CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE – JUNE 2025

Welcome to the summer issue of The Journal. The spring seemed to reinforce the adage that if you don’t like the weather in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region, wait five minutes and it will change. Five minutes is of course hyperbole, but we did seem to swing between extremes very often. Is it possible that the weather is reflecting the political climate?

We held two very successful events since the last issue of The Journal: the AI in T&E Forum, sponsored by the Hampton Roads Chapter in March, and the Workshop on Delivering T&E to Support the Pace of Technology Change in May in Portsmouth, United Kingdom. There are summaries of each event elsewhere in this issue of The Journal. Special thanks to Erwin Sabile and the Hampton Roads Chapter planning committee, and to Cathy O’Carroll, Andy Cunningham, and the Western Europe Chapter planning committee, for all your efforts. I was fortunate enough to attend the UK Workshop and I can’t imagine how it could have been better. There were excellent presentations and panels, good food, networking, cooperative weather, but also it was just fun. Several of us have already begun a conversation on when and where we can hold another event in the UK/Europe.

Through COVID-19 we proved that ITEA is adaptable and resilient. We did not close our doors or discontinue events, we merely changed how we presented them, all virtual rather than in person. The new federal government travel policy again challenges our creativity and resourcefulness. Our Test Instrumentation Workshop, Test Instrumentation in a Spectrum Constrained Environment, was originally scheduled for April in Las Vegas. It would have been easy to cancel it and move on, but we have held this key Workshop for 30 years and want to convene the cadre of experts in 2025. We shifted our thinking from planning a national event to catering to local interests in the area where TIW got its start, near Edwards AFB and China Lake. That community came together to find us a gratis venue, the Mojave Air & Space Port, identified commercial organizations for speakers, and volunteered to organize and chair technical tracks. The result is a slightly different format but the same delivery of technical expertise at the Test Instrumentation Forum, scheduled for September 9 – 10 in Mojave, CA.

The positive experience re-engineering the TIW compelled us to reconsider our other events for the year. The approach for the rest of this year will emphasize hosting local events in smaller venues customized for local interests. We have identified a few locations with high concentrations of government and commercial organizations and will continue to plan robust programs for the T&E community and our membership.  Our Mutli-Domain Operations Workshop is rebranding as the All Domain / Multi-Domain Operations Forum, October 7 – 8 in Huntsville, AL with the theme T&E on Real-World All Domain Programs. Two top Administration priorities – Golden Dome and the Defense of Guam – fit the theme and are locally relevant. We plan to have speakers and panels address these and related topics. The Cybersecurity Workshop, Model-Based Engineering in Cybersecurity Testing, is postponed until later in the year. Our team is working on solutions to bring this important topic to the community – keep an eye on https://itea.org for details to come.  The planning committee for the Annual Symposium is in full swing drafting an excellent program with the theme T&E for Rapid and Continuous Decision-Making. They are still accepting abstracts for this event, and we encourage you to submit yours by July 14^th. See our full calendar of events and where you can participate: https://itea.org/calendar/.

Last quarter I alerted you to a change coming to ITEA that reflects our maturity as an organization, and I asked you to hold us accountable. The first step was taken in April by the ITEA Board of Directors, when they approved a proposal to implement membership grades – Student Member, Member, Senior Member, Associate Fellow, and Fellow.  Five people were selected as Founding Fellows – Dr. Malcolm Tutty, Dr. C. David Brown, Dr. Laura Freeman, Dr. Eileen Bjorkman and I – who also constitute the Board of Fellows. This month we will post criteria for advancing your membership grade and will invite applications for those interested. Our goal is to have everything complete for the Annual Symposium in November in Destin, FL. ITEA members now have a growth path analogous to what we have in our jobs.

This is month six of our 45^th birthday party. As we continue to celebrate, we want to engage our members and the T&E community.  Tell us about your experience in ITEA, how you came to join, what you remember from the early days, and how being a member enhanced your career. Provide us with pictures from an event you attended and anecdotes from the recent or distant past. Help us preserve ITEA’s history in your own words and photos.