Inspired by the Hack-A-Thons of Silicon Valley, the Prod-A-Thon is a new competition designed to challenge the way Airmen analyze field intelligence.
On July 27, 2017, teams of competing Airmen at Beale Air Force Base were given two hours to make whatever intelligence product they could after a 30-minute period of viewing live footage, said Staff Sgt. Ryan, 9th Intelligence Squadron imagery mission supervisor. Their goal was to provide the greatest amount of data in the time allowed.
The winning team for this inaugural Prod-A-Thon consisted of geospatial imagery analysts from the 9th Intelligence Squadron; Senior Airman Alex, Senior Airman Dennis, Senior Airman Stephen and Airman 1st Class Samantha.
The Airmen were prepared for the challenge of producing data, but the time constraint made it more competitive.
“The competing Airmen have two hours to tell the best Intel story possible,” said Master Sgt. Michael, 9th IS mission operations chief.
Ryan said the aim of the competition was to get Airmen thinking critically about the products they create and shift from a factory mindset of rigidly following a set checklist to more of a lab mindset of actively considering what product to create.
“These time conditions were designed to simulate the constraints in which they must perform their job,” Ryan said.
“Innovation has become our unofficial fourth core value of the Air Force,” he said. “We have to adapt and think creatively to stay relevant.”
The Prod-A-Thon was also designed to break the template of the strict adherence to product specifications and empower Airmen by encouraging them to pause and think about how they want to arrange the intelligence they gathered in a way that allows them to win the competition, Ryan said.
“It gets them thinking about intelligence value instead of items on a checklist,” he said.
In order to further innovate the intelligence production process, Airmen from other intelligence branches who are unfamiliar with the exact specifications of the live footage mission were brought into the competition to provide a fresh perspective, Michael said.
This also served to encourage unity within the squadron and instill a ‘one sight, one fight’ mindset, he said.
Ryan said there are plans to introduce the Prod-A-Thon across the 480th ISR Wing’s geographically separated locations to encourage innovation among specified fields of intelligence production. The goal is to make the Prod-A-Thon a regularly occurring competition so Airmen can further apply their creativity to the mission, he said.
“Innovation is going to come first and foremost from the Airmen on the ground floor,” said Michael. “We want to give them the opportunity to show us that creativity, and have some fun in the process.”
| Date Taken: |
08.17.2017 |
| Date Posted: |
02.07.2019 12:28 |
| Story ID: |
309864 |
| Location: |
BEALE AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: |
54 |
| Downloads: |
0 |
PUBLIC DOMAIN
This work, Competition Empowers Intelligence Airmen, by SSgt Douglas Lorance, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
