Editor’s Note: As I/ITSEC 2018 rapid approaches, the Modern Military Training editorial team wanted to share a message directly from this year’s Conference Chair, Elizabeth Biddle, Ph.D., Technical Fellow at Boeing. The note penned by Dr. Biddle below was originally shared in the NDIA monthly newsletter. In her note, Dr. Biddle shares some important new features and approaches being employed at this year’s show, including Launch Pad, and Operation Blended Warrior (OBW) panel, and several discussions surrounding AI. You can read her full note below:
Elizabeth Biddle, Ph.D., I/ITSEC 2018 Conference Chair and Technical Fellow at Boeing
It has been an honor, and a valuable professional development opportunity, to serve as the 2018 Conference Chair. I/ITSEC is the largest global training, simulation, and education conference – supported by our NTSA and 300+ volunteer team, comprised of experts from industry, government, and academia. Their passion, dedication, and creativity towards the development of our 2018 program has made this an enjoyable year. Accordingly, they have produced a superb program with a variety of offerings to enable our diverse community to learn from each other and cultivate advancements in our community’s modeling, simulation, and training capabilities. Our 2018 theme, “Launching Innovations in Learning: Ready. Set. Disrupt.”, emphasizes the need for our community to think out-of-the-box, invent, and explore to ensure our training military and civilian personnel are trained and ready to face the challenges posed by our exponentially evolving environment.
Our 2018 Program Chair, Mr. Bob Kleinhample, has embraced our theme and been the catalyst for leading change this year to meet its intentions. Bob’s diligence and energy has enabled our team to create a fresh and innovative program that is comprised of our 142 papers, 27 tutorials, 29 special events, and 9 professional development workshops spread across the week. I have also enjoyed the vigor that our Sea Services Executives and Principals have invested towards the development of our new offerings that exemplify our theme. This year we are debuting a new Special Event called the “Launch Pad” to highlight emerging game-changing capabilities, while we are concluding our 3-year Operation Blended Warrior initiative with a panel session. Given the increased attention of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we have 3 related events: “Black Swan – AI Run Amok,” “Data Science to Machine Intelligence to Artificial Intelligence,” and “AI’s Future: Multiple Perspectives.” Our first woman I/ITSEC Fellow, Dr. Susan K. Numerich, will be presenting her views on how our community can apply learning from our experiences to drive innovation in the future.
Launch Pad: This new event showcases innovations in our community through three sessions on the exhibit floor. Launch Pad participants were selected from an earlier call to present disruptive solutions that will radically change the design, development, and execution of training and education. Themes for this years’ innovations are augmented/virtual reality, LVC interoperability, and performance measurement.
Operation Blended Warrior (OBW) Panel: For the past three years, OBW has executed a four-day, live event to identify and overcome challenges associated with Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) standards, database interoperability, cyber, performance measurement, cross-domain solutions, and distributed after action review. This panel will engage discussions of the lessons learned and recommendations for the future.
Black Swan – AI Run Amok: I/ITSEC’s 4th Black Swan event will investigate the long reaching effects of artificial intelligence (AI) as it is integrated into our day-to-day lives and the social impacts it may have. A panel of military, industry, and academic experts will discuss the various disciplines of AI along with its beneficial use, and debate whether our society can control its long-term effects.
Data Science to Machine Intelligence to Artificial Intelligence: This panel-style event will engage directly with audience members to capitalize on our collective ingenuity to discuss data science, machine learning, and AI. Our military and industry panelists will engage discussion on how to implement these technologies in a way that keeps our Armed Forces safe and highly operational.
AI’s Future: Multiple Perspectives: This is the first event on the I/ITSEC program organized the Women in Defense (WID) Central Florida Chapter. This panel, comprised of leaders in the AI industry outside of our traditional community, will share their unique perspectives on the maturity of AI, problem areas that AI can address, the challenges to be overcome, and areas of anticipated innovations.
I/ITSEC Fellows: I/ITSEC 2018 Fellow, Dr. Susan K. Numerich, will present her paper, which discusses how to harness our experiences, positive and negative, to learn and grow as a community. Her presentation will provide both a retrospective of the past and as well as her forecast for the future that applies her recommendations. She will discuss examples from her career to illustrate her points.
I/ITSEC 2018 will continue its rich tradition of supporting numerous STEM outreach initiatives, schools, and teachers throughout the week. This year we will be presenting awards to our seven Ph.D. and two Master’s scholarship recipients. Our series of special events that contribute to private and public STEM objectives to increase the caliber and qualification of tomorrow’s M&S workforce will be continued.
I look forward to welcoming you to I/ITSEC this November 26 – November 30 at the South Concourse of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. With over 16,000 expected attendees representing over 69 countries, I anticipate everyone will leave this conference with a valuable learning experience and refreshed to continue with our mission of advancing the state-of-the-art in modeling, simulation and training capabilities. Be sure to visit the I/ITSEC website at www.iitsec.org for the latest detailed agenda and conference information.
Want to stay updated about I/ITSEC 2018? Subscribe to the Modern Military Training newsletter – we’ll be covering the show closely throughout November.
