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Although my own chances of being able to swing attending this event have grown dim due to schedule conflicts and professional obligations, I nevertheless wanted to give a warm endorsement to Boyd 2008. The conference the previous year was outstanding and the agenda this year looks to be cutting edge:

Boyd Conference Details Dec 6-7

What – There is an opportunity to hold a short, intense seminar on the applicability of Boyd’s ideas, particularly operating inside the OODA loop and grand strategy (sustaining our own morale and attracting the uncommitted), on the weekend of December 6-7 at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI. Canada!

Purpose – The theme would be applying these ideas to conflict in the post-Iraq era, and more specifically to the types of diffused, networked, “open source” armed conflicts that some have called “fifth generation warfare.”

We are also interested in exploring solutions, such as the role of “resilient communities” (RC), for countering them. As Oil and food prices have climbed and the mortgage crisis has grown, the need to think more about Resilient Communities has become more urgent. We may have to re-invent our world!

We envision this as a working seminar to help shape the policy agenda in the first year of the new administration.

So we’re looking for a couple dozen attendees, all of whom would either make short presentations on their areas of interest or participate in panel discussions and working groups.

We also hope that the participants will leave with their own agenda items – to improve resilience within their organizations or to prepare articles and opeds on these subjects in the months after the seminar.

There is also a Boyd Blog in operation.

Michael Tanji sums up his views on the recent DNI OSINT conference that he and other blogfriends attended in Washington, DC.

Official DNI OSINT blog can also be consulted ( hat tip to Suki Fuller)

Dr. Chet Richards has reviewed the latest translation of one of the world’s oldest and greatest military classics:

The Art of War, trans. Thomas Huynh

One significant difference between Huynh and the other two is how they handle comments. Both Griffith and Cleary include remarks by the “canonical” commentators, a group of Chinese generals and pundits from Sun Tzu’s day through about the 12th century. They both also limit their own commentary to introductory remarks, 62 pages in the case of Griffith, 37 for Cleary. Huynh does not provide any of the canonical commentary. He does have a fairly brief introduction and translator’s note (totaling 18 pages), but most of his commentary is incorporated into the even-numbered pages that face the text on the opposite (odd numbered) pages.

Whether you like this is a matter of personal taste. It does allow for a smooth, uninterrupted reading of the Sun Tzu text itself, which is difficult in translations that have commentary interspersed with the words attributed to Sun Tzu. This is a huge plus. As for Huynh’s comments, they fall into two categories. One, which all readers will appreciate, concerns his insights into the language of the text and the environment of Sun Tzu’s day.

….A new translation of Sun Tzu from original sources is a major event, and this one would make a good addition to any library. If you get only a half dozen new insights – and you will (I did) – the book will repay its price many times over. Add it to the translations you’re using now and you’ll gain another source of ideas.

Read the rest here.

It isn’t quite being “liveblogged” but DNI is putting up posts on The Adaptive Leadership Conference.

I had the pleasure of meeting Maj. Don Vandergriff at Boyd 2007 and his brief on adaptive thinking, while targeted at reforming military education, has a facilitated “free play” nucleus that would be applicable to a wide variety of secondary and postsecondary educational settings to develop creative thinking based problem solving skills in students. Many of Vandergriff’s ideas are laid out in his book,Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War.

Hopefully, DNI will soon be providing an analysis of some of the presentations.

Via John, I noted that James Fallows has some posts citing Chuck Spinney of DNI and generally injecting 4GW and John Boyd’s OODA Loop into his political analysis of the Democratic primary battle.

Sweet! Kinda wish I’d thought of that myself.