The 4th Annual Government Convention on Emerging Technologies is a good place to be on March 29 through 31 this year. Technologies that will be commonplace in ten years will see their public debut at this conference.

It is designed for managers and government officials who are way up on the food chain at the major protective agencies. For example, all the military services, all of the intelligence community, all of the Homeland Security component agencies, and all of the federal law enforcement agencies will be in attendance.

It has only been a few months since the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Act was signed into law in December of 2004 and the flow of information through the various systems is undergoing comprehensive change that will affect us all.

Information interoperability will be a part of the conference. They describe the future in words such as: "horizontal integration, content management tools, tagging on the fly, data storage technologies, smart search technologies, analytic discovery tools, and sophisticated data visualization tools."

One item that really interested me was the session on "Interoperability in International Crisis." Using the recent tsunami as their starting point, it will be interesting to see what capabilities are being developed for early warning systems for such monumental disasters.

You can give the outline for the conference the once over at http://www.ncsi.com/govcon05/index.shtml. If you have the credentials and enough funding to attend, we welcome your first hand report after the conference. If there are other similar conferences that you recommend, there is a place to comment below and make your recommendation.