AFCEA TechNet Augusta 2022 kicked off this week. Soldiers, scientists, educators and experts swarmed the Marriott Convention Center downtown, and the nearby Hull McKnight building, for the yearly tech conference coordinated by AFCEA International.
“Events such as AFCEA’s TechNet Augusta convenes military and industry experts to pursue ‘great’ cybersecurity solutions,” said Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Fredenburgh, executive vice president for Defense and National Security at AFCEA.
The conference’s charter, fostering collaboration and networking between government, military and business, was highlighted in its opening talks Tuesday morning. The theme of this year’s conference is “designing and deploying a unified network.”
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Mayor Hardie Davis Jr., in his opening remarks, touted the connection between that theme and cities in general—calling them “networks” of “human capital” and “services, resources and people”—and Augusta in particular.
“It’s how we put them together that allows us to create opportunity to live to learn to work and to raise our families, but also to allow us to make decisions where people want to be a part of,” Davis said.
Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, Commanding General of U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon, further stressed and elaborated upon the unified network premise and its implications for the armed forces.
“Those are action verbs,” said Stanton, noting the absence of words like “talking about” or “discussing.” He mentioned Lt. Gen. John Morrison, the U.S. Army’s deputy chief of staff for cyber, providing guidance on what a unified network would mean for the military, and Lt. Gen. James Rainey writing it in an execution order.
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“Not a stand around and wait order, but an exort, to start implementing the design and the deployment of the unified network,” Stanton said. “It’s not the technology that we’ll need two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. It’s the technology we need today. There’s no waiting. We have to take our state-of-the-art capabilities, get them into the hands of the warfighter so that we can solve challenging problems and challenging missions.”
Rachel Arant Morris, resident partner coordinator with the Georgia Cyber Center at Augusta University, hosted a table at the expo on to invite and inform convention registrants about the graduate and undergraduate programs offered at AU’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, including project management professional certifications.
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While interested parties come from a wide variety of backgrounds, Morris says, there are also plenty of opportunities, such as workforce training, available from the Cyber Center with AU or Augusta Technical College active servicemembers, military spouses and veterans.
“They have more positions than they have people qualified to fill them,” said Morris about employers in the cyber fields, which leads many in the military to seek training or further education.
The AFCEA TechNet Augusta conferences continues through Thursday, August 18 at the Marriott Convention Center.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
