Future Forum and SRA International Updates
In the beginning…
Well I just got back to my dorm after Future Forum and I figured no time like the present to write about it. My morning started early, parking Advisory Board member’s cars from 7-8. Next, I headed inside for the Mentor breakfast, my mentor, Pete Lechner, and I mostly talked about Penn State football, but that’s whats important, right? Next, we went upstairs to check out the businesses. A couple stood out, HPTi, SRA International, and Lockheed Martin. Marty from HPTi remembered me from the HPTi Challenge earlier this semester where we performed vulnerability assessments on a hypothetical island. He wanted some feedback about the event because they are looking to do the second annual event in the Fall. I wish they hired more than just seniors because I’d be very interested in working for them. SRA International will have their own section below. Lockheed Martin lived up to their hype…again…as one of the best companies an IST/SRA student can work for. They had some virtual world software up and running, but what I was interested in was the Minority Report-esq touch screen. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, they had a screen that you touched to work with and it brought up people, stats, links, etc. about a person and you could navigate their “file” right in front of you with full interaction. VERY COOL.
SRA International
I owe Justin Wellen of SRA an update I believe. You see, SRA Int’l has this cool thing that updates them when something hits the internet with their name in it. They were drawn to my post about Washington D.C. and how I was talking about my trip there. In case you haven’t read it, scroll down so you can…but I mentioned that I didn’t think that SRA the business realized that we are SRA students because they never brought up the similar acronyms. He informed me that this idea was very, very far from the truth. They have been working with the major and the college to start recruiting hard in this area. Justin told me that he wanted me to tell all of you that this fall there will be an SRA bus to SRA. They want to, and any readers from SRA Int’l correct me if I’m wrong, take SRA students to Headquarters in Fairfax, VA to give us what I called for in my last post, a full day to get exposure to the software they are working on. I said about how it was rushed, he acknowledged that fact and pushed the bus idea. I think this is a fantastic idea. They are doing some cutting edge work over there and am personally excited about a trip like the SRA bus to SRA.
Next, I was re-introduced to some software they are working on with i2. I now remember that they hit on it when I visited, but I neglected to post about it. What this software does is search all kinds of documents using Google for a certain person. Take bin Laden for example. It would bring back all the kinds of terrorist activities he was involved with, where, when and what he did. It scans text and gives you all of this really cool information. That paired with i2 Analyst Notebook would be a very powerful tool. I am excited to see what happens there.
To wrap it all up
It was a very warm, very informative day. Other events we participated in was a panel about Risk Mitigation that will be posted on the Future Forum website later this week, and we got to tour Cisco’s Emergency Response Vehicle that was tested in Katrina relief missions. This Vehicle runs all of its equipment on a 3Mb satellite connection that only has about 6000ms lag. They run a wireless internet connection, this cool walkie talkie-phone integration system, a 720p television and numerous other TV feeds. The big, nice TV is used for teleconferencing and the whole vehicle was very cool. I cannot express how impressed I was with the way it worked and how it was built. At a million bucks a pop and 10 miles to the gallon, its a real gem. I will also be watching for what these things will be able to do in the future. The last thing I wanted to mention is that I was offered the job of coordinating IST field trips. I am very honored to hold that position and hope to plan some amazing field trips.
I covered a lot here, and if I forgot anything, I will update later. For now, I need to catch up on some much needed sleep to prepare for the upcoming Blue-White weekend. Hope you all enjoy the weather!
Thanks for the kind words! [It's not just SRA that tracks their mentions!] Actually, my tracker is easy–a little Google Alert-fu [with some careful boolean expressions to get rid of the common false positive matches]. It’s been my pleasure to be Marty’s colleague at HPTi for these past almost nine years–he and I have been growing our careers with HPTi as it grows–and we enjoy the opportunity to help others do the same.
Don’t take no for an answer too easily–we have been known to do Summer Hires in targeted cases, and also because of our many government contracts and contacts we sometimes have information about government-sponsored internship programs. For many years we actually admininistered the DOD HPCMO’s PET Summer Intern program.
If nothing works out for you this Summer, please still refer your friends. We have an external referral program–you can get paid when we hire the HPTi-quality candidates you refer to us.
Let me know if you want me to ask around for details on any of this–and thanks for the kind words!