Expo for Government Technologies

I finished my first day at the FOSE as I write this article.  I realized that attending the FOSE also gives me access to 3 other conferences being held simultaneously at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center.  GovSec Conference is one of them that caught my attention. All share the same Keynote Speakers.

After registering at the Press Room and obtaining my badge and conference materials, I reached the first Keynote Speech being delivered by General Stan McCrystal.  He was the former Commander of the U.S. International Forces in Afghanistan.  He talked about the current state of global and military affairs as well as the security challenges that America is facing. He was quite impressive.

Immediately after was the ribbon cutting and opening of FOSE, GovSec Exhibit halls and the other expos. Education sessions also started.  I decided to check out the exhibits first since I was already at the hall anyway.

There is APP Arcade and FOSETV.  Both at the sessions and at the Expo the cutting-edge apps were demoed, displayed and discussed by technology leaders and experts.  I intend to write about them after the conference.

Since the event is basically the annual gathering of government and industry representatives, I was as happy to learn with them the emerging technologies, policies and best practices in government information technology (IT).

I always had the impression that many of the new technologies were always tried and tested in the government first before their commercialization.  This is true for those whose creation or invention were made possible by research grants.  The military, which spends enormous amounts in security-related products, technologies, and researches, is a good example.  Many of the products exhibited at the GovSec expo are related to Home Security.

The Government Printing Office (GPO) demonstrated its new 3D Printing machine. I was impressed and excited watching the demonstration.

I also enjoyed the demo on the expertise of dogs in detecting people carrying undesirable materials such as bombs or some other weapons.

My original plan was to visit booths and attend sessions that deal with mobile and cyber security.  I have started implementing the plan and hope to write about the new technologies and some of the amazing products in later columns.

I was very interested in a couple of products that dealt with portability, mobility, and encryption when I was visiting the booths.  With tiny memory devices such as USB or tiny external hard drives, they basically allow you to bring your entire PC with you through the mini devices.  The entire contents including software that you have in your PC are in there in your pocket.

I have 2 more days to go.  I hope to visit all the booths and attend the sessions as I originally planned.

The Keynote Speaker for the second day is Joe Theisman, former Washington Redskins Champion Quarterback. He is scheduled to talk about “Managing to win”.  I think I can miss this one.