General Membership Meeting Highlights Work of SAIC Vice President

The chapter held a general membership meeting in June at the Gen. George Patton Museum in Fort Knox, Kentucky. AFCEA International, the chapter and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) were sponsors. The guest speaker was Sanjay Sardar, vice president for data science at SAIC. Sardar develops and implements strategy for managing business and operations in advanced analytics, big data engineering and information and knowledge management. Chapter President Bill Heidenreich kicked off the event by welcoming new chapter board members Col. Edward Prem, USA, and Richard Garner. After reviewing chapter business, Heidenreich noted that the chapter is a fun, award-winning organization with a significant purpose: to support professional development and to ensure the education of future service providers. The chapter accomplishes this by offering professional development luncheons, Young AFCEAN events about industry trends, and fundraisers for scholarships that support students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and their teachers. The chapter's vice president of awards announced that the chapter nominated 11 members for AFCEA International awards. Winners were Martin Harbolt and Luke Hill for exceptional professional career performance. The chapter also received the 2015 Model Chapter Award, as it has for several consecutive years. Nominations for local chapter awards will be accepted through November 1. Visit the chapter website to nominate colleagues for their outstanding contributions to the community. This year, the Scholarship Committee, led by Richard Roda, consisted of Maura Enright, Vickie Shackett and Chris Green. The committee worked hard to carefully review 14 applications. Of these applicants, three will be selected for awards of $1,000 each to be presented at the next general membership meeting. Following these updates, Sardar began his presentation, titled "Redefining Ingenuity: Effective Use of Metadata to Increase the Value of Data." It highlighted the rise of knowledge workers and the importance of business agility. There is now a need to access data faster and from any device, which becomes possible by using metadata and understanding data about data. New roles, rules and strategies have emerged to provide increased value to customers. Throughout his presentation, Sardar provided the audience with insights about these new roles, rules and strategies. The chapter's Executive Committee organized this event, with special thanks to Anthony Day, vice president operations, for making the venue, catering and technology arrangements.

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