“The fifth truth got dropped simply because ... it said special ops needs some help,” he said.

“I have told everybody I can get my hands on since then that it’s too bad the fifth truth got dropped,” he said. “Its omission encourages unrealistic expectations by poorly tutored employers and perpetuates a counterproductive ‘us versus everybody else’ attitude.”

Olson apparently agreed with Collins, because after a December e-mail exchange between the retired colonel and the four-star, the admiral said that he was re-instating the fifth truth into the SOCom canon.

Olson explained his reasoning in a statement e-mailed via Col. Tim Nye, the SOCom spokesman:

“The SOF Truths have provided time-tested guidance to the special operations community for daily activities as well as long-range planning. When they were originally penned, there was a fifth truth that was never published — ‘Most special operations require non-SOF assistance.’ It’s being included now so that we all understand the importance of force enablers and the contributions they make to mission success. To think otherwise would levy unrealistic expectations as to the capabilities SOF bring to the fight.

“The operational effectiveness of our deployed forces cannot be, and never [has] been, achieved without being enabled by our joint service partners. The support Air Force, Army, Marine and Navy engineers, [explosive ordnance disposal] technicians, intelligence analysts, and the numerous other professions that contribute to SOF, have substantially increased our capabilities and effectiveness throughout the world.”

New Pentagon Priorities Reshape Defense Business

I wanted to publish a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "New Pentagon Priorities Reshape Defense Business.  Smaller Contractors Benefit Amid Shift From High-Tech Weapons to More-Basic Arms Meant for Quick Deployment"

By AUGUST COLE

GREENVILLE, Texas -- In a cavernous hangar here, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. is working around the clock to turn ordinary turboprop aircraft into spy planes that hunt insurgents.

The so-called Project Liberty program delivered its first batch of the aircraft to Iraq this summer in less than a year -- a breakneck pace for the defense industry.

"This program went from contract to combat in about eight months," said Michael Strianese, L-3's chairman and chief executive. Plans call for more of the modified Hawker Beechcraft Corp. planes -- which cost around $20 million apiece -- to be sent to Afghanistan this winter.
Pentagon chief Robert Gates, visiting L-3 Communications' Greenville, Texas, plant in August, told workers the best solutions are sometimes the fastest.
Department of Defense

Pentagon chief Robert Gates, visiting L-3 Communications' Greenville, Texas, plant in August, told workers the best solutions are sometimes the fastest.
Pentagon chief Robert Gates, visiting L-3 Communications' Greenville, Texas, plant in August, told workers the best solutions are sometimes the fastest.The fast tempo is a sign of changes sweeping some parts of the defense industry. Early this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates began overhauling the Pentagon's proposed $634 billion fiscal 2010 budget, slashing many high-tech weapons systems that had been under development for years and spending more on basic weapons that could be deployed quickly in Iraq and AfghanistaThe shake-up has begun to alter the way many defense contractors do business. During the Cold War, contractors and the Pentagon spent as much time and money as they needed to perfect new weapons systems. Now, in a reflection of the new defense priorities, some contractors are scrambling to meet tight cost ceilings and deadlines.

The Pentagon and the defense industry were "completely divorced from economic reality," said James Hasik, chief of defense consulting firm Hasik Analytic LLC. "That is slowly giving way to a more vigorous effort on the part of the industry to get ahead of the Pentagon's problems."

Mr. Gates tried to drive home the importance of quick turnarounds during a recent visit to the L-3 factory here. He told workers that "the best solution isn't always the fanciest or the most expensive," but often the one ready for the battlefield fastest.

Oshkosh Corp., based in Oshkosh, Wis., is hiring hundreds of employees as it races to produce blast-resistant all-terrain armored trucks to protect soldiers in Afghanistan against roadside bombs. It won the Pentagon contract for the vehicles in June, beating out bigger rivals such as BAE Systems Inc. and General Dynamics Corp., for what has so far been $2.3 billion in orders. By the end of the year it aims to be churning out 1,000 trucks a month.

Many of those trucks will be tracked by armed, unmanned planes made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., which has accelerated production in recent years of its Predator and newer Reaper drones, which ply the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan. It is gearing up to sell as many as 375 of the $10 million to $12 million Reapers to the Air Force.

Mr. Gates's reordering of the Pentagon budget has improved the fortunes of many smaller defense companies, which account for many of the department's nuts-and-bolts technologies, as well as weapons systems used on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. Smaller companies focused on a narrower range of products can often react more quickly than the industry's giants, in part because they tend to be less bureaucratic.

" Smaller companies have been more responsive; that puts pressure on the big companies," said Jeffrey Roncka, a vice president at Charles River Associates, a consulting firm that advises defense contractors. At the same time, some of the cutting-edge weapons systems designed by the industry's biggest names are being sidelined as irrelevant and too costly.

The F-22 Raptor, for example, is considered the most advanced fighter ever built, and has earned bragging rights for its maker, Lockheed Corp., the largest defense contractor by sales. Lockheed and subcontractor Boeing Co. began work on the F-22 in 1991, and 16 years elapsed before the fighter became combat ready in 2007.

But Mr. Gates has insisted that the Air Force not buy any more of the $143 million fighters. As a result, Lockheed says its advanced assembly line that builds the fighter in Marietta, Ga., could shut down after 2011.

Meanwhile, Lockheed and some other big contractors have joined in the bidding to fill the Pentagon's more-immediate needs. Boeing and Lockheed are pursuing a $5 billion, 10-year logistics-and-services contract to support the U.S. Special Operations Command by performing tasks ranging from helicopter and weapons maintenance to supplying bases.

Lockheed is also joining forces with Hawker Beechcraft, which plans to bid on supplying the Air Force with an armed version of the small Hawker turboprop planes used to train military pilots. The government may order 100 of them as soon as next year, with deliveries expected possibly within 24 months, according to a preliminary contracting document.

Dennis Muilenburg, who heads Boeing's defense unit, said the company must deliver on big, existing contracts, while being responsive to the Pentagon's urgent needs. "Business agility is one of our keys for the future," he said.

Inciweb - A Tool for Incident Response

I am sharing this link to inciweb for several reasons. It shows a tool that is in wide use for coordination and information dissemination on a large scale using things like google maps and a variety of social media tools and technology to get information out to incident cooperators. Following incidents from start to finish provides knowledge about those we wish to support. Finally, perhaps you have a family somewhere near a wildfire and want to see what is going on.

http://www.inciweb.org/

Should someone what to see how incidents start, grow, and then scale back, this is a fun site to follow.

Inciweb begins to show the scope of interagency response. How will ASAP fit into fire response? Some possibilities include providing robust communications at certain staging areas and perhaps some spotting or other surveillance. For wildfire, the question is, would ASAP provide a new or additional capability (Do we already have something doing this?) or would it provide the additional capability at such low acquisition, operation, and maintenance costs that I would trade existing equipment for ASAP?

Possible opportunities for ASAP – interoperable communications (some type of airborne comms gateway or repeater), surveillance (provide a way for the various bosses/chiefs to see the big picture though planes to the same thing), thermal imaging (go up high with thermal imager – identify and pinpoint hotspots 24/7, freeing manned aircraft for other tasks), and connectivity to rest of world (internet and/or 3G types of communications for crews and evacuees to rest of world – The “I’m okay/we are okay" factor).

I’ve seen fires where the cooperators list was three times the size.

Just some random thoughts. Share as you see fit.

Preston

A note from my past

I found a short "slice of life" I had written in February of 2002 while I was in Qandahar, Afghanistan. Be forewarned that it does have a bit of "off color" humor and the whole topic just stinks..... ;)

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

======

February 24, 2002
Qandahar, Afghanistan
Operation Enduring Freedom

It was pretty much like any other day, any other Qandahar day, that is.  Early January in Southern Afghanistan, as I experienced it,it was cold and miserable.  There really is no nice pretty, packaged way of saying it, except that it was unlike any other experience I have ever had in my life.  In some ways it felt like Lord of the Flies out here.  We, as a group, didn't reach the point of complete chaos, although some would argue, myself included, that from the looks of the Joint Operations Center (JOC for you acronym lovers) we weren't far from total mayhem.

I quickly found that there was nothing simple about anything in Qandahar.  For example, relieving oneself.  In Qandahar, I would have to say that there is no "head", "latrine" or "bathroom" per se, so I'll forgo the clean and tidy description of what I have experienced.  It would be more appropriate to use the fouler description because that seems to describe the act more fully given the present surroundings and day to day theme of men hunting for wild animals.

It's early January and we were ostensibly "just passing through" as our journey was taking us farther north and east.  During this period or "lull" as some might characterize it, I had the privilege to learn and understand a fuller meaning of dignity.  Arriving the night before, it was very difficult to get an idea of how deep a hold squalor had. There was no greeting, simply the chilly reception of darkness. 

As the sun rose, the frost laden ground began to thaw hopefully. The day started like any other day in any other land.  The strong grip of darkness gave way to soft grey streaks of light, shining through free flowing clouds flirting with crisply drawn mountains in the distance, and eventually releasing it's hold on the sky. The falling darkness seeped into the ground gripping it's mistress - cold, and then meekly crawling away. 

There seems to be an argument between beauty and squalor here. Today, it seems as if squalor has laid claim to the land. This must only be a momentary victory, a mere setback for beauty. Beauty has asked for and, from the looks of things, has been granted a divorce from this soil. 

Not wanting to be alone, this land has a new mistress, Squalor.  Today it seems as if squalor runs things around here, while the true friend of beauty - rain -  has been blatently absent for sometime.

Leaving in it's place dust, dust and more dust.

With the unrelenting reminder of my own biology, I gave in to my optimistic hope that I would find a comfortable place to relieve myself. I've now adjusted my expectations to find anything that might even closely resemble what I call a 'bathroom' back home.  Once this mental adjustment was made, I quickly located a square plywood shed with the words "No Pissing" scrawled on its back side in black spray paint.  I realized and quickly came to terms with the fact that I would have to settle for relief and wait a while longer for comfort. 

The shanty roof, tilting awkwardly down at an angle towards its thin back wall, would have made Steinbeck's character's in the Grapes of Wrath, feel right at home.  Inside this 'shitter' as it was so aptly  called, was a two foot high enclosed plywood bench with three holes crudely cut into it. 
These holes, as I soon found, were not near wide enough from front to back to accomodate some of its visitors and their deposits.  With an uncomfortable sigh, feeling my bowels bellowing beneath my belt, I forced myself to step up into the stoop.  Scanning the bench for a hole without those organic scars of humanity, my eyes spotted the center hole.  This semi-clean portal gave me the opportunity to find the relief I had so desperately set out to find.

With a bowel emptying growel, I began to do what every human has done for thousands of years. I didn't realize just how vulnerable man was when in this position, until now.  This seemed to be as difficult as it was going to get.  At about the mid point of this exercise, the large silhouette of a hulking man hops up onto the step of this stoop.  He's clearly in the same state as I was and pays no attention to me at all.  Master Chief "O'Reilly" climbs in with his pants down in a flash, gives me a sheepish grin with a greyish palor on his face and sits down and drops his load at the first hole in the stoop. 

Now I don't know about anyone else, but for me it's not normal to sit next to anyone else while I'm taking care of my biology.  It's frankly quite disturbing, but since everything about this god forsaken country is "disturbing" I quickly make my mental adjustments.

Not really knowing what to do or say, I glanced over at him sideways, smiled and said "hey Master Chief, how's it going?" This came from me more as an obligitory statement which I had been conditioned to give since being a little boy.  "Social grace", my mother used to say. "Is something you need to have if you want to get anywhere in life".  "Always be polite and gracious."

Well as you can imagine, two grown men sitting inches apart with elbows touching, leaving their 'mark' on this country was probably not planned for in all of those fancy etiquette books my mother and sister's read.  What can a man say to another man sitting inches apart from him taking a sh*t?

I don't know.  I simply don't know.  I tried to act like I wasn't even slightly affected by it.  I didn't know what else to do, besides It wasn't my priority at the time. Afterall, I was very happy on my own to have achieved what degree of relief I could, albeit smelly, but relief just the same.

I do remember looking over at the master chief and asking him, "Master Chief, do you think there is any possible way for us to maintain our dignity in our present position?" he shook his head, grinned and sighed as he finished his business.  "Absolutely not, John. Absolutely not."  At that he pulled his pants up and shuffled out of the stoop. 

I realized at that point what dignity was. 

It wasn't flowery things, pretty clothes, or sweet smelling perfume, fancy talk, cool gadgets. It was being respectful of my own humanity, while being mindful of others humanness.

======

Weaving in the most banal and mundane parts of a persons life is important if you are trying to build products people need and can and will use.  My story was probably a bit crude in content but I hope this story makes the point for engineers, product managers, bizdev/marketing people that when building solutions, systems, tools and tech for "constrained users and uses"  (like Navy SEALs in Afghanistan) you need to keep a wide perspective as you think about what the end user's needs are and not become fixated on the obvious - "hollywood" parts of their days.

I see it happen all the time and that's a big reason Sofcoast exists.

Don't let it happen to you.

Cheers,

John Surmont

Coping with Constraints - The Lighter Side

Pigeon Found to be Faster Than Broadband

1:11 PM - September 10, 2009 by Marcus Yam

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What's next? BirdTorrent?

Carrier pigeons are an ancient way to transmit information. As we've seen in many movies, one would tie a small scrolled message to the leg of a pigeon before sending it flapping off to warn its recipient of impending danger.

Today we have much more modern and efficient ways to transmit information… or do we? If you're an internet user in South Africa on the Telkom ISP, you might have better results with the old ways.

A worker at a Durban IT company was very unhappy with the performance of Telkom's ADSL speed. As a result, he decided to pit a carrier pigeon armed with a 4 GB USB stick against a plain file transfer.

Winston the pigeon won.

By the time Winston reached his destination, only 4 percent of the file had transferred. The BBC report does not specify the full size of the file, but did say that Winston completed his journey in 1 hour and 8 minutes, while the internet transfer required an additional hour to complete.

ISP Telom said that it couldn't be held responsible for the slow transfer speeds to the IT company, as it has helped to advise the company in possible improvements, but thus far none have been accepted.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Good Enough

About half of my career as a SEAL was spent working with equipment as an end-user/practitioner, the other half spanned multiple roles and responsibilities, to include developing requirements, designing solutions, integrating disparate components for tactical use, breaking stuff, devising test scenario's, developing field use scenario's and "concepts of operations" or "CONOPS" for said stuff.  I also spent a lot of time transitioning this technology from experimental form to fieldable kit form, and developing the training processes, systems, artifacts and requisite syllabus, materials,etc...

Very early on I learned that fielding capabilities - not gadgets - is important.  I found that I would become enamored with a particular system and find a way to forcefit it into a mission set or build a CONOPS around it.  Most of the time it led to breakdowns and frustrations, there were a few times where there was actually a real capability "hidden" behind the gizmo and in my work I would uncover it. 

It's not too difficult to get caught up in the "gee whiz" factor of the latest gizmo and then realize that once I've taken it out into the field and used it a few times it became more of a liability than not having it in the first place.

Traditional approaches to resolve these and other issues take time, money and expertise (people).  If you think about time, money and expertise as different dimensions on a graph, it's not hard to realize that producing time, money and expertise required is a critical path and many cases is the first challenge to overcome. 

As a SEAL, I found that I was always faced with different constraints at different times and over time developed a fundamental approach for aligning my team's goals with the organizations goals for product development, fielding and use.  I use the term "Low Friction Innovation" to describe Sofcoast's core and fundamental design and product philosophy.  Others might better understand this philosophy by taking a look (or for some another look) at the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity).

Low Friction Innovation essentially is the practice of identifying and managing constraints such as money, time and skilled personnel as examples.  Once this process is developed then processes for determining various paths forward and the corresponding frictions that will inevitably exist, risks can be better managed while increasing probabilities of success.

I took the same approach as an IT Director with Audit Integrity.  During the startup period I needed to build the infrastructure for a data processing intensive technology business that needed "good enough" development, testing, qa and production environments to allow the engineering team to accomplish their goals.

Apparently the idea of "Low Friction Innovation" is topical these days.  There's a great article in Wired Magazine this month called "The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine". 

This same approach has served Sofcoast well in our lead product development processes and practices for ASAP.   For the ASAP product our goals were simple. 

• Decouple the traditional "envelop" based lighter than air systems from their shapes to provide mass customization and just in time design, development and delivery capacities for various customer requirements.
• Meet and Exceed unmet needs for Public Safety (and others) for affordable stationary aerial platform requirements. 

The philosophy is to use readily available ripstop nylon as the outer shell (that has the appropriate design for various uses such as energy harvesting; antenna elevation; advertising; surveillance; maritime; high wind; high density altitudes, etc...) Then select low cost, durable, lightweight bladder materials and decouple the helium gas containment system from the outer shell.  Once we'd achieved this we then discovered that our supply chain and our materials costs were well below any competitors while our performance was at least as good as other's if not better. 

Again, Low Friction Innovation at work.

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Infrastructure as a Service

I recently attended this years AUVSI conference in Washington, DC.  I'd like to congratulate Dan Imbat for his receipt of an individual achievement award.  Dan's work has been and continues to be extraordinarily valuable to the Unmanned Systems Industry writ large and I'm glad to hear he's been acknowledged for his work. Congratulations again, Dan.

---

I also wanted to take a second to talk about what Sofcoast isn't. 

• Sofcoast is not a bunch of ex-military end user's posing as engineers and trying to find and fit solutions around our products.
• Sofcoast is also not a bunch of ex end users providing business development and marketing services.

Sofcoast is a philosophical decision that I've made to offer an alternative to the status quo systems, tools and training that are either outdated, highly inefficient or frankly way too expensive. 

One problem area is keeping up with the constant advance of technology, specifically for mobile workers on the edge, vis a vis, "edge computing".  In our case we are very interested in meeting the edge computing needs of public safety professionals and department of defense professionals.

--
Infrastructure as a Service

The key question that drove my decision to develop an Infrastructure as a Service offering is simple.

"How can I build and deliver this "edge environment" for people?"  Some key considerations for me were also to develop a model that benefits multiple stakeholders such as customers, Local, Regional and Area leaders and key constituents while developing a revenue model and business model that works with an underlying fundamental focus on building and delivering compelling, competitive and highly valuable services to meet edge user needs.

Think about where the innovation occurs today in tools and technologies.  Unmanned systems, software, hardware, payloads, optics, communications....the list goes on and on....

What are the alternatives for "edge like" technology integration areas?

The world is shifting, technology is advancing, economies are shifting, requirements are evolving.

Terrorists aren't standing still, either.   

------

When I say "Infrastructure as a Service", I'm essentially asking the question "how can we create new opportunities for people in a region based on the assets that their infrastructure represents while meeting a real need?"  In the case of the Patriot Training Area it happens that people in the military, their vendors and people in law enforcement and their vendors (which are sometimes the same and in other cases are different) need places that are "out of the way" and "unfamiliar" that really aren't too far away geographically.

"Infrastructure" means places (with buildings, dams, bridges, lakes, rivers, airports, college campus, exposition centers) that typify environments that human beings live, work and play in.  Humans hurt each other and the people who look for these people and try to stop them use tools (radio's, camera's, cars, airplanes, unmanned airplanes, boats, computers, etc..) and they need to be good at using these tools to do their part in stopping the bad guys. 

My core thesis is that It's highly inefficient for taxpayer's to spend money for military reservations and training venue's that emphasize targeting and destroying enemies "in the open" with their tanks and airplanes lined up in nice tidy columns and formations when they've spent money to improve their own quality of life with schools, dams, bridges, lakes, rivers, airports, colleges, business parks and other infrastructure elements.  Is it really necessary and will it continue to be necessary  to go to "the middle of nowhere" or onto military reservations to learn how to use deadly force and shoot weapons and drop bombs or operate other technology like unmanned systems?  By the way, lethal force is the last resort for law enforcement, as it should be and law enforcement work "amidst the people" as well - it's a key tenent of their mission.

Do terrorists even march in formation?  Do they have tanks? No they don't.  Let's face it Terrorists hide and are hard to find because they "hide in plain sight" - they hide amongst populations and ordinary workaday people living their lives as best they can.  That's why they are characterized as an "assymetric threat". (More on this another time...)

The United States Special Operations Forces spent over 600 flight hours (hunting or "finding" and "fixing") Iraq terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi with an unmanned system.  Once they located him they sent in two F-16 fighter jets that "finished" him in less than 2 hours. 

So, there is an emphasis on collecting lots and lots of information and then acting decisively with force when necessary.  There is also a trend towards using alternatives to using deadly force.

 
Which means a dramatic increased emphasis on increasing the precision and effectiveness in gathering information in order to make effective decisions. 

Which is why ISR and Unmanned Systems meets a huge need.... and.... the demand for ISR and unmanned systems is unmet, insatiable and growing.

What's interesting is that the priority now and for the foreseeable future for funding is information centric systems and technologies...for both Public Safety and Department of Defense communities.

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder, CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Cloudparking and Energy Harvesting

Back in february I jotted some notes down about this topic of energy independent infrastructure as well as regenerative energy systems...I like to organize these concepts in a framework called "cloudparking". One of the thought streams that I had in this topic is something I call the "atomization of the blob" ... if you care to look at my quite bad handwriting and scribbled notes take a look here...

Here's a TED video of Saul Griffith on kites as the future of renewable energy...

Another great video that helps describe the impact of wind energy harvesting...

Also, take a look at this video of the Magenn Rotor Kite which approaches wind energy harvesting in yet another way...

Sofcoast's core area of emphasis, interest and focus is "constrained users and uses" and energy is the ever present problem for constrained users and uses, therefore being able to provide energy independent infrastructure for edge / constrained users/uses is a key element of Sofcoast's long term design philosophy.

We're approaching these problems head on and with this idea of rapid mobile infrastructure (otherwise known as "cloudparking") systems to enable edge of network / infrastructure communications and monitoring systems while over time developing and incorporating the ability to exploit/harvest/convert solar and wind as well.

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder/CEO

Sofcoast

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast

Cloudparking & Other musings

We had the opportunity to fly our latest design last week and test different payload suspension methods.  I'd like to give props to AJ Carr for granting us permission to fly on his property, thanks again, AJ!

Also, we'd like to shout out to the emergency management professionals who stopped by and paid us a visit. It was actually very cool to have been able to provide an "impromptu" demo for the fire fighters and emergency management folks in the area.  Very cool, indeed.

Here's a flickr photostream of some still frame images I captured from the camera inflight.  (I'll eventually get around to getting the actual video out to you all...)

Check out some of the videos below.

Here's another vantage point....

Coby, sent me an experimental payload "cage" that we tested as well...here's a little clip of us working on attaching it for testing....

LeAnn captured a little bit of footage for the pre-flight here...

"Cloudparking" is term that I've use to describe low cost and efficient ways (low friction) of creating edge of network or "near network" computing capacities.  Part of our focus will also be on energy independent cloudparking.... more on that later...

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

Don't be cloudless!

In a recent conversation with various friends and members of the company advisory board about what to emphasize with investors and what not to emphasize, it occurred to me that perhaps a better way to position the business is that we're building a "portable cloud computing company".  What's interesting is that it's not as difficult a story to present today as it was two years ago or even a year ago. 

If you aren't familiar with the term "cloud computing", take a look at this video for a pretty good explanation.

Lots of research has been done on the explosive growth of data and information people are generating because of mobile devices, desktop computers and cloud computing.  Here are some interesting facts from an EMC/IDC study.

• 70% the amount of data is and will be created by individuals as well as 30% by businesses by 2010.
• In 2006, 161 exabytes of digital information were created and copied.  (That is equal to 3 million times the information contained in every book ever written.)
• At this pace, the amount by 2010 will be 988 exabytes, and a compound annual growth rate of 57%.
• Images captured by over 1 billion devices worldwide (digital cameras, medical scanners, security cameras, etc) comprise the largest component of the digital universe. 
• The number of images captured in 2006 was 150 billion worldwide and is expected to reach 500 billion by 2010.
• Email accounts grew from 253 million in 1998 to nearly 1.6 billion in 2006.  But during that time, the number of emails grew 3x faster than the number of people emailing.
• In 2006, the average email traffic from one person to another accounted for 6 exabytes.
• IDC estimates 250 million Instant Messaging accounts by 2010 and over 60% of Internet users will access broadband.
• By 2010, IDC estimates a total of 1.6 billion users online worldwide.
• Convergent mobile devices such as the Blackberry, iPhone and other smart phones are making it easier to create meaningful UGC content.
• Growth of User Generated Content (UGC) on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace continue to grow exponentially. Unique users collectively top 250 million.

As an exercise for myself in checking patterns I googled a few search terms, my findings are below.

Search terms and results:

• "cloud computing" = 31.1 Million results
• "mainframe computing" = 2.9 Million results
• "smartphones" = 20.2 Million results
• "cellphones" = 7.9 Million results
• "software as a service" = 356 Million results
• ""Unmanned Aerial Systems" = 633,000 results

So what does this mean? For me it means that people are scrambling to figure out how to effectively (and affordably) manage their lives in the sea of data that they are swimming in.

"OK, so what?" You might ask.

As human patterns of behavior shift and information access and delivery via desktop computers, mobile devices and cloud computing converges these processes become ingrained in every aspect of our daily lives.  

We truly can't live without our access to the cloud.

Think about Twitter, Facebook, Nixle and other applications as some examples of the power of the web. Think about what's beginning to happen with public safety professionals as they learn about these technologies.  Let's face it, we're all learning collectively about what marvelous new possibilities exist because of our abilities to get connected and remain connected to one another.

Here's an example.  I spend about half my time in Kentucky and the other half of my time in San Diego and was stoked when I read about the company Nixle rolling out their product in my community in Chula Vista, California.  

This is a system that leverages mobile devices, cloud computing and desktop computing systems to establish a direct and real-time link between public safety professionals and private citizens.  A very cool application from what I can tell that should have a positive and productive impact on society as a whole.

So, from a fundamentals perspective it may make more sense to describe how our core strategy is to commoditize something ahead of a sharp "curve".  In other words, cloud computing is a really, really disruptive idea in many ways, especially with the low barriers to enter and the way it can turn existing business models over.

Quick, imagine that you're now cloudless!

What do you do?

The problem this produces is that as people become more dependent on the web or "the cloud", what happens when people find themselves "cloudless"?  (Or as we define it, "constrained"), for background, see my "constraints happen" post.

What happens when those who protect and serve you find themselves cloudless?

As a company, Sofcoast is focused on instantly creating, extending and preserving "The Cloud" for a variety of users, specifically public safety, defense and commercial applications. 

Particularly within the context of constrained environments by extending the edges of the network or "the cloud".  

Even in areas where there is a belief that "it won't happen to us."

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder/CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

ASAP X4C 24 Hour Flight Testing

This weekend we flew the latest ASAP design (X4C).  This design focuses on maximum performance across multiple environmental constraints.  This weekend we tested no/low wind and high density altitudes.  Our tests were highly successful if not a bit uneventful (which in aviation is a good thing). 

Our findings were as follows:
17 hours duration.  25lbs net lift @73 degrees F, 59% humidity, ~1200ft MSL.

We terminated the duration test when we lost power to the payload and lighting at about 17 hours.  We conducted a separate lift test as well and our estimates are 25+ lbs net lift at this point.  Now that we've got the additional lift performance, in our next design improvement on our payload system we'll be targeting extending power aloft time for the payload and other systems to something beyond 24 hours. 

For those of you that are interested, here's the photostream link on flickr of images captured from the payload at 500ft over a 24 period.

Also attaching new videos from the test flights. See below.

ASAP X4C 24 Hour Flight Endurance Testing.



Pre-Flight and Walk around.

Perch and Stare at an affordable pricepoint.

ASAP X4C Payload Video of some test Video.

Dawn of a new day - ASAP.

Hour 14 of 24 hour ASAP test flight. Good Morning!

All in all these test flights were fantastic.  The Sofcoast team and our partners have been working around the clock to make the necessary design and system adjustments to bring the design performance in line with realistic environments such as high density altitude, low/no wind as well as high wind.  It's a great feeling to see the system perform as envisioned and we wouldn't be here without a lot of help. Especially from Sofcoast's contract manufacturer, Southeastern Kentucky Rehabilitation Industries, a not-for-profit disabled workforce sewn products manufacturer in Whitley County, Kentucky. 

Thanks again to Mark Soles and his team for their work and contributions to the ASAP system.

Cheers,

John Surmont, Founder/President/CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Constraints Happen Part 2

I'm sure many of you have followed the story about a bridge over the I-75 interstate freeway near Hazel Park in Michigan has "completely collapsed" after two gasoline tankers exploded, creating a massive fire. Check out the article here

One of the conversations that we at Sofcoast have been having is that the headlines do not say it yet, but based on the number of folks in the pictures, there likely have been and will be possible reports about local cell infrastructure being saturated with calls reporting the accident and calling to check on the status of friends and family.




We thought the photos were so dramatic that we wanted to post them for our readers to see as well....




























Less visible, but just as important is our observation that it is very likely that in six to eight months a report will be written that will describe the communications flow on the land mobile radio system and the problems that ensued with everyone using their smartphones to push up to the minute information out to their social networks via the same infrastructure that is necessary for first responders and emergency management professionals to effectively coordinate action and respond.

So in this situation, (assuming a similar accident with 4,000 gallons of hazardous cargo occurs with First Responders equipped with ASAP systems)  there are two or three possible uses for ASAP and the integrated payload.

• Repeater/Gateway services for public safety
• Surveillance to support response (traffic safety, potential threats posed by fire, identification of hot spots and other threats created by intense heat, and tracking spread of hazardous spills into local streams, etc.)
• Augmentation of cellular system (private/cell phone companies)

The key point here is that Public safety professional demand access to voice infrastructure when disaster strikes and ASAP provides a low-cost way to meet that demand.

Cheers,

John Surmont, Founder/President/CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Constraints Happen

A friend of the Sofcoast team Jason Rexilius (check out his site here) forwarded along an MSNBC article about the company Liftport that I thought was great. Check it out here.

It looks like the folks at Liftport see and are also attempting to address the real problem that has, does and will exist -

Constraints happen when modern infrastructure fails. 

From my perspective and Sofcoast's perspective this is great news because we firmly believe that much more can be done and it is very encouraging to see others spending their own resources, time and treasure to address this very real danger for people everywhere.

Kudos to the Lifeport team and much success!

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder/President/CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Drumbeats

Of the several blogs and feeds I follow, one of my favorite feeds is the "VC Channel" feed. Check it out and let me know what you think. 

In a previous post I talk about critical decisions and aha moments and today I noticed that the guys over at DefragCon have a blog  themed "accelerating the aha moment". 

One of the posts by Eric Nolan is titled "Too much and not enough", check it out here.

The point is that there seems to be more chatter about the frustration people are experiencing with what Eric Nolan terms as "Too much information, and not enough time to process it." or "Too much knowledge locked away in the corner's of other people's minds, and not enough tools that help expose it."

Thanks Eric for "beating the drum" with a pithy description of what I have been fundamentally characterizing as the problem of discontinuous media, or simply the "frame problem".  If you are interested, check out the following previous post which discusses the "frame problem" and the point of our solution, Continuous Media Flow, here.

(here's an image that describes our software system as well, FWIW).

---

I also wanted to share some excerpts from a separate blog post by Anthony Ha.

Here's the main idea of the posting, to me...

"....regardless of which version of history you prefer, the description of the present and the future is the same — the tools we use at work are starting to looking more like the tools we look at home, and that’s only going to become more true."

----

And, lastly, for what it's worth, I thought I'd share Todd Huffman's sStitch youtube demo as well. We're happy to have Todd onboard the Sofcoast team as our Chief Science Officer. In this video he will demonstrate some of the core innovations that Sofcoast is incorporating into our software system.  You'll notice that this implementation is for the iPhone.  Be looking for some new video demos that we'll be posting of our blackberry software in the coming days as well.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

John Surmont, co-founder, President/CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

I wish you 'enough'.

A friend of mine forwarded me this and I thought I'd share it with you all.

Enjoy.

----
Recently I overheard a Father and daughter in their last moments together at the airport. They had announced the departure.

Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the Father said, 'I love you, and I wish you enough.'

The daughter replied, 'Dad, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed.. I wish you enough, too, Dad.'

They kissed and the daughter left. The Father walked over to the window where I was seated. Standing there I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, 'Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?'

'Yes, I have,' I replied. 'Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye'.

'I am old, and she lives so far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is - the next trip back will be for my funeral,' he said.

'When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.' May I ask what that means?'

He began to smile. 'That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone..' He paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail, and he smiled even more. 'When we said, 'I wish you enough,' we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.' Then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.

He then began to cry and walked away.

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them; but then an entire life to forget them.

Take Time To Live..

To all my friends and loved ones, I wish you Enough !

Cheers,

John Surmont, co-founder, President/CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Walking around in the dark

Last week I had a great visit to Huntsville, Alabama to meet with a couple of larger companies to discuss Sofcoast technologies and team and areas/opportunities for us to work together.  We walked away from these meetings with several new insights as well as some great opportunities for us to work with some great people at a couple great company's.

We're under Non-disclosure agreements with both so unfortunately I can't go too much farther except to say that both meetings were absolutely worth the time and effort.  By the way, I continue to be impressed with Huntsville, Alabama.  I know it's not "the bay area" or "SOCAL", there's still alot going on there and I look forward to visiting again soon.

I'm also glad that I had the opportunity to spend some time with one of Sofcoast's board members, Cecil Moses on his farm just outside of Lynchburg, Tennessee and then overnight at his home in Madison, Alabama, just outside of Huntsville.

I discovered something one night when we went for a walk around the lake while staying at his Madison home. 

I enjoy and miss "walking around in the dark". I can remember so many times as a SEAL that we would fly, drive, dive, jump, walk, run, ride... in the dark.

Kind of funny to me to be reminded while I was walking around this lake that a) I thoroughly enjoy walking in the dark and b) for me, it's a bit of a metaphor for being an entrepreneur, inventor and CEO.

I enjoy what I'm doing now and I realized that it's a bit like "walking around in the dark" when I was in the teams.  We had a vision, mission and focus and had prepared and were essentially carrying out our plan and regardless of the environmental constraints and factors (like being in the dark) we were prepared and equipped to effectively perform whatever tasks before us.

And then there was the training and "workup" period that we had to go through to be ready for these walks in the dark. Walking in the dark was uncomfortable.  It was disorienting.  It was unnatural. Yet, we developed the skills, identified the necessary resources and people and eventually got very good at it.

I think the same thing applies to starting a company.  Startups experience pre-formation, formation and the early period which is turbulent to include what an experienced tech industry vet that I was recently introduced to called a shakeout period.  The good news is that just as in SEAL Team when we would have shakeout patrols or excercises/events, it made us stronger.  I think the same thing applies to business. 

We used to have a saying in the teams "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger."  I think a similar saying could be applied to starting and operating young company's like Sofcoast. "That which doesn't kill the business makes the business stronger."

Walking in the dark is uncomfortable.  It is disorienting.  It is unnatural.  Most people won't subject themselves to this type of discomfort.  However it is also important to understand that effectively operating with uncertainty are critical skills that organizations of all sizes and shapes with all types of missions must get good at, or else they will simply suffer the consequences of requiring certainty at all times.

Cheers.

John Surmont, co-founder, President/CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

 

ASAP payload Integration. Success!

Friday July 3rd marks a tremendously important milestone for our company.  The first successful video surveillance payload system integration for the ASAP system! 

Here's some video, of the system on the ground being prepped.

....and an overview of the winch system .... and of ASAP in flight...

And here's a photostream of some snapshots from the test payload. 

I'm continuously encouraged, impressed and frankly amazed at the Sofcoast team.  The display of focus, professionalism, persistence and patience is dazzling!

We wouldn't be here without this team and those who support each of them.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support! 

All things being equal, persistence wins.

Let's keep it up team.

Cheers,

John Surmont, co-founder, President/CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

Founders Logic

Today I wanted to briefly discuss a recent meeting I had with Todd Huffman.  We discussed technology insertion, mobile systems, location awareness, geosocial media as well as a whole host of other topics.  I thoroughly enjoyed our visit and am happy to report that Todd has agreed to join Sofcoast as our Chief Technology Officer.

Welcome aboard Todd!

We discussed the premise of the company's software systems as well as an iPhone project Todd has been working on. Todd and I agree'd that we have both in different ways and from different perspectives observed that new and very exciting opportunities are surfacing daily as mobile technologies continue to advance.

So the interesting item for me is that Todd "gets it".  That makes two of us, Todd.

The reason I chose the term "founders logic" for this posting is that as we clear the memorial day weekend I found myself reflecting about the importance of founders in every aspect of our lives, most importantly the founders of nations, such as ours. Imagine the difficulty of starting a company then magnify it times a bazillion... I wonder if that might be close to what it must have been like to found a country.  Amazing! 

So, for me founders of tech companies in todays economic times might have ups and downs, however I suspect that it's all gravy compared to what our founding fathers and the founding fathers of other nations went to.  I mean think about what it means to bring something into existence, especially when it's a fuzzy image!  For me the experience has been both exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.  More on that another time.

Todd and I also agree'd today that he is going to make a video of himself using the WeieMedia software system and we're likely going to post these videos on youtube. It's funny that to us that the idea is extremely simple - participatory information logistics for mobile systems. Yet it seems difficult to articulate.... maybe its the speaker and not the message....hmm...

The WeieMedia software system enables location aware and network enabled devices like Blackberries and iPhones to provide citizens and first responders of all types the opportunity to be initial reporters and makes it possible for machines to rapidly evaluate incoming data, synthesize basic or baseline information, analytically seek confirmation, validation, and additional information from the initial reporter and others in the vicinity of a reported incident.

WeieMedia is a unique concept that makes efficient transmission of multimedia evidence possible. Establish a baseline that exists on the originating device and on the server receiving the information. That frame is used to then create baselines on other devices requiring similar information. If the originator or another user obtains additional information (video, audio, data, etc.) that new data is sent to the server, consolidated into the frame, and then the “new” pieces of information necessary to create the desired picture on the end user’s device is forwarded to that user. Speed is gained by not sending everything, just the new or changed information.

As designed, WeieMedia provides users the ability to capture video (stills and movies), audio, location, text, and identifying information using handheld smart phones. WeieMedia can also incorporate forms that allow for more efficient collection, aggregation, and distribution of information that improves law enforcement personnel ability to perform assigned tasks.

The WeieDo Field Interview form that runs on smartphones is one example.  Other examples might be facial recognition that could be done in car (on laptop running background application) or on centralized local or regional server.  Picture taken from smart phone, dashboard camera and then sent to facial recognition application. Perform task where it is most efficient and most effective or beneficial to those needing information.


As designed, the application is capable of being tailored to meet a variety of law enforcement and public safety needs.

The results of mechanical synthesis, analysis, consolidation, and communication can be tailored to the needs of local and regional law enforcement. The machine can be configured to notify dispatchers and other authorities as needed to initiate action. The information can be consolidated into larger pictures that are compatible with existing or use low cost, openly available GIS tools.

For me the whole idea of participatory data logistics is an interesting space that is beginning to emerge.  I'm excited by the possibilities and look forward to continued discovery and problem solving!

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

Quell the storm and ride the thunder

The end of May is often a difficult time for many Americans.  It's a time when we reflect, remember and are reminded of the ultimate sacrifice that American men and women and their families have made in service to our nation to protect our freedoms and way of life.

Over the long weekend I found myself reflecting about my life and my close personal friendships, specifically my relationships with two great American hero's in every sense of the word.  I am grateful to have known these brave men and to have been known by them and called friend and mate by them.  Chris Mueller and Mark Metherell laid down their lives and made the ultimate sacrifice so that we might live free.

In times of hardship and difficulty it is comforting for me to remember brave Americans like Chris and Mark.  I also found myself reflecting on a quote I carry with me to this day. This is a quote Chris shared with me when we were fellow "road guards" as BUD/S students.  The quote is a brief excerpt from the Citizenship in a Republic speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States on April 23rd, 1910 in Paris, France.


The excerpt is called "The Man in the Arena".

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Recently, I've come to appreciate the paragraph that follows the famous "Man in the Arena" quote. I thought I'd share it with you as well.

"Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world.  Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows.  Still less room is there for those who deride the sight of what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are.  The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary.  There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder."

I've spoken briefly about Chris Mueller and Mark Metherell in a previous post called "Transitions (Part Two)"  and I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge the sacrifices of all of those brave men and women who've made the ultimate sacrifice along with the 4,302 Americans who have been Killed in Action in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and the 682 Americans who have been Killed in Action in Afganistan since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).  See the Defenselink source.


I will also say thank you, however it's not enough.  That's another reason I started Sofcoast, which I'll discuss another time.

Chris Mueller was killed in Action on October 25,  2003 in Afghanistan.

Here's a pic I pulled from a UCSD article about Chris.  Chris is standing tall at a static display in Coronado, California.

Here's another pic of Chris Mueller on the Drop Zone at Military Freefall Training in Yuma, Arizona.  (Note the yellow jumpsuit and yellow helmet indicates student in training).
 

Mark Metherell was killed in action on April 11, 2008 in Iraq. 



This is a picture I took at Mark's gravesite on Memorial day 2009. My youngest son is pictured wearing a "Hoo-Ya" ballcap and super man t-Shirt with kaki shorts and sandals. I smiled because I could picture Mark and Chris dressed much the same way.  I still take great pleasure in wearing my sandals and shorts. I guess that's what I remember most about our time together.  Stressful job handled gratefully, gracefully, with a genuine unassuming warmth and good nature.

I sat down beside Mark's grave, said a prayer for Chris and his family, Mark, his family, his wife Sarah and his daughter Cora, pulled out my tin of copenhagen had a dip and imagined he, Chris and I having a dip and discussing our lives, our mission and our family.



Here's another picture of Mark with his baby girl Cora from Mark's memorial website, www.markmetherell.com.

We miss you, Mark and Chris.

Charlie Mike.

BTBT
KKKK

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

 

Diffusion vs. Scale

In a recent conversation with a colleague of mine, Coby Leuschke we discussed the idea of Diffusion versus Scale. (By the way, I've added Coby's cglusky blog to my blog space.  Check it out, he's got some great momentum in the non-profit space with his nonprof, Metanomy.

So as anyone might do, as I thought about diffusion vs. scale, I did a quick search on google that resulted in 33,000 hits that discussed Social Entrepreneurship and the diffusion vs. scale concept.

On his April 14th post on the Social Entrepreneurship blog, Nathaniel Whittemore talks about the diffusion of innovation and describes what FrontlineSMS: Medic co-founder Josh Nesbit thinks about how to effectively scale. The question for Josh is about horizontal scale.  FrontlineSMS: Medic is software that makes it easier for rural clinics to communicate with their community health workers via SMS and without the internet even at great distances. This improves quality and coverage of care.

For at least the last 4 years I've been attempting to describe the Sofcoast "big idea".  It may be that there's not one "big idea" that its actually quite a few diffuse idea's that are coalescing within one singular entity that leverages the diffusion of idea's, innovations and concepts for business models, design, engineering, sales, distribution and market focus.

Last weekend while I was watering flowers in my backyard with my kids I had the chance to use the Miracle-Gro® LiquaFeed® Advance™ Feeder. This system allows me to enrich the stream of water and do a better job of feeding the plants.

What I observed was that in delivering water to my flowers a focused stream of water actually does more harm than good to my flowers.  Solution: change the type of nozzle that I was using.  A "mist" type exit opening is advised and preferred.  This allows more water to be delivered in a much more effective way without damaging the flower's.

What shows up for me is that the diffusion vs. scale discussion presents an interesting framework in thinking about how people connect and link to information, knowledge and innovation.  For the sake of this discussion perhaps people are "fed" information and need to communicate and to "feed" information to others.

• Imagine how information "feed's" people (as in my flower story)

• Imagine how information nourishes (or harms) people.

• Imagine how the lack of information can be harmful to people as well.


• Think about the gaps that exist today across the global socioeconomic strata. I'm also careful to not just focus on those "edge" user's in Humanitarian Assistance scenario's (the one's in far away 3rd world countries), but people living in the United States as well, such as rural area's, which is where I am from, incidentally).

Here's a visual mental model for the WeieMedia platform that's in beta.  

Think about putting two oil funnel's together with the narrow pieces inter-connected.

• Imagine rain drops as information.

• The wide mouth of the funnel captures this information. People are mobile and enabled with cellphones. They represent the diffusion of information across an organization, particularly while they are mobile). 

• information digitization process (WeieDo). (pronounced "wee-do") This is a very simple application that runs on the mobile user / field operations person that they can use to digitize in the field information.

• This information is then collected and pooled in the narrow mid-section of this funnel. Digital information is transmitted in the background from the cellphone to the WeieLink platform. (pronounced "wee-link")

• The pooled water is then enriched and "fed" out of the second funnel's mouth.  By "enriched" we mean that the information is actionable, relevant, precise and targeted. (Imagine the water spout's "screen" that splits the water into "channels".)

• For us, the specific methods for communications delivery or distribution isn't necessarily the big idea. Our focus is to improve the efficiencies in leveraging a dispersed and highly mobile group of people in how they organize, think and act.  Interestingly enough, as the social media technology revolution continues to grow and mature it provides our platform with an expanding way of connecting others.

The point is that there is a gap right now the pits "diffusion" vs. "scale".  It's binary and "Either / Or" and WeieMedia is positioning to be that digital information bridge.

So, how is mobile technology enabling (at least the first steps) of digital information diffusion?

Also how does diffusion enable information sharing in scenario's where 1st world infrastructure suddenly becomes 3rd world infrastructure in a heartbeat. (imagine Hurricane Katrina and the rapid deterioration of the New Orleans and statewide infrastructure).

How much of this diffusion technology (this isn't actually a word, per se, I made it up) is presently targeting entertainment and social promotion and social membership as opposed to actually helping increase the quality of people's lives in meeting their basic needs?  Whether they're in "geographically desirable" locales or "geographically undesirable" locales?

• For post/pre-industrialized societies infrastructure is failing or has failed.
• For industrialized societies the threat always exists that infrastructure could fall. 

Why the divide?

Perhaps it is that business models require "scale" in order to provide investor returns and historical bias against diffusion is manifest in which business plans and business models are successful. Maybe the problem is that business models haven't "caught up" yet?  It definitely seems like many of us are out here in "no man's land" on "the edge" attempting to leverage the converging benefits of scale with the benefits of diffusion and offering an opportunity to enable the Enterprise to catch up.

Think about it. Enterprise level software is software which provides business logic support functionality for an enterprise, typically in commercial organizations, which aims to improve the enterprise's productivity and efficiency.  Services provided by enterprise software are typically business-oriented tools such as online shopping and online payment processing, interactive product catalogue, automated billing systems, security, content management, CRM, ERP, Business Intelligence, HR Management, Manufacturing, EAI etc. Characteristics of enterprise software are performance, scalability, and robustness. Enterprise software typically has interfaces to other enterprise software ( for example LDAP to directory services) and is centrally managed ( a single admin page for example).

Additionally, enterprise solutions don't scale "down and across" very well, especially for in field applications or for people in highly constrained environments or "edge" users.  Translation:  Enterprises need a minimum of infrastructure to function.  How does a diffuse network of people who have lost a robust infrastructure organize, manage and cope?

With the WeieMedia software system (pronounced "wee-mee-dya") we're relentlessy focusing on leveraging the power, opportunities and efficiencies (contextual and otherwise) that geographic and information dispersion and diffusion create while empowering highly mobile user's "in the field" to leverage, amplify and magnify this diffusion.

Let's take a very practical look at it this way.

Try drinking water from a fire hose.  It doesn't work. You can't. Don't try it, trust me. (I've been doing it for awhile now!)

Isn't that what we're doing today with digital information?   Think about the impact of twitter. Albeit people are still scratching their heads as to what the business model is (which may simply be to be acquired...).  It's digestible information.

Now modify the delivery mechanism of water in such a way that one can consume, ingest and digest this water for their own benefit and for the benefit of others and society writ large.

Maybe we're at a crossroads and perhaps we should all collectively "step away" from our desktops and rethink the ways in which we connect, share, link, collaborate and most importantly - think.

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO, Sofcoast, Inc.

Sofcoast, Inc. develops game-changing solutions that empower local, national and global entities in the public and private sectors to connect and enable mobile field workers, defend against danger and loss, and restore stability in the event of disaster. Designed by military and law enforcement veterans, our flexible, affordable infrastructure and communication platforms are quickly deployed to make a meaningful impact on business, communities and society, from creating cost-saving efficiencies to protecting property to saving lives.

Stepping into the void

The genesis for Sofcoast is that after spending over half a century of combined experience with the DoD, Special Operations Forces and Law Enforcement our team formed after collectively identifying real needs that existed that were not being addressed in the space of critical information delivery.  I have received the lion's share of credit as the visionary and inventor for our business.  I appreciate this, however without the rest of the Sofcoast founding team I would still be in my garage saying "can't you see?!".  (Picture a bearded nomad, worn down, alone standing on a mountain top yelling at the sky...).

In the very early, pre-formation period for Sofcoast, Inc., and while I was operating my first consulting company (Sofcoast Group, LLC), the founders came together and agree'd that we could and should attempt to offer to solve what we observed to be very clear disconnects in how people think about tools and communications and human behavior.  We essentially shared the same philosophy about people and tools with a relentless obsession for exceedingly satisfying our customer's when it comes to shattering self-imposed restrictions and limitations people seem have about what "is possible". Especially in rural communities.

So what "voids" is Sofcoast really filling?

Fundamentally, our company approach is based on a very simple philosophy.  Identify the most constrained environments with the most pressing unmet Life Safety needs.  Design, build and deliver targeted life safety systems to meet these needs.  Over time expand and widen the people we can help to include those life safety needs that exist and occur in less constrained marketspaces delivering cost savings and efficiencies to more and more people in how they are protected and kept safe.

In a recent businessweek article titled "Innovation Trickles in a New Direction"  several diagnostic tool manufacturer's describe an "emerging" different "trickle up" way of thinking.

"..that may be ideally suited to dealing with the widening recession: creating entry-level goods for emerging markets and then quickly and cheaply repackaging them for sale in rich nations, where customers are increasingly hungry for bargains. The term for this new approach is trickle-up innovation.  The process turns conventional product development on its head. Over the years, multinationals have prospered by turning out premium-priced products for the world's affluent. Rather than also designing products for poorer people elsewhere, many businesses found they could simply pass yesteryear's models down, as if they were unloading fleets of used cars. Lately, big companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), Nokia (NOK), and Procter & Gamble (PG) are discovering that they can profit by targeting the world's masses first. And they can score again by selling these low-priced products elsewhere.."

So, let's dig a little deeper and start with the "first need".

There's a recently published document by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice called "High-Priority Criminal Justice Technology Needs".

On page 14, the second bulleted paragraph states.  "Safer, more cost-effective aerial surveillance solutions to identify, locate and track illicit activities and to locate missing persons, particularly for application with small and rural agencies.  Solutions must consider regulatory requirements."

As discussed in my "Critical Decisions and "aha moments" post, we spoke with the NIJ (National Institute for Justice (NIJ), RULETC (Rural Law Enforcement Technology Center) and some other Law Enforcement professionals and what we heard from them was a real need for a lightweight tethered airborne platform could carry a variety of payloads in the 8-15 lb range to an altitude of 500 feet above ground level for a period of time. The platform should be easily hand carried, maintained and deployed by two people in less than 30 minutes.

According to validated requirements by Public Safety and infrastructure support organizations such as the NIJ, organizations in rural and urban communities need a low-cost airborne platform that allows responders to claim the high ground they need to rapidly complete life saving communication or surveillance tasks. 

So, what are the existing challenges people have today for rural Life Safety?

Public Safety organizations and personnel in rural areas often feel forgotten, left out and underappreciated by regional, state and federal agencies. Most major equipment that is purchased or leased is refurbished or used.  If they want modern communications systems and technologies, they have to pay for access to a regional, statewide or an adjoining urban area's communication system.  While standards based communications should provide greater coverage and interoperability, they often fail because system administrators fail to grant access to shared interoperable talk groups and the systems were designed to provide coverage to geographic area's and regions with the highest population densities (as well as largest concentrations of political constituencies). Alternatives include paying fees to operate on a public utility's communications system, taking the community farther outside of normal public safety operating frequencies.  Communications systems are difficult to pay for, making it necessary for communities to "get by" with their existing systems.  Systems adminstrator's routinely check ebay other secondary markets to locate and acquire used radio equipment so they can provide for the maintenance spares to keep their systems operating.

While communications are a critical infrastructure item, the ability to provide surveillance and information gathering to first responders is also critical.  Small airfields and the cost of operating fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft are well documented. Operating costs are usually high.  Finding a platform capable of carrying the desired payloads is a time consuming and expensive process, as depicted in another program requirement identified by the NIJ, through RULETC (the Rural Law Enforcement Technology Center), called the Law Enforcement Aviation Technology Program. 

So, what makes these systems so expensive? 

Most aviation platforms and associated payloads were designed for the military market or commercial aviation market which require these platforms meet or exceed strict regulatory requirements and standards. Additionally, the technologies are often highly specialized, if not exotic.  Payloads are developed to operate in the harshest combat environments and usually have a narrowly, albeit predefined set of criteria that restricts and limits their applicability for public safety.

 

Disaster response needs a highly flexible and mobile capability that will provide responders with the ability to accomplish a broad range of tasks, usually within hours of an incident.  Expensive platforms designed for combat missions are usually very complex and require a large "footprint" for support and logistics as well as training and maintenance "backside" support, otherwise known as "the tail" in DoD circles.

The problem historically has been that even in the United States "trickle down"effects are felt in the domain of Life Safety.  But why?

Government seeks to put money “where it will do the most good…” This means several things, but for rural communities, it means that grants and other government spending goes where the largest populations are. Who can forget the fuss over 9/11 spending when some states had higher per capita spending than more populated states? In short, rural areas are usually left to fend for themselves.

While rural areas could wait for outside support from FEMA and similar state agencies, (which we've seen as recently as the 2005 Hurricane Katrina has it's own consequences), most strive to prepare themselves to meet their own local needs. They work closely with vendors, local industry, and non-government organizations to meet local response and recovery needs. An affordable platform capable of performing a variety of missions is a tool rural communities need in order to meet the life safety needs of their citizens.

Below is a graphic depiction of existing potential Life Safety critical information platforms. This is a placeholder, John Monteith is working on putting together a graphic that will better depict the needs and gaps in the marketplace.

Figure 1. Existing system capabilities in the marketplace, with an eye on the future.  (author unknown)

Ideal Solutions

Disaster Situations Rural Communities May Face

The following scenarios are based on common incidents, possible incident response,and incident recovery.

• Person Lost in Remote or Wilderness Areas. Even the best communications infrastructure has limitations when operating in the vicinity of canyons, valleys, or other terrain features. Volunteers are called out and air platforms are requested to begin the search. Working dogs are brought in to find and follow a scent trail. More agencies and people arrive to help search, but the lack of communications coverage create problems for incident commanders and responders as well. In some cases, obtaining air assets to aid in the search takes time, increasing the search area. Air search capabilities may also be limited by lack of communications coverage and terrain.

• Tornadoes or Other High Wind Events. Tornado warning sirens sound, emergency alert messages are transmitted via radio and television, people take cover, and then the tornado rips through a field, mobile home park, or small city with devastating results. Communication towers are destroyed, power is cut off, and access is hindered by debris. Incident commanders have difficulty requesting and coordinating the necessary assets needed to assure live and safety.

• Large Earthquake Occurs Near a Populated Area. Whether a rural community, small town, or urban center, earthquakes create catastrophic situations. Infrastructure (electric power, gas lines, water lines, sewage systems, telecommunications, etc.) is damaged or destroyed. Access for local responders is limited by debris in streets. Communications may be limited to line of sight radio systems and shared channels. Access to the incident may be limited by the inability of responders to coordinate with outside resources or blocked and damaged roads. Participation of air assets with surveillance and information gathering capabilities is limited because the noise they create may cause further structural collapse, endangering responders.
  

• Floods or Tsunamis Destroy Property and Infrastructure.   Communication towers that have backup power fail because the generators were connected to gas pipelines (turned off by the gas company) instead of tanks. Towers are built in flood prone areas, causing loss of the transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, and other equipment necessary to provide communications. Emergency operations centers are destroyed or compromised, disabling the response and recovery tools people planned on using. Roads and other infrastructure are destroyed, making access to the devastated area time consuming and difficult. People are forced to relocate, often to areas without communications infrastructure, making it difficult for response agencies (government and non government) to provide coordinated, efficient, and effective refugee support. Infrastructure (power and communications) needed by local industry is destroyed, making it difficult for prepared companies and facilities to restart the jobs that provide devastated employees a variety of reasons to stay and participate in the response and recovery.

• Ice Storms and Other Severe Weather Conditions Disrupt Communications. The power goes out, communications are severed, and service providers and emergency responders do not know the extent or severity of the situation and cannot access the region to provide support. Communities want to take care of their own, but emergency managers and leaders are unable to coordinate an effective response due to the lack of critical infrastructure.
  

• Wildfires Prompt Evacuations and Disrupt Regional Communications. Emergency managers direct evacuees to stadiums, fair grounds, schools, and other preplanned evacuation sights that are hopefully out of harms way. In the process, facilities and capabilities are overwhelmed. Medical, pharmaceutical, and veterinary care is often needed to meet basic, but critical life safety needs. Telecommunication infrastructure may be limited due to the increased demand or because infrastructure was damaged or destroyed in the fire. People, trying to stay informed or trying to find or notify relatives overwhelm infrastructure designed to support a population with limited communication needs. Failures in the communications system have the potential to negatively impact life safety of the refugees. During recovery phases, temporary infrastructure may be needed to facilitate communications, information gathering, surveillance, and coordination.
  

• Release of Chemical or Biological Hazards. Whether accidental or intentional, natural or man made, response to these hazards requires expensive equipment and complex computer modeling to provide basic response information to emergency managers and response personnel. Most small communities cannot afford this equipment, making analysis and response difficult.

Infrastructure Enhancement, Development, and Deployment for Rural Communities

Most small communities do not have the budget to pay for multimillion-dollar public safety infrastructure improvement projects. Assuming they had the funds for one improvement, would it be a new communications system and towers or a manned airborne platform that provides surveillance and information gathering capabilities but provides limited communications support? Once the money is obtained to purchase or lease these infrastructure improvements, where will the funds to operate them come from? While some rural areas have a vibrant and growing tax base, many do not.

A tethered, easy to maintain and deploy, lighter than air platform capable of carrying a variety of communications, surveillance, or information gathering payloads will allow rural communities to fill infrastructure and capability gaps without having to pay millions to obtain and maintain capabilities they may use infrequently. Consider how an affordable air platform meeting these criteria could be used in our various incident response scenarios. 

• Person Lost in Remote or Wilderness Areas. Even the best communications infrastructure has limitations when operating in the vicinity of canyons, valleys, or other terrain features.    As incident command is established, the lack of communications is discovered. A tethered air platform with a light weight communications gateway or repeater can be raised to an altitude of 500 feet, providing responders from various agencies the capability to communicate throughout the search area. Depending on weight constraints, a camera and streaming video equipment could be an added or alternative payload, allowing searchers to identify potential search areas. In some cases, the platform could provide a link to the existing communications system, allowing coordination of additional incident response assets.

• Tornadoes or Other High Wind Events. Tornado warning sirens sound, emergency alert messages are transmitted via radio and television, people take cover, and then the tornado rips through a field, mobile home park, or small city with devastating results.

First responders arrive and begin life saving activities. A tethered airborne platform could be used to provide surveillance or information gathering capabilities without causing damaged structures to collapse or making it difficult to hear survivors calling for help. Depending on altitude and visibility, the surveillance capabilities could improve the ability to discover casualties and direct life saving efforts to the locations that need them. If needed, the platform could provide communications repeater and gateway services. During recovery phases, public works and insurance adjustors could use information gathering capabilities and combine the data with graphic information systems data to support their recovery efforts.

• Large Earthquake Occurs Near a Populated Area. Whether a rural community, small town, or urban center, earthquakes create catastrophic situations. Infrastructure (electric power, gas lines, water lines, sewage systems, telecommunications, etc.) is damaged or destroyed. Access for local responders is limited by debris in streets.

As first responders begin to establish incident, unified, or area commands, they will know whether communications have been adversely affected. A tethered lighter than air platform could be pulled out of SUVs, trucks, or other pre deployment locations to fill any communications gaps. If communications infrastructure is not the an issue, various surveillance payloads could be placed on the platform and deployed to assist in identifying clear response routes, broken gas, water, or sewage lines, and fires. All of this information can be used to help direct the necessary actions. As response becomes recovery, lighter than air platforms could be used to help provide essential communication clouds to refugee areas and the various organizations that are helping them recover.

• Floods or Tsunamis Destroy Property and Infrastructure. Floods occur seasonally due to snow and ice melt. High levels of rainfall occur as various weather systems move through a region or linger in areas that seldom see large volumes of precipitation. In some parts of the country, high tides, storm surges, or pump failures also contribute to flooding.
  

Prior to disaster, a tethered air platform with a ranging system, GPS, and communications link could easily be used to monitor water levels in areas not accessible during inclement weather or extreme conditions. With an imaging payload, damaged or breaking dikes, dams, or levees could be detected in near real-time. After the disaster, the same platform could be used to gather information about the damage and resulting situations that need to be addressed or plug gaps caused by a compromised communications infrastructure. The lighter than air platforms could be used to help provide essential communication clouds to refugee areas and the various organizations that are helping them recover.

• Ice Storms and Other Severe Weather Conditions Disrupt Communications. The power goes out, communications are severed, and service providers and emergency responders do not know the extent or severity of the situation and cannot access the region to provide support.

A deployable, tethered airborne platform could easily fill gaps in existing or damaged communications infrastructure.

• Wildfires Prompt Evacuations and Disrupt Regional Communications. Emergency managers direct evacuees to stadiums, fair grounds, schools, and other preplanned evacuation sights that are hopefully out of harms way. In the process, facilities and capabilities are overwhelmed. The lighter than air platforms could be used to help provide essential communication clouds to refugee areas and the various organizations that are helping them recover. During recovery phases, the surveillance and information gathering capabilities could be used to monitor burnt areas for mudslides, support infrastructure recovery, and fill communication gaps.

• Release of Chemical or Biological Hazards. Whether accidental or intentional, natural or manmade, contamination and leaks require quick and accurate response.

A lighter than air platform with a payload capable of measuring the chemical or biological hazard, or even radiation levels, could be used to provide low cost plum monitoring. Depending on payload size, instruments to measure wind, temperature, and so on, could be used to gather data to update various plume models when such equipment is not deployed or available in the area.

The Ideal Platform

After reviewing the above scenarios and considering other information, the ideal solution is an affordable airborne platform that has low operating costs and provides first responders the flexibility to use a variety of payloads designed to meet their needs. This solution would be easily transported, lightweight, require little maintenance, deploy rapidly with trained or untrained personnel, and fly at altitudes high enough to meet communications, surveillance, and information gathering needs.

The affordable aerial platform can be deployed in 30 minutes or less, carry a 15-pound payload at an altitude of 500 feet above ground level for a period of 24 hours, and be configured to carry a variety of payloads. The following are possible payloads:

• Communications repeaters or gateways
• Cameras and other imaging devices
• Wi-Fi or WiMax access points
• Cellular amplifiers
• Various combinations, limited only by weight and power constraints

The Department of Justice and the Rural Law Enforcement Office identified the need for a tethered lighter than air system after years of frustration of not being able to deliver critical information to first responders in rural areas. The need for communications during the first hour of emergency response is a matter of life and death.

While meeting the demand for an affordable lightweight platform capable for filling communication gaps is impressive, additional cross-discipline opportunities make it a tool every public safety agency and private industry should consider. Here are some of the possible uses for a tethered lighter than air platform:

• Accident Investigation
• Aerial Surveillance
• Construction Site Monitoring
• First Responder Events
• Roof Inspections
• Traffic Management
• Aerial Photography
• Mobile Communications relay and repeating systems
• Crowd Control / Public Safety Monitoring
• Land Planning and Development
• Search and Rescue

Sofcoast evolved to meet a need in the public safety and military communities, which need access to affordable products for better information sharing and collaboration. The company is built on management’s experience in Defense, Federal, and Local Law Enforcement, giving the company first-hand insight into their needs.

Our company approach is based on a very simple philosophy.  Identify the most constrained environments with the most pressing unmet Life Safety needs.  Design, build and deliver targeted life safety systems to meet these needs.  Over time expand and widen the people we can help to include those life safety needs that exist and occur in less constrained marketspaces delivering cost savings and efficiencies to more and more people in how they are protected and kept safe.

We think this is a noble endeavor and further believe it is a privilege to have the opportunity to continue our tradition and history of service to humanity.

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

WeieMedia and Context Efficiency - aka - "The Point"

(if you use twitter,  my username is @sofcoast)

Sometime circa 2005 I was attempting to summarize and describe my core thesis of increasingly inefficient context within existing information workflows or human / computer interaction.  I called this envisioned system "ContextSys" and wrote alot about it and eventually  put a powerpoint presentation together to attempt to describe my theory in more depth.  I found that it simply was either "too high level" or "too technically specific".  I will admit that my psychology and emotional state did pass from frustration to fear to excitement in some sort of dizzying cyclical path for some time. When it first came out, I read the book by Jim Collins called "Good to Great" and my experience with this topic might be what he terms as "hedgehogging"...not sure.  Nevertheless, there were days that I wondered if I might actually simply be crazy.  I think some of my friends and family who were observing me at the time might have been wondering the same thing.

My core belief is that lives will improve and people will be safer as affordable technologies increasingly improve both tiny and large contextual inefficiencies that exist in their day to day lives.  For some reason, I couldn't allow myself to give up on my premise.  I couldn't help but "see" that contextual inefficiencies were rampant and were life threatening for all people.  I also couldn't not notice and observe that technology continued to advance and become more and more affordable and I surmised at the time (and still believe this today) that the end resultant could / would be the delivery of remarkable and life saving and life changing contextual efficiencies that would eventually surface that the world would "get" and use.

Toying with the idea of context and technology, I decided to develop a thesis and a corresponding whitepaper and some example use cases. In one of these early whitepaper's I termed this integration and delivery system "Invergence Technologies".   I depicted the integration and delivery of a hardware and software system for enabling human beings to be much more efficient in their ability to create increasingly efficient context within a given information workflow and business process.

Some of my influences can be traced back to my time with David Stoner at Audit Integrity.  If you've read some of my previous blog posts you'll have heard me talk about working at Audit Integrity (AI) and of my friendship with David Stoner.  In the pre-formation and early post-formation period two of the co-founders, David Stoner and Eliot Clinghman had set out to develop a mathematical model based on building a neural network. Specifically, as I understand it, they were attempting to develop a backpropogating supervised learning system for financial data. What I discovered was that "contextually stable" information was critical, especially at ingestion.

I continued to study and my knowledge continued to evolve about contextual stability as well as efficiencies/inefficiencies.  I then found myself back in "The Teams" as a SEAL and took alot of my discoveries with me.  For me, my discovery and research would simply continue with an emphasis on high value field related information workflow and the corresponding contextual efficiencies / inefficiencies that are associated with field information collection processes. It's funny, the problems I was identifying as contextual inefficiencies would show up specifically in different ways depending on the situation or technology I was dealing with at the time.  Sometimes it related to an Unmanned Aerial System I was helping design, or test or train someone on.  Other times it was simply a communications or connectivity issue in moving data from one point to another.  It never ceased to amaze me that fundamentally I was beginning to develop a methodology for identifying patterns of effective and efficient contextual information workflow, and also ineffective/inefficient information workflows as well.

As I continued my own study and research for other purposes, I discovered that what I was describing as "contextual inefficiency" could show up in many different situations, industries and fields.  I was able to reference my experiences with neural networks at Audit Integrity and make these connections. Additionally, I began to look a bit harder into Artificial Intelligence and in my studies I discovered an interesting intersection with animation.

There is a situation called the "frame problem" in cartoon making.  ..."This name derives from a common technique used by animated cartoonmakers called framing where the currently moving parts of the cartoon are superimposed on the "frame", which depicts the background of the scene, which does not change. In the logical context, actions are typically specified by what they change, with the implicit assumption that everything else (the frame) remain unchanged...."  (I'll find the citing for this and post it, I lost the link to it...)

So, as I do with most things, I gave my idea a name and then developed a conceptual diagram for it. This was the genesis for the Frame theory, which serves as the underlying theory for Sofcoast's patented Continuous Media Flow technology. (Pardon my typo for "site", it should be "sight".) (See below)

            Figure 1.  Surmont Frame Generation Theory (Conceptual)

                  Figure 2.  Surmont Frame Linkage Theory (Conceptual)

Figure 2 depicts the question that I asked in august 2005, which was "would person B have reasons to link to person A's frame?"

•   In my theory the answer to this question is always 'Yes'.
•   The answer to "then how?" is "It depends."
  

As I began to develop this theory, I stumbled on the paper "Understanding and Using Context" by Dr. Anind K. Dey

Dr. Dey cites the following definition for context:

"...schilit and theimer: "Disseminating active map information to mobile hosts." IEEE network 1994: location, identities of nearby people and objects, changes to those objects.

dey's definition:

Context is any information that can be used to characterise the situation of an entity. And entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves."...

Although Dr. Dey is describing the inefficient use of context with computing systems, I believe that in some way his research supports my thesis which is as follows:

The problem with Artificial Intelligence is that it cannot replicate the complexities of context switching like a human's brain can, thus resulting in "Context ineffeciencies".  These inefficiencies exist when a human being (and their brain's) attempt to interact with tools that cannot manage context as efficiently as a human being's brain. 

It's a buffer overflow problem that we're all "dealing with" without even thinking about it.

Context inefficiencies exist in all aspects of people's lives. 

We as human beings are evolving as we learn to use computer's.  The social aspect is quite topical today. Eventually, contextually efficient workflow's will surface as critical as we continue to merge our social systems with technology and tools.

If you look closely, you too can make this observation...

Increasingly capable, mobile, portable and available technologies and systems  such as:

• location based services
• open source software
• Global positioning systems
• rich media systems
• massive linking, indexing and search systems
• smartphones

all connected to:

•  maturing and evolving global telecommunications infrastructure

with an increasingly:

• connected and accessible global labor and knowledge workforces

Some precursor's and examples might be:

            The exponential growth curve of user generated content fueled by: (some examples)

•   Social Networking as a phenomenon
•   The iPhone
•   Blackberry
•   YouTube
•   Facebook
•   LinkedIn
•   Twitter

I believe that these are all precursors that will shape the new opportunity and space, which I term “context efficient” systems, processes, platforms and technologies.

So...

Where does the term "WeieMedia" (pronounced "wee-mee-dya") come from?

The purpose of WeieMedia is to enable people worldwide to generate, share and view accurate and relevant information through user friendly hardware and software systems. (deliver context efficient information workflow for all people.)

So I focused on developing a name that would encompass the following themes.

“We” -  The social collective. All of humanity. Everyone.  All of us. Also a way to describe a set of collective concerns that people have and to include tools that they are already using and/or context's they are "in".  One example of a concern/context everyone has is to be kept safe or protected from harm.

"eie" - from and to everywhere - individualized / localized (contextually efficient) information - for and from - everyone -

——

                    "We" + "ie" =  --  Weie  (pronounced "Wee")

---

Today, Media has many definitions. One of them is:  

• Mass Media:  "communications that incorporate multiple forms of information content and processing."

--

Weie + Media

---

WeieMedia

--

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

The only easy day was yesterday

Today marks our 5 month anniversary as being an investor backed technology company.  We closed our initial financing round in November, 2008 at pretty much the worst time imaginable in human history.  Really. It was hard.

We're thankful to have the investor support that we have.  We're also happy to have those ever critical first customer's that we have developed since last December.

I wanted to take a couple of minutes to share where the "big idea" actually came from.  I am a former Navy SEAL.  Navy SEAL's are the maritime  component for The United States Special Operations Command (aka SOCOM) as well as the Special Operations component for the United States Navy. 

Got what it takes? Check out the Official SEAL Team Site

At any rate this means that as a Navy SEAL, I spent an enormous amount of time and energy in and around the water. 

We have a saying in the teams "The only easy day was yesterday." I'm not sure who actually coined the phrase, but I will tell you that there's an entire philosophy behind that phrase for me. Anything worth doing is likely enormously challenging.  It's hard.  It's difficult.  Again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.  Maybe (in my case) people think I'm crazy for leaving a 15 year career as a Navy SEAL and launching this company in the worst economy since the great depression. Well, I guess that depends doesn't it? 

One of my advisor's sent me a quote by George Bernard Shaw.   "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.  The unreasonable man persists in trying to make the world adapt to him.  Therefore, all progress is a result of the unreasonable man."

Do you think Navy SEAL's are reasonable men or unreasonable men?  Do you think entrepreneur's are reasonable people or unreasonable people? I guess it depends on your convictions and how you see yourself and your world. 

A man that decides to join the Navy and become a SEAL recognizes that the odds are against him, yet he pursues this endeavor.  His belief, his conviction, his vision, his abilities carry him forward.

Is this any different than starting a company to change the world?  How could it be?

We have another saying in the teams.  That saying is "Everyone wants to be a frogman on a sunny day."  What this means to me is that the things SEAL's do really look cool on a warm day in southern california.  It's an entirely different story in heavy sea's, frigid water, or in below zero conditions at 12,000 ft. in the middle of nowhere.

I kind of see starting this company in this environment like this.  If you're truly a warrior then be a warrior. If your truly an entrepreneur, inventor, tech executive than can you really change because of the economic cycle you're in?  I can't. So here we are.

Anyway, back to my "and there I was story"...

As fate would have it, sometime in the year 2000, I was running on the beach in Coronado, California one morning when I had a really bizarre thought.  "If a person were drowning in the water off the coast of San Diego, California it wouldn't matter to a lifeguard in Miami, Florida."

Huh?

That's what I thought too.  What was I thinking?  Well, it took me 5 years to figure out that there was "something there" and I've spent the past 3 years in working to launch this company. 

• Localized context. (someone is in trouble in the water somewhere)
• First Responder's (Lifeguard or someone who actually can help)
• Relevant and actionable information (the lifeguard that can help knows where to help and who to help)

It doesn't get any more critical than when people's lives are at risk.    And the most interesting thing is that it's always local information. 

Imagine the scenario isn't a drowning victim and a lifeguard.  Imagine that it's someone you love in a small town... say a lost child in the woods....

What would you do?   What could you do?

That's what Sofcoast is about.  Delivering critical information to lifesavers.

Stay tuned!

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

First Customer Acceptance of ASAP!

Today was a historic day for Sofcoast. 

We completed our first customer acceptance for ASAP. 

I want to acknowledge the phenomenal work of each member of our company along with our partners, our suppliers and our advisory team.  Without each of their contributions we couldn't have brought this product to life in less than 5 months from customer discussion, concept to product acceptance and delivery.

Outstanding work, team!

Best Regards,

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

The Impacts of Social Inertia

I've spent some time sharing personal stories of transitions with you.  I also talked a little bit about social inertia. 

The point of sharing these stories about personal changes and personal transition decisions with you is to make the point that people must adapt in order to survive.  We can't avoid it, it's not a choice - it's how we're wired.

--

I accept that my mentor and fellow board member Bob Terrell is more right than I may have given him credit for.  For the past 18 months, since the first day I asked Bob for help, he would tell me stories about "models" and "spreadsheets" and beautifully designed and styled presentations and the most sophisticated and elegant plans that frankly disappeared "when the shooting started."

He keeps telling me to simply focus on the "blocking and tackling" of business.  And I am.

--

There were four fundamental observations and trends that we made as a company prior to forming Sofcoast.

In summary, they were and still are:

•     Maturing telecommunications infrastructure across the United States (and worldwide)
•     The globalization of the workforce
•     The rapid advancement and increasing affordability of consumer technology
•     The explosive growth of user generated content

Today, I checked out Jeff Bussbang's weblog and noticed that in one of his blogs "5 takeaway's from CTIA", his descriptions align with our read on the world as well.  He provides some more specific descriptions, however fundamentally our view remains valid, which is promising for our business.

CTIA is The Wireless Association which is an international industry trade group that has an annual convention where industry members have the opportunity to launch new products and services as well as demonstrate their new offerings.  Back in 1999-2002 I spent quite a bit of time studying the wireless industry, I had friends that worked at San Diego based Qualcomm (I even interviewed with them in August of 2001 for an embedded systems programmer position...when the lead engineer started quizzing me on array's and functions and buffers my eyes glazed over...needless to say I didn't get the job...)

In summary here's the "Takeaway" list from Jeff.

1.  "The lights are still on" in telecom. 
2.  "Innovation is still happening, VC investing isn't."
3.  "Device Fragmentation is here to stay"
4.  "Video is mobile's next big thing"
5.  "The carriers finally get it, but its too late."

So the question here is this:  How might "social inertia" be showing up in some of the blog posts and thinking of venture capitalists? I'm not a venture capitalist, so it's not likely that I can argue a point one way or another.  It's simply a question about human behavior. 

Is it possible that the definitions of "exits" and "returns" might need to be rethought?  What is the psychological, social and physical impact to society of innovation?  Does a healthy society then lead to growing and healthier returns over some horizon of time?  Didn't we get ourselves into trouble when we let the quants run wall street?  Didn't we get ourselves into trouble when the financial industry simply focused on returns and sold these promises to its investors?

Are some of the constraint's around timing? (Horizons of time for liquidity)

Maybe abundance? (Hyper-competitive, hyper-innovative marketplace)

Is it inertia? ("not a quick win", "not 'big' enough", "me-too", "not-me", "nothing new under the sun", "No more big idea's")

Maybe a new type of VC fund needs to exist. One that doesn't promise 20x returns in 5 years.  Maybe one that sets realistic expectations. Maybe one that's focused on improving the quality of life, or including others and not excluding them, perhaps bringing new industries to different geographies, building new industries, creating more new jobs, not poaching old ones, or perhaps simply contributing to the collective consciousness of humanity.

I'm not sure.

Maybe the opportunities need to be created.  Aren't we learning that we can't wait on wall street or the Federal Government to figure it all out?

What say you?

Cheers,

John Surmont, Founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

Low Friction Innovation

I thought I'd change things up a bit.  Some of you may appreciate and even enjoy me recounting my past.  I'll continue to do this from time to time.

For now, let's talk about innovation.

What does innovation mean to you?

Webster's definition of innovation is a relatively short one.  The noun innovation means "something new or different."

There are different types of innovation.

Some innovations are minor and temporary, such as figuring out how to avoid a traffic jam and modifying your route home from work.

Other innovations are radical and literally have never been seen before and create entirely new industries and human behavior patterns. (Take social networking and social media for example).

History is full of things that have never been "seen" before.  Isn't it funny how with the really big innovations that mature into products and then industries, which over time, don't really resemble their earliest albeit humble beginnings?

I mean look at the the Wright brother's Wright 1899 kite drawing.  Does this resemble a Boeing 777?

Now we can look at at and it's obvious that it's an airplane, only smaller and "less capable" than it's ancestor, that huge marvel of modern ingenuity the Boeing 777. 

I guess it depends on who's doing the looking.

And that brings up a point that I want to share.  Different people see different things when they look at something. We've all heard stories of conflicting eye witness accounts....

In another conversation I'd like to share with you how our software technology (WeieMedia) pronounced "Wee Media" aims to reduce confusion in critical situations. More on that later.

For now I'd like to start a post that talks about innovation as a process, not a destination.  In my experience, innovation has been less a matter of "aha!" and more a matter of being able to retain and then recall (over different periods of time) cognitive reference points or memories of tiny observations and then having the ability to associate or re-associate these observations within different contexts.  While not being too "set in your ways and thinking" or "anchored in what you know".

Then having the ability to disconnect these associations from each other.  In some ways one might think about it as "disassembly and then reassembly" or decompilation and recomplication.  To me there are always opportunities to find  "right angle" solutions through a low friction discovery process nested within the innovation process.

I want to talk about a philosophy that I've developed over the past 15 years.  I call it "Low Friction Innovation.

Low Friction Innovation

Much of my thinking about innovation has evolved over time, first of all there have been times I've been accused of being a McGyver. (Which I am not.) From rewiring a power system with a spyderco knife while adrift to establish a communications link to get my team safely home.  Or inventing a system like ASAP to deliver critical information at the most critical times.

I once read Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt's book The Goal, which introduces Dr. Goldratt's management philosophy called theory of constraints as it pertains to effectively producing desired outcomes.

In this book, Dr. Goldratt outlines a process he calls "The Five Focusing Steps".

One important point is that in his five focusing steps approach are not so much the steps themselves.  It's that  Dr. Goldratt specifies not to let inertia become the constraint.

This is important because it is the core premise of Low Friction Innovation. In other words, how has or does social inertia impact innovation? How does it show up for you?  Is this possibly why people might have looked at the Wright Brother's Wright 1899 kite drawing and not "see" the possibilities?

One of the core foundational theories that sparked the creation of Sofcoast is that there has been and continues to be massive creation activity in web technologies, consumer technologies and telecommunications technologies. And yet social inertia is still a limiting factor or constraint.

Think about it.  An enormous amount of energy was directed and focused to create the iPod, the Blackberry, the iPhone, Google's search technology and application ecosystem, social media systems such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, twitter, Digg and of course, typepad, to name a few. Also, how about Mashups?  How about the continuous improvement and maturity of our telecommunications infrastructure?

It appears that innovations are abundant in our society today. So what is the constraint we must be concerned with? Is it abundance? 

Have we approached the period when innovation is truly democratized (available to everyone)?  (Minimum Social Inertia) Perhaps Social Inertia is lower in the larger metropolitan area's, area's where there is a concentration of federally funded high technology research and study. What about everywhere else?

Are there still constraints? We think there are and our focus is to eliminate these constraints (primarily Social Inertia) in very very focused ways, beginning with delivering Lifesaver Innovations we call LifeSafety systems.  Is it possible that the answers we're looking for to effectively and efficiently equip our lifesavers to access critical information when and where necessary regardless of geography, population density, socio-economic position or proximity to high-tech clusters or federally funded research clusters?

In the book by Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do? he describes "side door opportunities"?

What if the most important "Side door opportunity" is to ensure that a child lost in the woods in a city or town that's not located in a densely populated area with federal funding flowing throughout it's region will still find first responder's and "lifesavers" that can respond with the same fundamental critical information capabilities as those found in larger metropolitan area's or regions that are densely clustered around federal funding and research institutions or in high-technology hubs with massive pools of investible funding such as Silicon Valley.

Maybe it's because I was once a small child in a small town and consider myself "one of the lucky ones".  I firmly believe we should take low friction innovation further because we can.

What if Low Friction Innovation is about efficiently and effectively exploiting the abundance that exists and utilizing these innovations that have been created to improve the quality of life for how people are protected and kept safe?

What about democratizing the innovation process? (Continuing to reduce the constraint of Social Inertia)?

What about preventing the end of those things we value as human beings, as parents, as stewards of our environment?  Regardless of where we live?  Where we work?

How might this philosophy impact Federal, State and Local government use of taxpayer money?  Should we be concerned?

What is the impact of developing innovations (something newest) within existing innovations (something new or newer)"? Isn't this what is happening anyway?

How much more efficient might we be as a society if we focused on leveraging "what exists" in the process of creating something new?  Isn't it true that we must always start with what we think we know, prove we know it or don't know it and then continue to expand and extend this knowledge to continue to create new breakthroughs?

Conclusion
Radical innovation (revolutionary or radical) is critical and must continue to be funded and promoted and fostered.

Is there a place for something in between evolutionary innovation and radical innovation?  Perhaps the way we think about innovation and society is itself the radical innovation.

What if affordable and available lifesaving innovations were the next killer apps?

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast, Inc.

Transitions (Part two)

Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001?  I'm sure most people over the age of 8 years old at the time do.

I had just transitioned off of active duty as a Navy SEAL in July of 2001 so for all practical purposes I'd just taken an extended leave period.

I remember speaking with my mother that day and she asked me if I was going to go back in.  I replied, "If someone asks me for help, I will. Otherwise, I trust my brothers completely to stand the watch for all of us."

Days and weeks went by and no one called.

One day in October, 2001 I received a call.  I cannot share with you what was discussed in that conversation.  I can share that it was a series of questions.

In November I received another call.  This time there were very few questions.  I was requested to return to active duty. Yes, it was a voluntary decision.  SEAL Team is an all volunteer force.

What would you do?

I want to share that it wasn't like a hollywood script.  It was a direct request for help from my brothers.

I answered that call and went.  How could I not?

I am bound by my covenant with my community and the Department of Defense, so I can not share specific details. I can say that I deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom on Christmas Eve, 2001.

I think there were some existing policies that were disregarded in how I was brought back on active duty.  There was simply not enough time to follow the steps that existed at that time.  I accepted this fully.

One example, is that I technically wasn't on the Active duty payroll while I deployed.  My superior's were infuriated by this and fought like hell to take care of me.  I deeply appreciated this.  But that's not why I went.  I went because it was the right thing to do.  I'm thankful that my wife had savings and she worked, so we were ok.

I believe that there are defining moments for people, teams, businesses and even countries.  This was one of them for all of us.

I had expertise and skills that were needed so I went.  

Two of my very best friends, Chris Mueller and Mark Metherell were extremely jealous!  Yes, it happens to the best of us.  They kept asking me "how come we're not getting called back, Johnny?" (Some of my teammates had nicknames for me, some of them would be undignified to share with you, other's were simply "Johnny", "Johnny Comms" or the infamous "Backwoods".)

At any rate, I tried to calm them down and tell them that it's because I'm a comm nerd or geek, not because of superior operational skills. (Which I believe to be true as well.) This didn't sit well with them, I think they were deeply disappointed that they didn't get a call.  Personally, I think they should / could have gone in my place and I told them as much.  I think they were better operator's than I, however I was selected and requested, so I went.

--- White space---- stuff happened---- and time passed-----

Upon my return the administrative "fallout" was huge!  It took months to work its way through the system. I also decided to go back into the reserve community.  This was an uneasy decision for me.  I wasn't settled with this choice, but I made it because I was now a father and believed it was the right decision to make for my family.

So, I went back to where I'd started.  As a First American Interactive Division (FAFID) Information Technology contractor.  I also want to point out that they did hire me back, which my family deeply appreciated.  What I discovered was that I'd changed.  It was no longer satisfactory for me to build technology for finance when there was so much work that was left to be done in helping my brother's and my country.

Then I got a call from my friend, David Stoner.  "Hey dude, I'm starting a technology company and am looking for great first hires, interested?"

"And work for you, Dave?  Of course!" 

"The only problem is that I'm really not a tech genius like you, Dave."

"You're a leader and that's why I'm hiring you.  You'll learn everything else from me."

So we set out to do all of those things that always need to get done in the pre-formation stage of a business.  Dave worked out proving the theory that they could develop a system to provide predictive modeling and simulations for corporate behaviors, such as fraud and other malfeasance. I helped build out the initial "test sets" as well.  

Our investment capital came in and the company was formed and began operations late 2002.  I worked part-time for about six months and then in March of 2003 I joined AuditIntegrity (AI) full-time.

I was still unsettled by my experiences in Afghanistan and began drilling again as a SEAL reservist. 
All the while, I worked with some great people at AI.  Jake Seitz was the networking boy genius that made me look good, David Stoner was the Database guru.  I developed some of the automation systems for moving massive amounts of data, one small file at a time.  Automating the processing of raw data and ingesting it into data systems was one of my focus area's among many others.  I enjoyed this most, was probably least qualified to be doing it, however Dave encouraged me to stay after it and I did.  It may sound really "geeky", but there are scripts and routines (code) that I developed that are still running today. To me leaving some place better off than when you arrived is my first sign of success.

Are people better off after spending time with you? Working with you?  Working for you?  This is very important to be mindful of.

...And time passed....

Audit Integrity continue'd to evolve.  So did I.

All the while I'd been getting calls from my old SEAL buddies, Chris Mueller and Mark Metherell.  They also had answered the call and wanted to share their experiences with me. (To whatever degree they could.) I remember the last conversation I had with Chris Mueller, in October of 2003.  Chris was in Afghanistan and the last thing he said to me was "Johnny, write your congressman and tell him not to forget about Afghanistan!"

24 hours later Chris Mueller was killed in action in Afghanistan.

And then I got another phone call.  This was another request for help from the teams.  Technology was advancing and the teams were in need of SEAL technical expert's to help stand up some new technology programs.

My response was to respectfully decline. My reasoning was that I was older, had definitely lost a couple of steps and probably wasn't their best choice. Basically I thought, "Hell, there are other much smarter, faster and stronger guys out there than me."

And there are, they're the ones standing watch right now.

....A little bit more time passed....

I got another call.  This time I was asked if I was interested in applying for a commission. "Me? officer material?"  I was stunned.  I'd never considered "going to the dark side."

Again, I made a choice here..."why not?"  So, I applied.

....some time passed....

Then I got a third call.  This time was to inform me that I'd been selected and was to be commissioned should I accept the commission.  I accepted, was commissioned and then got a fourth call.

"Ensign, we need you back."  OK, duty called, again and I went.

This was a very difficult decision for me to make because I was leaving my friend David Stoner and Audit Integrity.  I'm probably not doing a very good job in describing just how important both were to me.  They both trusted me and gave me the opportunity to develop new skills and to lead in different ways.

David was also getting sick.

"I'll be back Dave, it's only a 1 year mobilization." I said.  I frankly didn't believe what I said, and I don't think Dave did either.  "Dude, you need to go back and help if you can, we'll be here when you get back."

====================

So the question here is "How has change impacted you and your life?" Are you learning to embrace change? Anticipate change?

Cheers,

John Surmont, Founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.

Transitions (Part One)

Websters defines transition as "movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another; change: the transition from adolescence to adulthood."

Change is difficult for many people. 

Learning how to manage change is a critical life skill for all of us.

So how can we effectively manage change or transitions in ways that increase enterprise value? Personally I think we all already are managing transitions for our personal survival.  It's a matter of integrating a healthy respect and appreciation for change into our organizations that is the challenge.

In the Navy, the Chief Petty Officer or "Chief" is the backbone of the entire force.  The reason the entire organization functions is because of these critical individuals.  The officer corps sets the agenda's and the Chief's implement and enforce them.

Chief's are experts at what they do and they impact every aspect of the Navy culture through and through.  Key advice I was given early on was to "find a good Chief and ask for help and listen to them."   As a disclaimer,  I was never a Chief, so I'm not qualified to speak much more about Chief's except to say that as a junior enlisted SEAL and a junior officer,  I knew enough to "find the Chief" and ask them for help and it worked.

When I reported to my first command as a new guy in the teams a Vietnam era SEAL Master Chief gave the us new reports some very good advice

"You all have now earned the privilege to work at this command and you  should be satisfied that you've come this far and are now team members.  You also need to be prepared for what's ahead.  What you are going to find is this:  Good job.  Join the club, new guy."  What this meant to me is that I must never be complacent, that I must always be diligent and disciplined in refining my skills and continuously working to improve myself professionally and personally in order to ensure that I would earn the privilege of being a SEAL, a teammate and a brother. 

He also gave us another bit of advice, which was.  "You'll find that this is a small community and you will make a reputation for yourself.  You had better make sure that you make your reputation a good one."  So, with that I spent my career as a SEAL Team member focused on identifying gaps and then narrowing what gaps I could to personally help fill. 

In the context of business, I think what the Master Chief was describing to us "new guys" that day was the importance of differentiation.  Thinking back and considering his advice now I think he was advising us that we were successful in "getting to market", however we had better be mindful of the life and death consequences and we had better make sure that we were continuously contributing to the success and health of the organization as a whole.  I think his message also meant that it's not good enough to simply "be on the team", or "closing the deal".  You've got to continuously strive for improvement, increasing value and benefit to your customer's and your organization.

As a business, this also shows up for me in again not settling for simply "making the offer" or being "in the space".  It's critical to keep strong emphasis to always be developing strategies for separating your product or service from your competitor's. Or else.  When you peel away the layer's, this is a process of survival and  every human being is doing this all of the time, they just might not be able to recognize this or define it as a "business process".

Very early on in my career in the teams I realized that it was extremely important to stand out in some way and that I needed to develop my own "niche".  Something that I could make a name for myself in as a SEAL. It worked out that technology was this niche for me.

During a tour as a SEAL Instructor at BUD/S, I was also attending night school to finish my bachelor's degree (to keep a promise to myself and to my mother). My degree program was Information Technology, so naturally I started to look around the organization to identify what gaps existed that I might be able to fill with this area of study.  My goal was to always be improving some aspect of myself while also contributing to the organization.  During this period, I developed a keen interested in software, specifically database technologies.  I described my desire to help develop a system with the leadership and was given the opportunity to extend some very early development of a database system that tracks BUD/S students performance and develop a fully functional system to track, monitor and provide statistical analysis of student and class history.

Frankly I was tired of all of the paperwork I had to do and wanted an easier way of managing these administrative tasks so I could get into the water or onto the beach.  The point is that I was open to learning and developing new skills.  My idea of fun wasn't to sit in front of a computer and struggle with developing stored procedure's or writing functions or building task workflow's or developing Entity Relationship models and taxonomies, data workflow diagrams and User Interfaces.  What I did care about was helping my teammates in any way that I could while also differentiating myself.  This database system provided me this opportunity.  The benefits were apparent because it immediately reduced a lot of pain for all of the instructor's.  Less time spent by them on filling out paperwork.  More time for the Instructor cadre to do what they were there to do - instruct future SEAL's. 

That was the primary benefit, however other benefits were, better quality data and the ability to begin to derive statistics and run analytics,which was a very important capability for the entire force.    Moreover, I also was able to begin to develop new skills that were in demand outside of the teams.   The overarching theme is that being willing and having the ability to step in and "fill gaps" is critically important for any organization. Especially in today's environment.  It's been a way of life for me.

This was circa 1999-2001 and I again consider myself fortunate to have been an active duty SEAL on an Instructor assignment and given the opportunity to develop some new skills that were very different than those skills I had developed as a SEAL.  This experience also gave me something to put on a resume. Contrary to what one might imagine, in 2000 putting "Navy SEAL" on your resume was a double edged sword. On one hand it clearly demonstrated abilities.  On the other hand most of your accomplishments are classified so figuring out how to say what you've done without saying what you've done can be really difficult if not impossible. So I don't even go there.   

One of my college professor's also suggested that I add what I was doing with the BUD/S database on my resume and put a resume out on monster.com to perhaps get a part-time job and "moonlight" as an IT professional to check it out and see if it was something that might interest me.  

I decided to do just that and published a resume on monster.com.  Shortly thereafter I was hired on as an intern and developed one of the most important relationships of my life.  I met David Stoner, who at the time was the Lead Database Architect for a Silicon Valley based startup  (now defunct) called "Hellobrain".  If memory serves correct, this was a 30+ million dollar venture backed startup during the dot com heyday's.   Anyway, I worked for David as an intern and also developed a close friendship with him. David became my first mentor outside of my military circle of friends.  David was a structured former senior executive with Lehman Brothers and Nomura Bank in New York.  David was truly a genius with database systems and structured finance and financial analytics.  David Stoner gave me the opportunity to learn and grow and to contribute.  Over time, David and I became very close friends.

So, by day I was instructing BUD/S students and by night I was learning how to design, build and manage very large database systems. I enjoyed the creative aspects of designing huge data stores and I also enjoyed that I was learning something completely different from my SEAL background.

David became my first reference outside of my military career and my landlords.  His recommendations produced my first job offer with First American Finance as a production database adminstrator and paved the way for me to successfully transition off of active duty if I wanted to.  

In June of 2001 I decided to transition from active duty status to reserve status with the SEAL Teams or "The Teams".    Without AuditIntegrity co-founder, David Stoner, I don't think I would have had the opportunities that I had as a former SEAL to develop such a different set of skills in software development for web based technology as well as provide me with opportunities to get ever critical technology startup experience under my belt.

So, I'd successfully transitioned from my career as a SEAL to a full time IT professional position with a fortune 50 company that was not in the DoD industry.

 

Then, September 11, 2001 changed everything.

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast

Critical Decisions and "aha" moments

I've been using linkedin for a couple of years now.  I think it's a phenomenal way to get reconnected with old colleagues or to connect with new ones. One group that I am a member of is a group called "Execunet Executive Suite"

Last week Timothy Cascio's post got me thinking.  In this post he asks the following two part question:

•     What is the biggest executive "Aha!" moment in the past year?
  
•     What led to your moment of clarity and how it has changed you?

As I've reflected this week, I felt that it might be valuable to others for me to comment on one of the most critical "Aha!" moments I've had with Sofcoast over the past three years.  While I have had several "Aha!" moments, this one I think is exceptionally important not only to Sofcoast but for other entrepeneur's and executives to think about.  

First of all, I want to preface this post with a thank you to Marc Andreeson for his blog where he introduced the book "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and it's author Stephen Gary Blank.  I read this book cover to cover in 2 days and I bought copies for as many people as i could get to listen to me about it.  I still reference Stephen''s book in my thinking and the terms technical  or technology risk and market/customer risk are totally credited to him. At any rate, I've been awed by what I learned and I'm also thankful that he decided to share this knowledge.  He clearly had a choice and he decided to be open with his insight, personal experiences and expertise.  His example of openness and desire to contribute to others successes is a great example for others to follow, especially me.

Thank you, Gary for writing the book and thank you Marc for talking about it.

Off an on, I've spent about 12 years of heavy lifting conducting trials, performing research, developing technologies and systems (and yes, I actually wrote software or did the engineering myself because in some cases it needs to get done quickly and 60,70,80% is good enough and I specialize in the "zero to one" stage of invention/innovation).  I've also led testing and evaluations for high risk, "do not fail" type technology programs. As a SEAL technical expert this book blew me away because I recognized the patterns he described everywhere around me. 

Especially in the fall of 2008.

In November 2008 we closed our first round of financing and became an investor backed technology company. First of all, I think everyone would agree that this was a terrible time to be raising money and to be attempting to close a round of financing.
Our business strategy is focused on delivering a whole product solution, and our core software technology is still in development, presently we're about 2 weeks from our first beta software product, so our strategy has always been to to lead into the marketplace with a peripheral device or "Lead Product" that over time our core offering will integrate into as it becomes available. 

Once we closed our financing, I was faced with a key decision. First of all our initial strategy prior to the market downturn was that this would the first of a series of investment rounds, Angel to Series A (or bridge) as necessary as we continue'd to march towards commercialization.  What I was faced with in November 2008 was the stark realization that this may very well be "it" as far as capital into the business goes, at least until we're either "break even" or demonstrating some type of profitability.

What this means is that in our planning and strategy development, as well as the business plan that our investor's invested in, we had a certain market / customer risk profile and technology risk profile.  What I discovered is that we needed to back both down as quickly as possible while still delivering a key peripheral product that hit the mark. 

So the question I had to ask was "Do we lead into the market with the peripheral product we had planned?" or "Do we shift to a more immediately needed product?" My instincts told me that the original lead peripheral was going to miss. This didn't matter anymore, what matters to me at this point was finding an answer to the age old question "What do I do now?"

So, I called one of my mentor's and fellow board member's, Bob Terrell, and asked him for help. He agree'd that this was a critical decision and quickly put me in touch with a key target customer. We then were able to get a meeting with them and in this meeting I experienced the "aha" moment.
I realized as I described the peripheral product we were developing that they were only minimally interested. So I simply asked them the following question. 

"What do you need that you can't find or afford that if I build for you you would buy." 

This opened up the door for us, I drew some ideas on a napkin, went back to the team put together and delivered a proposal and closed our first product sale two weeks later. Without spending one dime on building the product.   Now after 4 months of development we'll be delivering this product to our first two customers at the end of the month and have an additional 6 clients who are waiting for first product delivery.

It seems like an obvious answer now, but it wasn't then. The lesson here is to always be mindful of technical risk and market risk and to be sure that as time goes by that you rebalance your strategy's risk profile. 

Cheers,

John

John Surmont, founder & CEO
Sofcoast

What's in a name? (part two)

Life Lesson:

Sometimes accidental discoveries or people "nudging" us forward is what makes the difference between success and failure.

Now I don't want to give you the impression that I "knew" that I was going to become a Navy SEAL, I simply was trying to figure out how to get myself out of a jam, or at least what I thought was a jam.  

What I didn't expect was that the next 9 weeks of my life and the decisions I made during this period were the truly life changing decisions that needed to be made.  Joining the Navy as a cook was simply step 1.

It was step 2, 3, 4....100 and beyond that have proved to be most informative for me in my life.

So here goes with the rest of this story.  "There I was.."

Bootcamp was not necessarily life changing for me.  What was life changing was that it became very "real" for me to discover that I absolutely didn't want anything to do with being a cook on a ship.  I realized that about 10 minutes into the first day when my Company Commander laughed at me when I told what my rating (job) was going to be. Everyone in my group was slated to be either a cook or a nuclear reactor technician.

Seriously.  It was like we were the bad news bears of Navy boot camp.

Well during the 2nd week I had the opportunity to meet 3 SEAL's.  Their presentation occurred on some cold bleacher's after a swim test and it kind of went like this.  "We're cool SEAL's and your not. You want to be like us, but you can't. Any questions?"

So, of course, I'm "that guy" and I ask the question "OK.  So where do I sign up?"

They looked at me, (at that time) a scrawny buck 80 and chuckled. The Master Chief "O" asked me "What's your job (rating), son?" 

Me:  "Cook, Master Chief"

Master Chief O: "sorry, we don't need any cooks in the teams, bud. Any others?"

Me: "Wait, master chief.  Is there any other job that a cook can be?"

Master Chief O: "We'll see. talk to Petty Officer "D" and work it out".

Me: "Yes, Master Chief"

So what I worked out was that there might be a way for me to prove myself to them physically, mentally and emotionally and qualify to take a test to a) get out of this cook job, get a new job and then b) have the opportunity to try out for Navy Diver, SEAL Team or EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal).  Frankly I wasn't really interested in any of these jobs, I simply didn't want to be a cook. 

Honest.

So, I worked out every morning with the SEAL's in bootcamp.  Interesting thing was that about 10 guys were in this group in the beginning. 

Now working out with the SEAL's was like this:

Wake Up:  1:30 AM
Be at the pool ready:  2:45AM
Workout:  3:00-5:00AM
Breakfast: 5:15AM
Meet up with the rest of my boot camp company and continue through the day.

So, as we progressed through bootcamp guys simply didn't want to wake up and go.  Eventually (about two weeks later) I was by myself. 

There was a point where I was the only recruit at the pool for the workout.

The SEAL's expected me to stop showing up too.  I didn't.

Why? I guess it's because I enjoyed it very much.  (And I really didn't want to be a cook.) It reminded me of my days as a high school athlete.  I Loved athletics, especially football. The team aspect is what I thrive on.  This will also be a story for another day.

So what I didn't know was that I'd inadvertently put a wrench in these SEAL's routine.  They didn't expect that anyone from a group of cooks in boot camp would stick to a grueling SEAL PT routine. 

I think at some point they actually warmed up to me in a funny "old school SEAL" way.  The Master Chief pulled me aside and said that they'd agree'd that I should have the opportunity to try out if I could pass the psychological screening. Which they candidly stated that they weren't sure I would pass...

I did pass the psychological screening process and then took a physical test and excelled at it.  I was then transferred to a new job (rating) category - Torpedoman's Mate.  Again, I didn't care much about Torpedo's either, I simply didn't want to be a cook.

Now I want to point out that I've never been the type of person who says "It's my destiny to be X". That's not me.    I actually think that I need to give credit to my high school athletics coaches the physical conditioning that was normal for me in High School was not too different than what I experienced with the SEAL's.  Although flutterkicks and pullups were always hard and hurt, running, swimming and the rest of the stuff was fun. I enjoyed it.  My high school football Coach Larry "Cotton" Adams and my strength coach, Clyde Burchett had prepared me physically for SEAL training which was to come....

Additionally, I wasn't an all star athlete in High School, I deeply loved athletics, but for a variety of reasons (injuries primarily) I didn't have the opportunity to truly develop and contribute as much as I wanted to or believed I could have.  In some ways this desire to be a contributing member of a team probably drove me as much as anything did at that point in my life and probably to this day as well.

So, now I'm guarantee'd that I won't be a cook and I have a choice to make.  "What's your choice son?  SEAL, Navy Diver or Explosive Ordnance Disposal?"

Well, remember that I shared that I didn't really care as long as I didn't have to be a cook. I chose Navy Diver and graduated bootcamp.  Took two weeks off and reported to my next school. Which was a 12 week course in the same place in Florida (this whole training command was shut down years ago). 

Well, I didn't really have my own routine, I simply had the same routine that the SEAL's had taught me in bootcamp, and frankly I enjoyed being around them very much.  So what do you think I did?

I showed up a 2:45AM and worked out with them every day in A school as well.  At first they were shocked that I came in "every-single-day" then they expected me. 

Eventually they trusted me enough to lead a couple of their PT sessions.  They gave me an outfit and I worked the recruits out. Understandably today this wouldn't happen. At this point in 1992 I guess they saw an opportunity to get some rest because clearly I knew the workout routine and was going to be there.

At some point I started working out twice a day and then swimming every day.  I had nothing else to do to, at least that's how I saw it.

So I progressed through this school and graduation day came. Again the question (this time by one of the SEAL motivator's) was "What's it going to be Surmont?"

Me: "Well, I guess I'll stick with Navy Diver, Master Chief."

Master Chief  "O": "You're kidding me? Right?"

Me: "Master Chief, I mean no offense, I frankly don't want to be a cook more than I want to be anything, so it's really ok."

Master Chief "O":  "Let me tell you something son, you're one of the 'oddest ducks' I've ever met! Why would you go through all of this with us and then choose to be a Navy Diver?"

Me: "I'm not sure what Navy SEAL's do? So I have no way of knowing if this is something I want to do."

Master Chief "O": "Got it. Well, you'll make your decision and I wish you well either way."

So, I selected Navy Diver and graduated and reported to Navy Dive School in Panama City, Florida.

I checked in and did my PT tests. One day the administrivia rep was reviewing my records and I was called in to her office.

Admin Lady: "Son, do you realize you're in the wrong place?"

Me: "Huh? No ma'am, I'm supposed to be here at dive school."

Admin Lady: "No, son, look here at your record.  It says "UDT/SEAL". Do you realize that you are in the wrong place and you need to go to San Diego, California?"

Me: "Are you sure?"

Admin Lady: "That's what you're records say.  Who's your Motivator from school?" 

I told her and she called their office and Petty Officer "W" answered the phone. The Admin Lady described what happened and he asked her to put me on the phone.

This is what he said (Paraphrased).

"Surmont, you need to go to BUD/S.  You'll do well if you stay healthy and take one day at a time.  Do something special for yourself, bud.  Go for it."

I then handed the phone back to the admin lady and made the decision that day to go for it.  "Ma'am, I think there's been a mistake, I actually should be at SEAL training."

She agree'd and after a couple of weeks of fun in the sun in Panama City, Florida I reported to BUD/S for training.

When I arrived I felt that I'd come home.  

As I went through SEAL training in 1992 and 1993 I remember that people would always ask me why I seemed so happy even on the most difficult days.

I would simply smile and say "It sure beats cooking for a living."

===
Joining the Navy  was a monumental decision that has had a positive impact on my life.  Throughout my career in the Navy what I experienced was that there are fantastic leader's in the military.  The people in every military organization I've ever been affiliated with were the most dedicated, professional and highly intelligent group of people I have every had the privilege to work with.

What I also experienced was that along the way, I was given opportunities to excel.  At every turn in my career there were great people who cared enough to encourage me to do my best and "take the shot".

If there's one life lesson for me it's this. Empower your people.   You don't know everything, no one does. Trust your people enough to give them the opportunity to excel or get rid of them and hire people you do trust.

I am deeply thankful to all of those people that I served with who gave me a chance to prove myself and to excel.

And that's why this company's name is "Sofcoast".

Cheers,

John Surmont, founder & CEO

Sofcoast, Inc.