Only slightly more than 30 days into a new year, and much has already been said about 2010. Some pundits have heralded the year as a clean slate from a tough 2009, while others have been less optimistic, predicting more of the same for the next 365 days.

At the macro level, the U.S. economy is still very much in the midst of recovery. The president’s recently released budget indeed presents challenges for many, but national security spending continues to be supported. The Quadrennial Defense Review will continue to be scrutinized, but its commitment to ISR sensors and platforms is unambiguous. Emergent lessons-learned from the attempted Christmas Day attack call for increased investment in analysts and tools to help the “connect the dots.” The National Reconnaissance Office will soon release documents that will be the foundation for the future of our classified overhead reconnaissance.

At a more tactical level, most were surprised in January by the candor in the assessment of the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Major General Mike Flynn, who released a very blunt report titled “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan.” In the 20-plus-page document, Flynn argues that the intelligence community has not adapted to the demands of intelligence support to counterinsurgency operations. His controversial observations have provided the spark for productive discussions, both formal and informal, around our community.

So I see 2010 as filled with opportunity, and I hope our members and the GEOINT community do as well. We now have the ability—arguably the mandate—to use the current state of affairs as a catalyst for action: action that ultimately will help end users, decision makers and warfighters be more effective and efficient.

USGIF has dedicated this year to the idea of a new era of geospatial intelligence, something we are calling GEOINT 3.0. By providing more of the programs the GEOINT community wants and promoting the tradecraft in the areas we need to be, we plan to lead the GEOINT community to some of these next-generation opportunities.

First up, we are partnering with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to offer the International Commercial Remote Sensing Symposium (ICRSS), held March 3-5 in Washington, D.C. We will offer a phenomenal array of speakers at an event that will be packed with valuable content on this truly important topic. Government and industry leaders from around the globe will converge to discuss the current state of the community, the future of remote sensing, and other important issues such as resolution limits.

Our members’ overwhelming response was that the agenda, which includes a panel of industry CEOs, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, Gil Klinger of the Pentagon’s Space and Intelligence Office, and NGA’s Director of Commercial Imagery Data Karyn Hayes-Ryan, was great. However, our members expressed concern about the registration cost, which they felt was challenging in this economy. In response, we’ve lowered the registration prices across the board, and hope that this will enable more people to join us at this event and to foster discussion and learning about the explosion in international remote sensing.

In May, we are again excited to offer a week-long series of events serving the GEOINT community. We will partner with NGA to reprise the annual Tech Days, which will have both classified and unclassified exhibits and discussions. We will again help the Army Geospatial Center, the Army G2 and NGA produce the Army Geospatial and Imagery Conference.

Also, that week will hold the USGIF Invitational Golf Tournament, the highly regarded networking event with the Friends of ISR following the unclassified portion of Tech Days, and, of course, the black-tie GEOGala that concludes the week. We plan to bolster the learning and education opportunities throughout the week with offerings such as our GEOINT 101 course, a USGIF Workshop on motion video, and more.

The GEOINT Symposium returns to Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 1-4, and the USGIF Planning Committee is already identifying keynote speakers, panel discussions, and breakout session topics. The USGIF staff has been working diligently with the city of Nashville and the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, and we are very excited to begin to unveil the enhanced experience we will be able to provide our attendees for GEOINT 2010.

In between these “major” USGIF events, please be sure to stay connected with us, especially through our new and improved Website at usgif.org, and bring us any ideas that you may have for ways that we can better serve the GEOINT community. Through our GEOINTeraction Tuesday networking events, our Young Professionals Group, Chairman’s Dinners, the USGIF Workshop Series, awards and scholarships, and the USGIF Accreditation and Certificate Program, there are plenty of ways for you to volunteer and make a difference for the community.

I look forward to seeing you soon in 2010, a great year of opportunity, and a great year to explore our 3.0 future.