Not everyone knows that the Global SOF Foundation (GSF) was modeled after the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)–but it was! Keith Masback, the President of USGIF and member of the GSF Advisory Council, as well as Aimee McGranahan, the COO of USGIF, played huge supporting roles in the birth and rapid growth of the GSF.
USGIF hosts an excellent, productive, and tasteful event every year–The GEOINT Symposium. This year it took place in the lovely city of San Antonio, Texas, and the GSF sent representatives to connect with our current partners, scout for new partners that would enhance our GSF community, and catch up on the latest in Geospatial Intelligence.
To start, we were amazed by the number of current GSF partners that were on display at GEOINT–we interacted with 14 of them! It just goes to show that we have only partnered with the classiest and most capable companies in the defense industry.
We participated in a creative crowdsourcing event at the booth of OGSystems, where Stu won a shirt adorned with one of his favorite phrases– “BOOM.” We spent over 2 hours trading information with our Oracle partners, enjoying the comfort of their gigantic booth space and inventing an island called “Stutopia” (yes–be afraid!). We ran into representatives from Fulcrum and discussed ways that we can help them with some upcoming projects. We met everyone we didn’t already know from DigitalGlobe, and received briefings on their latest capabilities since some of their recent impressive mergers.
We also had the chance to meet with some other companies that we want to add to the GSF ecosystem–with capabilities ranging from hardware to software and everything in between. We hope to introduce you to some of them, soon!
Next year, GEOINT will be in Tampa, and the GSF is looking forward to taking advantage of this outstanding event taking place in our backyard. Keep your eyes and ears open, and make sure you save the dates for GEOINT 2018.
Success has many Fathers: Building a Joint SOF Headquarters