Report: Boyd & Beyond 2012

I wanted to offer my thoughts about Boyd & Beyond 2012, now that the dust has settled and the participants are recovering from two days of intense intellectual engagement by day and partying at night.

First, thanks are in order to those who made Boyd & Beyond 2012 a reality:

To the United States Marine Corps, for use of their facilities at the Command and Staff College, the Expeditionary Warfare School and the Al Gray Research Center.

To Colonel Stan Coerr, USMC – the  principal organizer of the Boyd & Beyond Conferences.  It is Colonel Coerr’s hard work during the year that makes these events possible.

To Major Marcus Mainz, USMC – whose dynamic style helped facilitate a very tight schedule of speakers and kept everyone well fed at lunch.

To J. Scott Shipman – my co-blogger, friend and the official host (with his lovely wife Kristen) of the annual Boyd & Beyond Party, where the conversation continued into the night ( they were also my most hospitable hosts as well).

To the archivists and staff of the Al Gray Research Center who made our examination of Colonel John Boyd’s private papers, briefs and personal library enjoyable and informative.

To the folks from Adaptive Leader, who provided the coffee, water and snacks, of which I had too much 🙂

And finally to Gahlord Dewald for creating a much  better home for the conference’s twitter archive.

Now on to the conference itself……

Everyone had their favorite presenters and the number of questions often exceeded the time available, but we could loosely group featured individuals into clusters based on their role at the conference:

THEORISTS:  Dr. Chet Richards, Dr. Venkat Rao, Dr. Terry Barnhart, Michael Moore, Matt Lungren

WARRIORS: Brigadier General Stacy Clardy, USMC, Captain Paul Tremblay, Gunnery Sergeant Nick Galvan and Damien O’Connell ( my apologies to Nick and Damien as I entered the case study after it had already begun and did not catch the intros, Nick might be a Master Gunnery Sergeant and I do not know Damien’s rank at all)

SCHOLARS:  Dr. Katya Drozdova, Adam Elkus, Mike Miller

PRACTITIONERS: Greg Wilcox, Marshall Wallace, Pete Turner, Mike Grice, Gahlord Dewald, Chris Cox, Tom Hayden, William McNulty, Jonathan Brown

MASTERS of CEREMONIES: Colonel Stan Coerr, Major Marcus Mainz, Colonel G.I. Wilson

SPECIAL GUEST: Mary Ellen Boyd, daughter of Colonel John Boyd 

Some of the highlights from my perspective:

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