The annual acquisition
community symposium has come and gone and once again DAU and our guest speakers and panelists came through
with an outstanding event. In an after action survey
72.8% of respondents said that the symposium was very
useful; 7.6% useful; 17.9% somewhat useful, and 1.2%
moderately useful. Only 0.5% said the symposium was
not useful.
We also received a lot
of good suggestions on how to improve on the content
and administrative processes for the event. One
suggestion was to ask the DAUAA membership what they
thought would be a suitable theme for the 2011
symposium ?scheduled for Tues, 12 April 2011. We have
done that, with excellent feedback from the membership,
and are now reviewing alternative themes for the 2011
event. The lead time for a theme is necessary since
the research paper program uses the same symposium
theme. The call for papers needs to go out in July
2010 so that papers are written, submitted, edited and
published in time for the April 2011 Journal. As a
point of interest, the formal name of this Competition
is the Edward Hirsch Acquisition Writing Award (Hirsch
Award) in honor of the beloved and respected late DAU
professor of systems acquisition Brig General Edward
Hirsch, USA.
Some
more statistics on the April 2010 Symposium may be of
interest:
At
least 834 people viewed via VTC (app 200) or attended
the symposium in person (634)…which makes the 2010
symposium the largest attended DAU event ever! I
thought it would be difficult to surpass the record
breaking attendance at last year’s symposium…but we did
it. I personally think it was one of our best
symposiums ever, thanks to our candid and informed
speakers and panelists and the fantastic support
provided by so many people at all DAU regions. As you
can imagine, a lot of behind the scenes planning and
preparation goes into making such an event possible and
it would be impossible for me to mention everyone who
contributed to the success of the symposium. You all
have Mr. Anderson’s heartfelt thanks and sincere
appreciation for your hard work and for allowing DAU to
continue to shine in front of the DoD Acquisition,
Technology and Logistics leadership, military service
leaders, defense industry and all others who attended
from the acquisition community. Those who planned and
contributed should feel very proud of their
contributions. It was a pleasure to work with Team DAU
and the Alumni Association Board in the planning and
execution of the DAU Acquisition Community Symposium
and I look forward to working with them again next
year. I do want to specifically mention Wayne Glass
and Shaw Cohe from the Alumni Association Board for
their tireless and selfless planning and execution of
the event.
We are
also working on a hot topic forum to be presented at
Fort Belvoir’s DAU Campus on Thurs 12 Aug. The topic
is: Human System Integration: A Primer on Policies,
Processes and Initiatives. This is an important part
of acquisition and impacts weapon systems, information
technology systems, and space systems. I hope you can
attend. This forum will be held in the VTC Room 6 in
Bldg 202 at 11:30 AM ?1:00 PM.
About Bill Bahnmaier, DAUAA President:
Bill Bahnmaier is a retired Marine and a former (retired)
instructor at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). In
his last tour of duty as a Marine he was a major system PM the Marine Corps Assault Amphibian. Since retirement, Bahnmaier works as an official volunteer at DAU and also is
a part time consultant and instructor on defense acquisition
matters. He and his wife Peggy reside in Alexandria, VA.
They have 9 nephews and nieces and 15 great nephews and
nieces.
.bmp)
