Ross Wilkers
This is the second part of ExecutiveBiz’s conversation with Graham Plaster of The Intelligence Community LLC. Click here to read the first part of the interview.
ExecutiveBiz: How will small businesses have the chance to participate in the effort?
Graham Plaster: We are crowdfunding this month. Small businesses and individuals that want to get involved early on can get a number of benefits. Starting January, I will also be volunteering as the chairman of The Intelligence Community Associations Network (ICAN) which is a conglomerate of nearly 50 member organizations in the national security space. Between our Indiegogo Campaign and ICAN, there are many ways for businesses to get involved.
ExecutiveBiz: Q: Who is supporting the effort so far?
Graham Plaster: We’ve had really strong endorsements from LTG Mike Flynn, the former director of DIA, and also from senior leadership inside and outside the intelligence community. A number of supportive partners who we have been working with us for a while include Stratfor, Transparent Language and The MASY Group. We list our partners and sponsors on our website, www.theintelligencecommunity.com We will continue to highlight the help of our sponsors during the course of our Indiegogo campaign.
ExecutiveBiz: Why are you using Indiegogo to crowdfund? When will the campaign happen and how can people take part?
Graham Plaster: Indiegogo is the largest crowd funding campaign platform. It has been around quite a while and has been used to successfully crowdfund a lot of start-up companies and innovative ideas. We also looked at Kickstarter, which is for creative projects like movies and films. Indiegogo reaches more countries and was a better fit for us. We’ll be running our Indiegogo campaign for 40 days starting October 27 through December 5. People can go to theintelligencecommunity.com/indiegogo We are excited for people since we will be putting out a number of benefits ranging in the price of $2 up to $10,000 for various things.
ExecutiveBiz: What will happen at the launch gala on October 2015 with LTG Flynn as the keynote speaker?
Graham Plaster: We have lined up a premium venue in the capital area. We have set aside a whole 7 story museum exclusively for this event and unlimited booth space for sponsors. We are going to have a black tie dinner for a thousand people. We are really pumped because the target to get the whole platform done so that people can use it at that point. Hopefully we will be able to provide service to the community.
ExecutiveBiz: What are some other potential opportunities in crowdsourcing within the national security arena?
Graham Plaster: There are a number of interesting implications in crowdsourcing in the community we have. A lot of innovation in national security really has to do with visualization, big data, algorithms and technical solutions. “The crowd” is something people don’t seem to really cultivate well. For any company with a great technical solution, we can provide the test bed and beta test community. For crowdsourcing, the government always wants to have a big bench of talents to be called upon at a moment’s notice instead of having a large staff of people on overhead that don’t necessarily get to do meaningful work all the time. We are excited to have the capability to make an enterprise solution available to government or companies where they can hire specialists for short-term solutions, sourced around the country or the globe according to whatever set criteria of the agency or enterprise.
