About

Shownotes (0:55) Introduction -Colonel Jennifer JJ snow is the Chief Technology Officer at the United States Air Force. AFWERX is a United States Air Force program with the goal of fostering a culture of innovation within the service. It is intended to engage inter and extra service innovators and entrepreneurs in the operations of the United States Air Force.Jennifer serves as the government representative for technology outreach, and engagement on behalf of the command and 756 interagency action officers spanning 40 different government agencies. Snow has over 23 years of experience of successful federal civil, civilian and military leadership and management experience.She's a top innovative and focused individual recognized for the ability to consistently overcome obstacles in the defense and intelligence community. Jennifer's background is in counter prolexic approach can pronounce that counter proliferation. And that counterterrorism operations, which includes tours and deployments with Air Force, Special Operations Command special tactics, Joint Special Operations Command, the 17th training wing National Security Agency, which is known as NSA generally, junior officer crypto cryptologic, career programme, serving seventh intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. JJ’s work has been presented to the members of the National Security Council and the White House and key senior leaders across the department Department of Defence, intelligence community, and interagency to inform and highlight emerging risks and opportunities in involving technology, and technology influence environments. In our current role at AFWERX.JJ serves as the military representative for technology outreach and engagement, bridging the gap between government and various technology communities to improve collaboration and communications, foster a culture of innovation, identify smart solutions to wicked problems, and guide the development of future technologies to benefit the US Air Force Department of Defence, interagency and allied partners. JJ truly believes that anyone can be an innovator no matter their age or background. According to her, the best innovation stories exude passion, vision, and cross-cutting impact. The interview-(4:03)1. Can you tell us about your journey? I mean, you started off as a science fiction writer, you were doing so many things and now you're pushing the boundaries of technology for the United States Air Force and innovating. All these amazing things. So please help us get to know you better.(4:28) I actually started off with Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildland firefighter and a park ranger. Five years and my love of technology came through there. I was using radio telemetry to track endangered squirrel populations on the Delmarva Peninsula, sturgeons, up and down the Chesapeake Bay to study their migration. So a lot of the technologies that I started to play around with started in the Fish and Wildlife Service, and then I joined the Air Force.They were a part of the plan to pay for a master's degree and actually go back to the FBI, which is a completely different story. But doing that, I decided that, hey, I really love this and I want to stay on board as an intelligence officer where I'm looking at different types of technologies. What are the risks that they pose? What are some of the opportunities that they bring? And then how do we bring that together, you know, on behalf of national security, and then that led to my current job, which I've been doing for the last six years as an innovation officer.Every job I'll tell you has been great. By far this is my favorite line of work, I get to work with kinds of amazing people. I learned something new every single day and, and I just was fantastic. I am just so pleased with my experience in the Air Force and all of the wonderful opportunities I've had.(6:10)2. Tell us how your role is different because I know you work at a different pace than the rest of the Air Force. So can you shed a little bit of light on that?(6:59) I'm part of the challenge. And this was under former secretary of defense Ash Carter, is the fact that our acquisition cycles were moving slowly. And he really wanted to foster an environment that enabled agile acquisitions, so that when we had military personnel coming in with a need, we could respond much faster. And that was born, the works models, di UX, navel x, and several other innovation hubs. These are fantastic. So when I first came out, I was skeptical because everybody knows how slow the government moves in acquisition. There's a lot of policy behind that regulation behind that, that we're looking at how can we tweak this? How can we change it? What do we need to keep? And what do we need to improve upon or dispose of and make better like break it to make it work? Models, really, were one of the foundational models to help do that. It's a public space.It's a digital and physical space, where all kinds of bright minds can come together with government and private sector, academia, hackers, and makers and come around these really wicked problems, and bring in unique technologies in ways that we never imagined how to solve those problems together. And then that brings that forward in a way that benefits the individual innovator and the small business. But it's also benefiting the government and helping us to move faster. And so what you saw is a number of different interesting acquisition mechanisms that came into play that then allowed us to move much faster.For example, we have the zippers and the sitters that are brought into play here that Small Business Innovation Research and the science tech transfer research that are brought into play with the Air Force. This allows us to bring in a small company and see if the tech that they have is of interest to an Airforce partner, if it is, they've got $50,000 to start, and they can talk to all of our liaisons if it is that partner does a letter of interest. And then that moves them on to a phase to the partners a major command, they can choose to match funding with AF works. So they can put funding in and we'll match that. And sometimes we'll have a private sector partner that comes in that has an interest in that area, too. They will also do matching. And so you've got a number of exciting options there. In-house, we use Spark, which is for our airmen to come forward with great ideas. When they encounter a challenge in the field, they can bring that forward and say, Look, this is a problem. And it touches all of these areas in the Air Force. And others can upvote that and say yes, this is a problem for us, too. We'll partner them with the right technology, and the right experts to develop that out rapidly iterate with them in the room. And then they tell us this is perfect, we need to tweak it like this, make this change. And then we're able to roll it out very quickly, a lot of that is done open source, in many cases will team up with one or more small companies.That can move very, very quickly under a year, sometimes under six months, sometimes under three months, if it's something all over and we're able to get that going quickly. Um, for a lot of our SBR grants and our STARs, you're able to put in for those and I think we had Oh, close to 4000 this last time, our team will review those and then go ahead and send a letter out and we try to turn those in about 45 days well heard of before, it would take you 18 to 36 months and the larger contracts will still take that time period. But now we're also establishing really unique transition mechanisms. So for the first time, instead of waiting, you know and Okay, we've got our first 50k and now we've got our second round of funding and a customer that's working with us and now we got our third round. Oh gosh, we don't have a contract yet. What happens is I'm figuring out those smartpass. So, one of them, we're teaming up with the Naval Postgraduate School because they have all of the services there and a bunch of our interagency partners. And in this, we're leveraging off of the joint interagency tech bridge that they have bringing everybody together and allowing our students that are there for 1824 months, sometimes 36 months to come in with a problem that they've had on their last assignment. They can work as a team or individually and say, I've got this challenge, and then reach out to the right companies or reach out afterward and say, Look, I need help on this, that becomes their thesis or Capstone. Hmm, 8 months or 36 months, when they graduate, they've now worked with that company to evolve a solution that also counted as our capstone or thesis work. And that gives a clear transition pathway because many of them go on to their next command, bring that technology with them, and deploy it into the field for the first time.(11:49)3. How do you prioritize evaluating all these proposals or technologies or solutions that you're working on?(12:39) What we decided to do was open it up. So our interagency partners who are looking for some of the same solutions, were there to help us vet it, but we broke it down. So we can have one person review as few as 12 technologies, rank them, and then push it back to the overall group. And we can do it by segment. A specific focus area, or we can do it by an interagency focus area. And then they can match it against what the airforce is doing. In this case, we have all of these interagency partners, sister service partners, and the Air Force team, they're actually evaluating this with help. What that does is it creates this really cool collaborative environment where other people, other teams that may also need the same technology can now look at it, they don't have to duplicate the effort of reaching out to say, hey, we've got all of these needs, they can see what we have. And if it works for them, then we can team up on that knife. If we save time, everybody wins.(13:44)4. How do you make sure that information is disseminated and, and it's organized in a way that is digestible? And I can say, Okay, yeah, this one looks good. For me. This one doesn't look good to me. Like how does that happen?(14:11) There are several different databases that we're working with. One of the longest-running and I would say the legacy database is a database called Vulcan is a joint database that actually creates a tech Bazaar if you will, where companies can come online and set up their own free tech card. And in case they can put all of their information, their contact information, they can do an overview, they can share a white paper or a slide deck. And then at the same time, government customers can come in and view a series of texts. So if, for example, say I was traveling to San Francisco, and I wanted to look at all of the artificial intelligence companies that were in that specific area, because I want to set my trip up around me. Of course, this database allows me to go in, I can click on San Francisco, and then I can sort for artificial intelligence companies, and it will pull up everybody that has filed a card in that database and the companies to do this. And then I can click on it, and I see their point of contact, I see where they're located.I can set up my time around the city to meet with all of them and go around and, you know, tell them, Hey, this is what I'm looking for specifically, and come back home with a fantastic list of capabilities. What we started doing before the pandemic, and we started doing this virtually after the pandemic was we actually have a joint technology scouting team. So the army was involved. The Department of Homeland Security got involved. The Air Force, of course, was involved in Special Operations. So we had all of these different team members coming in bringing their requirements. We'd sit in a room and we'd say People who were coming out to San Francisco or, you know, we're coming to Austin, they would meet with us. And we would each go around the room and say who we were and the organization that we represented and what some of the funding opportunities were, they got 10 minutes to run us through a pitch and then 10 minutes to answer any questions. If we were interested, we exchanged cards, and then we followed up with them. Now we've switched everything digitally. So we tech conferences, Joy tech conferences, with the folks out in Washington state, the Northwest defense conference, folks. And then we've done a bunch of meetings, ridgeline partners were the last one in New York City. They set up a bunch of companies for us to look at. It makes it really easy for you to get to know people and understand their technology quickly. the right resources that matter to you, not all of the tech will meet all of the requirements for the people in the room, what everybody comes away with a win. And after each one of these trips, we do a full report. And that's shared out across the defense department, our interagency partners with all the contact information and a brief summary on each company.So anybody can follow up with them. And we also encourage them to go back to Vulcan and share their data. And then in that space, the government can actually put a call for specific technologies, or can actually post an upcoming event, all they have to do is drop their company card in their virtual card, and then they're registered and the service can reach out or the interagency partner can reach out to Hey, yes, we want to include you in this.(17:37)5. So it sounds almost like you're removing a lot of barriers to work with the government and inviting pretty much everyone who can sort of contributing?(18:58) One of the biggest pieces that we wanted to do was find a friendly front door for small businesses and individual innovators to find their way in a lot of cases, you have large companies and they overshadow the little guys. Yeah, try to create equitable environments. So I know when I was at softworks, one of the conferences or conventions we held was a cybersecurity convention. We invited, I think, to different companies to get a table and two chairs. So it didn't matter if you were one of the very big companies, a company just getting started. The little guys that were coming in thought it was hilarious, they were like, this is great. We're all on equal footing. Now. You know, the big companies actually, like this is actually cool, we didn't have to bring all of this stuff to set it up. It was more personal, more engaging. Everybody had a really good time, we got some great feedback. But a lot of the changes we're making come from the feedback that we've been given over time, and we're trying to listen to our customers on all sides and adapt and improve.(19:53)6. Can you tell us a little bit about what are some of your favorite innovations that came out of this? (19:58) One we recently had a discussion with is a company that is doing space-based refueling a satellite. So this is a gas station in space. Super, super excited about that, because you all have joint satellites up there. stead of having a satellite degrade because you no longer have propellant. And this would allow us to fuel up our satellites. We are actually about how we could leverage things like small-scale robotics that could add repairs on the satellites to keep them up in the air longer and give them a longer life. So this was really exciting for us to see the company actually resupply the International Space Station with water. They're moving forward very quickly. Another company I just talked to you about this week. They have a concept into a prototype for reusable launch containers. These would actually launch with a regular rocket going to space and you could put an experiment onboard or test equipment, or resupply. And here's where it gets really exciting. They're reusable up to five times. You want to put them in outer space and there's a crisis that happens. There's a tsunami that happens someplace. If the military deploys to that location, they can actually reach out and hit their phone and say I want a resupply cargo crate to land within 50 yards of this location, and they hit it and 30 minutes later it comes down to their location. My goodness, right? Isn't that cool? Things that we're seeing. And it's so exciting because people are doing this really innovative collaborative stuff. And it feels like this year in particular, it's really, really picked up people are being really thoughtful about interesting combinations of technology and what comes next.  It sounds like people are giving some competition to Elon Musk here.They're going to leverage off of what he's built and push up. And so and that's the other exciting thing, you see all these incredible space platforms moving forward. And then people are figuring out well, that platform exists when it didn't before. So now I can do X, Y, and Z. They're combining new technologies and interesting ways around that, you know, we were talking about additive manufacturing, 3d printing, of course. And so there's a lot of discussion about new materials, lighter materials to reduce the launch loads, cereals that are biodegradable materials that are, you know, responsive to different stimuli. So sunlight or water, just really fantastic capabilities that we have thought of before, but people are paying tech in interesting ways. And that's generating these brilliant new ideas.I mean, I've spent some time in, in 3d printing, and, you know, coming up with new materials, and, and this was a totally new world for me. And yeah, I mean, just understanding how far we can stretch the technology is mind-blowing, because some of the things were not even possible, you know. So they’re talking about, okay, now we can 3d print metamaterials that create self-assembling, like microstructures, or nanostructures that heat or sunlight or water. And so they're flat, and then you put them in water, and they form this like solid, or they start to float. It's kind of like the movie Batman, where you know, his cape is flat, and then he gets it with an electric charge. And it turns out that he can fly that happening, but with 3d printing now.(24:06)7. You also wrote science fiction novels, and you're a good, great storyteller. And so tell us a little bit about that. How did you develop that skill over time and or what got you interested in writing stories and telling stories?(24:20) I've always been a reader since I was a kid. I love science. I love science fiction, science fact, I'd love a good mystery. And so as a reader, it's almost natural that you also become a writer and sort of writing short stories and poetry. And that turned into scientific articles. And then a couple of books, which belong to a trilogy that I finished in my family. Where the last book was big was a cliffhanger that the second book was on the finger and there's no third book yet. They're like, so um, yeah, I hope to get back to that one day, I don't know if that series will end. Storytelling is all about relating and experiencing in a meaningful way to others. And in the best storytellers that I've met, they're able to convey information in such a way that there's a lesson there, and I'm able to retain that lesson, learn from it. And it becomes part of me, right? I'm doing a good job as a storyteller, and I'm talking about innovation. When I walk into a room, my first one or two sentences have to get the audience excited. It has to get them engaged. And it has to tell them why they care, especially with Metairie, because our senior leaders are very busy people. There are men and women who do not have a lot of time. And so you've got to get to the bottom line fast. And that lets them know, Hey, is this a meeting I want to sift through? Or is there something I can be catching up on? And somebody else is going to follow up on this? It's really important to let them know right up front, here's why you care about this. Yeah, telling a compelling story that lets them know, is why this technology is important. Here's how it solves your problem. That's the biggest part.I love stories because I feel like it brings us closer together as inter lessons. And then it also helps us to share information but in a meaningful, meaningful way. If I throw a bunch of facts and figures up on a board or whiteboard, people are gonna be bored, they're yawning, they don't get it. But if I tie that together, now they're going to get excited about it. Now they're going to enjoy it, and they're going to engage with me more and they're more willing to ask questions or feedback.(27:10)8. You are an expert network and everything. So can you tell us how this skill of yours helps you in your career? (27:16) Most of the work I'm doing now innovation is core to everything and telling a story that gets people involved makes them part of what's happening, a big part of what I try to do, especially in and around the different events, because we'll bring in a lot of different people from different walks of life, all ages, sometimes you have an age of 13 to 84 in the room, whoa. And so they'll come in, because there's a problem that they want to solve, and they want to understand more about it. They want to contribute and give back and they want to have fun in the process. But they want it to be meaningful.You have to understand how each of them brings a different type of expertise. And, for me, a lot of this ties into mentorship. And as you know, I'm part of the mentor project, which is all-volunteer private nonprofit, right now around mentoring. This is also, you know, the core of the heart of what you do as a mentor. It's including people and making them feel like they're also part of the story. when you bring them in, and they understand, well, this is the problem. And then you open that aperture, and you let them know that hey, this is a space where anything's possible. Let's brainstorm, let's throw out all the crazy ideas we possibly can. And then you find out that the idea initially thought we're crazy. We're not so crazy. After all, cool things come out of that. We had a process where we were looking at how a special operator that works with a dog jumps out at a high altitude, while the dog needs to be on an oxygen mask, especially on an oxygen mask. The dog has to be oxygenated before that without stressing the dog out. Yeah, we had a very young teenage girl that had actually fit the gun around her neighborhood and measured all of the muzzles on the difference. And she had new measurements, and it was wonderful. And then we had an older gentleman that came in and was thinking about, you know, we don't want the dog to be stressed out, we want him or her to be comfortable. It was a super cool conversation, what came out of it was a square kennel size bag that has a top and the dog would be put in there as a plane was taking off that had oxygen flowing to the and it's got some gloves that you reach into the box. And right before they're getting ready to jump out of the plane, the special operator would reach in and put a little oxygen mask on the dog and unzip the top, lift the dog out, strap the dog to his chest and jump out the back of the airplane. Well, it worked beautifully. And he but you know that wouldn't have happened without all of these diverse perspectives.(29:58)9. what do you think like, you know, obviously, I don't expect you to reveal any secret that you may know. But do you think aliens exist or not? Like, you know, recently there has been a lot of talk about our Mamula which is the object that flew by? Yes, yes. And they were talking about a lot of debate about you know, you know, it's like, artificial or natural. What are your views about it?(30:50) It's an interesting challenge, right? Because the way it came into our solar system, and the way it left was very irregular. Physics didn't quite make sense. So, um, I love the debate that's happening around it. I think it's really important. I hear people saying, Oh, it's just, you know, an asteroid that has this visual shape. I hear. There's another gentleman that says it's actually a spaceship. I don't know that either of those is correct, and maybe someplace in between. I'm leaning more towards that it's an unusually shaped asteroid at this point in time. But I've got to tell you, it would be crazy to not think that there isn't life on other planets and that there are other life forms that are higher intelligence.I mean, we're discovering today here on Earth, that you know, you've got, I think they had what was it cephalopods, cuttlefish that are able to do delay. gratification and experiment he would do with a child with Mars. Yeah, wow. I had no idea at Burning all the time. So, you know, my personal opinion is I think that the universe is vast. And we have a lot of exploring to do. And I'm excited to see that happen. And yeah, I'd be really surprised if we don't encounter other life out there.(33:33)10. I think maybe five years because the James Webb telescope is coming. When is it like next year or next year? (33:37) I think it's next year, I have to go back. And look, I think it's next year. So much getting launched right now. Yeah, many cool things are happening. It's not just NASA or the European Space Agency. But you now see all of these private insurance companies that are coming in and doing amazing things. I mean, Musk, Jeff Bezos.These other small companies that are popping up all over are really surprising me and saying, Hey, we're doing this, we're doing that. I talked to a company a few months back, they actually are launching low Earth orbit satellites out of the back of a pickup truck. Now, though, in a few weeks, because they're very low in orbit, but you can use them for, you know, monitoring of, like different areas for agricultural crops, you could use them for low-level communications during a disaster.So it's that kind of mindset that's helping us to really probe our planet. But that will also be useful on other planets, like the first helicopter, the drone that's on Mars, I can't wait to see that thing fly and see what yeah, that's so cool. I think of all the areas we can cover now, because we have a flight-capable copter.(34:49)11. So what is your view is going to sort of will be the long term impact of what we are going through economically help, you know, public health-wise, and also from the perspective of like, adoption of science and how it's going to impact how we educate our children because I think a lot of things are going to change, in my opinion, I just want to hear what you think.(35:47) So this has been so interesting last year. And I say that from the perspective of, you know, encompassing the idea that it was an extremely tragic year from the pandemic perspective, but it was extremely triumphant here, from the perspective of people finding their humanity coming together, even though we were remote to make a positive difference for others.So many incredible advances this year in various technology areas, ones that I didn't expect, and some that really surprised me. Because people have been, you know, unencumbered by a lot of other distractions. we've kind of been put in this, this timeout zone, it's really helped us to focus and create and be creative. But also, as we're working remotely, I feel like, at least in my experience, this last year, my network has grown tremendously. I'm people around the world with amazing ideas. we're teaming up on different problems. They've got some great texts to share that we're bringing here to the stage. And the impacts that I'm seeing are, instead of just developing a technology for a country, it's a technology for a region, it's a technology for the world. And people are focused more on social good. And the impact that can come from uplifting and elevating so many others in power, I'm so many others. So I don't I don't think we're going to be going back to business. As usual, I see a lot of companies that I've spoken to that are going to go to a hybrid structure, hmm, fast, a lot of office space. And you see, companies like we work that are going to really flexible housing and office models, where you now have like a swipe card, right, and you go, you swipe your card, and it's like going to the gym, and you're able to go and as you travel, you have a place to stay no matter where you are, if companies find that attractive and appealing, because their teams are able to work from home, it's saving time.In many cases, people are happier. And if they get to go into the office a couple of times a week, they've got that flexibility where they can see people, and then they can still do stuff around the house when it's convenient for them. things and so it's a really interesting combination. I know, for me, I've been really, really productive. And then at the same time, I also miss that face-to-face interaction and it's really important when you're establishing those new relationships. So I think it will be a hybrid model, I don't think we're going to go 100% remote because humans like to be around other humans.Of course, I think that's an interesting and interesting development that will help us globally as far as climate goes, because it's going to cut down on traffic and but it also may, it also may result in how we restructure the way cities are designed and the way we use buildings in the future. I think we're gonna see some interesting changes there, and especially around green tech. Yeah. So I think there are some really exciting changes coming for healthcare two. We were talking about telehealth for years. It took a pandemic to actually get us there to where people are using telehealth and finding it more pleasant than waiting for a couple of hours in a waiting room. They can be at home getting stuff done that, you know, if their child is sick, they now are looking at, you know, a thermometer or a biometric device that can actually scan your child and give feedback biofeedback to the doctor. And if it's a fever, if it's a toothache, if it's an earache, you know, there are a lot of different things that are being examined right now, as far as how can we make this beneficial in a remote fashion? And they're doing it? And then how can we make this accessible, the accessibility part really excites me because there's a large portion of the globe that does not have access to health care, yeah, we're able to do this in a meaningful way. And we're able to provide that in a format that works across a variety of infrastructures robust to austere, now we've got something new we can use people even when they're remote, and get them the basics that they need. (41:58)12. Can you tell us how people can reach out to you and connect with you if they want to?(42:05) Yes, the best way to find me is to go to JJ snow on LinkedIn. And if you find me there, just go ahead and click and drop me a message and say, Hey, I heard you on a monogamous podcast, or just tell me Hey, I'm interested in app works. And I'll go ahead and connect with you and see how we can help.RESOURCESLinkedin:linkedin.com/in/jjsnowツCONNECT WITH ME  ツ Connect with me on different social platforms too:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manujaggarwal/   • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manujagro/  • Website: https://manujaggarwal.com/   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.