Monday, June 30, 2008

Potomac Tech Culture

East Coast Blogging quotes a Zach Goldfarb's account a NVTC event and a social media event. Goldfarb was struck by the fact that there was no overlap of attendees of the two events.

Since they were held on the same night at the same time, it is a little difficult to see how anyone could attend both events, unless you were a reporter whose business it was to cover both events.

East Coast Blogging
makes this very improbable assertion:
As I have stated before, government contracting does not lend itself to a lot of innovation.


Huh?
The US Government? The government whose Census Dept. funded the development of the original Univac computer? The Government whose ARAPA net was the forerunner of the Internet? The government with a long history of funding the most advanced technology? The government who funded a revolution?

Government contracting is a unique world of long sales cycles for fast changing technology, low profit margins, and an improbable mix of the most outdated and most advanced technology.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can understand where it may be a surprise, but I believe the days of govt innovation are behind us. While it is true that agencies like DARPA have doen great things, the areas I work in are ruled by huge defense contractors. New ideas with a lot if risk are frowned upon it would seem. Deliver what we "know" works seems to have been what has happened in order to avoid too much risk of losing the contracts or award fee hits.

Alice said...

Huge defense contractors are a mixed bag. There are islands of huge innovation buried in mountains business-as-usual.