FCW Insider: IRM College anniversary

The Information Resources Management College at National Defense University celebrated its 20th anniversary on Saturday night with a black-tie gala at the new Gaylord Hotel at National Harbor. Attendees were a blend of the usual suspects from the policy world and some familiar names from the past. For many attendees, this was their first visit to the new National Harbor location. It is certainly a spectacular setting, and if it were easier to get to, I could see a lot of conferences and events moving from downtown. On this particular Saturday, Mother Nature put on quite a display at sunset, and even hard-to-impress types were whipping out cell phone cameras to record it. This is one of a string of significant anniversaries in the marketplace. The Council for Excellence in Government has a 25th anniversary later this year, and the Federal 100 awards program will celebrate its 20th next spring. There will be lots of opportunity for looking back on the past two decades, marveling at the changes that have come about and wondering what’s next. To get a sense of how much things have changed,  a video on the history of IRM College started with a tip of the hat to early pioneer Adm. Grace Hopper and ended with the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds. Quite a journey. A number of folks from Emmett Paige’s era at the Defense Department were there — Tony Valletta (now consulting), Cindy Samuelson (LMI) and Cindy Kendall from SAIC. Kendall got a number of mentions from the podium as a key figure in creating IRM College. When I spoke with her about it, she mentioned that DOD had programs for computer center managers but no program for people who managed the data created by the computers. This was a major change in thinking to move the emphasis from the machines to the information.