SCIP 2014: Fail Continued

[Trip Krant]

29th Annual Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals In...

This year's unique format provides enhanced educational services and increased networking opportunities with key industry players for non-stop relationship building, interaction, and best-practices from competitive intelligence professionals at this premiere industry event.

The continued emphasis on case studies and best practices from recognizable corporations, is misplaced.  Applying benchmarking and best practices to competitive intelligence is a terribly bad idea since every company is unique.  Focusing on best practices negates the intrinsic value of CI – the tailored perspective it creates.

Benchmarking and best practices will only create incremental process improvements for the CI field, if anything at all.  Incremental process improvement is not enough to keep pace with the external environment – especially when CI is already lagging.

The conference introduces little novelty, and plants few seeds for the field to develop.

Case Studies + Best Practices + Benchmarking = FAIL

[Trip Krant]

Instead of presentations along the lines of “How ShitCorp uses social network analysis to spot threats and opportunities”, it should be sessions along the lines of “Network analysis workshop (laptop required)”. Instead of a vendor stacked panel on “Software for CI”, there should be something like “Introduction to Python for OSINT and CI (laptop required)”.

Individuals or teams from organizations could then submit papers and posters presenting their innovation to, or application of, CI practices to be judged – with awards across several categories. That way awards actually have significance – its not just librarians voting awards to each other.

[Trip Krant]

SCIP Chapter Strategy Launch - 2/12/14 (pdf)

SCIP Chapter Handbook - March 2014 (pdf)

[Trip Krant]

The pitch for Boston SCIP CIdea-Fest:

Save the date: September 16th CIdeaFest 2014 : Our third annual event where we invite you to get up in front of your peers and tell us an idea you are working on or a problem you are struggling with, and get feedback (or sympathy). Please submit your topic in advance so we can allocate enough time for everyone. Some possible themes we have been kicking around are: Big Data collection and analysis tools (like everyone else), Microsoft/Skype realtime translator – hype or reality? - impact on CI interviewing opportunities?

And by “Idea-fest” they really mean problem-and-sympathy-fest...

Also, "Big Data" is a term that has been thrown around to the point of uselessness. SCIP shouldn't throw-it around too just to sound cool.

Data Science however, is an emerging discipline that has already had a significant impact on the field of intelligence analysis. SCIP events should focus less on sharing sympathy, and more on providing its members a minimum-effective dose of training in data science skills (machine learning, math & stats, hacking, etc) so that CI practitioners can absorb and adapt the discipline to CI.  

[Trip Krant]

The final line-up for Boston SCIP CIdeas-Fest to be held at the Natick community library:

Here’s what we have planned for this year’s CIdeasFest:

Chris Hote – Digimind: Using social media for tactical CI
Mary Chitty – Cambridge Healthtech: Monitoring new technologies

We are also working on presentations on CI and strategy and CI and forecasting.

Come join us and bring your own ideas and concerns.

Good thing SCIP members have to pay $20 and non-members $30 to attend this event - otherwise the audience size might overwhelm venue capacity...