Video Coverage of Connections UK

By: Brant

CONNECTIONS 2013 Conference on Professional Wargaming

CONNECTIONS 2013 Conference on Professional Wargaming
The Connections 2013 conference will be held 22-25 July in Dayton Ohio, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Connections is the only national event dedicated specifically to professional military wargaming. Organized and chaired since its beginning in 1993 by (now retired) Air Force COL Matt Caffrey, the annual Connections conference has worked to advance the art, science and application of serious wargaming by bringing together all elements of the field (military, commercial and academic) so participants can exchange information on achievements, best practices and needs.
The theme for 2013 is: "Enhancing Wargaming Support to Budget Decisions." Given the current and future uncertainty over US Department of Defense budgets, this is a timely theme indeed.

Another valuable element of Connections is the chance to meet leaders from across the spectrum of wargaming. Past attendees and speakers have included Larry Bond, James F. Dunnigan, Joe Miranda, Al Nofi, Peter Perla, John Prados and many more.
Keynote speakers for this year are:
- COL Chris Froehlich, Chief Strategic Planning Division, Air Force Material Command
- Dr. Peter Perla, author of The Art of Wargaming, Lead, Wargaming, Centre for Naval Analysis
- Dr. Thomas Allen, Deputy Director for Studies and Analysis, Joint Staff

Connections is open to all contributors to the field of professional wargaming: military, government, defense contractor, academic, and recreational. It is an unclassified event. Many of the attendees are recreational wargamers in their spare time, but the emphasis of the conference is on discussion of activity and issues in professional wargaming, from the military, commercial and academic perspectives.

See the conference website and agenda at http://connections-wargaming.com/
Contact Matt Caffrey at matthewbcaffreyjr - at - gmail.com for further information.
Thanks for your interest,
Brian Train

By: Brant

Liveblogging the Special CASL Strategic Wargaming Roundtable featuring Dr Philip Sabin

There's a special CASL roundtable going on today, as Dr Philip Sabin, author of the books Simulating War and Lost Battles, is giving a talk.
(edit the next day: here are the slides, so you can see the charts/diagrams below for yourself)

Your liveblog follows...

The Continuing Merits of Manual Wargaming

Talking primarily about tabletop wargaming... contrasting with Roger D Smith's book Military Simulation & Serious Games, that treats manual wargaming as "ancient history"

Key topics we're covering today
- What are wargames?
- What use are wargames?
- Why manual wargames?
- Accuracy vs simplicity
- Fog of war
- Luck of the dice


More after the jump!

Liveblogging the CASL Strategic Wargaming Roundtable

The crowd is assembling at the Center for Applied Strategic Learning as we're getting ready for tonight's festivities. Mike Markowitz and Joe Saur are tonight's speakers.

Stay tuned for the liveblog...
(Rex, wish you were here!)

Incidentally, you can also check into other presentations/events from CASL at this archive site.

---

Tim's throwing us off by talking from the back of the room instead of up front.
He's doing it b/c they're streaming the content live, which means he's got to in front of a mic.

Brief infomercial for MMOWGLI, and looking for some interested parties to help with the testing on a new project from that team.

---

First presentation is starting, with Mike Markowitz talking about Wargaming Irregular Conflict.
Discussing work with TRAC (TRADOC Analysis Center), building a tabletop wargame for dealing with insurgency at the tactical level. TRADOC asked CNA to design a game for battalion/brigade level ops, such that the units being maneuvered were companies/platoons.
Original iteration was a province in Iraq, later adjusted scenario to Helmand Province.

Operational context for a complex multi-player tactical wargame, played on a computer network.
OWA - Operational Wraparound.
Represent operations of 3 BN-level entities to address the question of "what's going on next door?"
Feeding actions of players into Cultural Geography and Nexus Network Learner models
Simulation of C2 in flow of brigade "assets" into a particular BN level
Integrate the model results
--- Cultural Geography model outputs affect infrastructure "income" and intelligence
--- Nexus Network Learner adjudicated KLEs and other interactions

What makes war "irregular"?

Regular	Irregular
state vs state	insurgency & resistance
fire & maneuver	Presence
capture territory	Control population
decisive campaigns	protracted conflict
clear distinction of combatants	"unlawful" combatants
combined arms & joint operations	light infantry and policing
attrition-based models	attitude and behavior models

more after the jump!

Battle Lab: Your First Convention

Continuing our series of articles being reprinted from elsewhere, here's one that originally appeared in the now-sadly-defunct Scrye, talking about what to expect out of your first game convention.

Your first convention

Planning
Conventions can be a great way to get your game in front of your audience. The high concentration of gamers and the foot traffic in the exhibit hall make for a target-rich environment for a new company. If you're looking to spread the word about yourself, setting up shop at a convention is a great way to do it.
The first question you really need to ask is “Why are we going to the convention?” Are you focusing on selling product? Building some buzz around your company? Trying to meet people and show off your game for another company to pick you up? If you don’t go into the show with a solid definition of success, you won’t have much of a measuring stick to gauge your overall investment in time and effort.
One of your next decisions needs to be "which convention?" Staying close to home, or with a friend, can cut down the overall cost. If a local convention is not an option, then try to shoot for a convention whose major events are closest to your core products. GenCon is a heavy RPG show; Origins is a role-playing and board-gaming mix, with some card events for good measure. There are many smaller, local cons as well, and they are often willing to offer booth space to a company at a low rate.
Get your deposits in as soon as possible. The difference in cost can be dramatic. As an example, at Origins 2006, a booth cost $555 if paid by January 10, but went up to $671 if paid at the end of March. For a new company, the $120 difference might make or break your first show.
Finally, you need to decide on your booth crew. Drafting a friend is a cheap way to man your booth. But you need to make sure that folks working your booth are as well-versed in your product as you are. Remember, the customer doesn’t know that your buddy is just here for the free convention; the customer sees a representative of your company behind the table.


much more after the jump!

Strategic Gaming Roundtable, NDU 1/18

Stay tuned for the liveblog of today's NDU strategic wargaming roundtable.

Looks like we're starting now, after some tech connection issues.
Covering some admin bits:
- next roundtable will be Monday 19 March.
- Connections in late July

First presentation will be Bill Simpson from MCWL: Multi-Sided Gaming or Getting a Handle on Chaos

It grew out of a project on MAGTF Strategic Communication.
Game purpose: "to understand and apply the USMC Strategic Communication Concept across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war."

How to coordinate non/kinetic actions along the same message through the staff processes?
"How do you properly replicate the myriad interactions, assess the impacts, and adjudicate the outcomes?"
Had to be very simple b/c while there was time to train adjudicators/staff, there was not time to train the players.
Built off of Marine Corps Planning Process CoA wargaming paradigm.
Worked at multiple MAGTF levels: MEU, MEB, MEF

Process flow was a 17-step slide, and I'm not going to try to capture it all here. If I can snag it later, I will.

One of the first adjudications was situational awareness, and they let the players sort out (using their professional military judgment) who knew what at any given point in time. If the players couldn't agree, then the umpires stepped in to adjudicate. Kept the process flowing...


Follow the jump for the "more" - trying to get the length of this post on the main page under control

After Turkey Day Game Fest - Columbus, OH

Looking for something to do on Black Friday besides dodge idiots at Best Buy? If you're near Columbus, make sure you check out the After Turkey Day Game Fest sponsored by CABS.

November 25th - 26th, 2011
Doors to open at 6am on Friday the 25th and close at 6am on Sunday.

EDIT
Additional details from over at the CABS folder on CSW

After Turkey Day Game Fest - 48 straight hours of gaming! Friday, November 25th doors will open at 6am and will close Sunday the 17th at 6am.

As always the ATD is FREE!

Dare we say that there will be a vendor on site Friday! (RC Hobbies is expected) ...

Dare we say that every adult coming in will get a free card game! (First two hundred) ...

Dare we say that Friday morning there will be a flea market! (9am to 1pm)

Dare we say Joe Blundo of the Dispatch will be with us on Friday and doing an article on boardgaming to appear in early December. (If you want to help me show him the ropes let me know.)

1st Annual Ticket to Ride Tournament CABS November 25th, 2011 Registration Ends: 3:50 pm Round 1 Board Call: 4:00pm

FLEA MARKET FRIDAY - 9am to 1pm.

If you want a FREE table to set up your games to sell ... Send me an email. We have limited number of tables and we are already have 6 committed. You are expected to be set up by 9am and continue until 1pm and be down by 1:30pm. As we will need the space. Remember these are your fellow CABS members and it is not Ebay. If you want to sell and clear out your collection ... then have great prices and be ready, as negotiation is encouraged and expected, after all we are all gamers !!! ;o)

and

Ron Charity will be open for sales FRIDAY at 6am.

The flea market will begin at 9 ... so those selling should be onsite by 8:30 setting up.

A card game to everyone that shows up ... (I now have a limited supply of two different so households can get two different ones.)

Kids will get a third one - a TOP TRUMPS DECK.

By: Brant

Fall-In for Gaming!

Need something to do this weekend? Head up to Lancaster, PA, and hit Fall-In! for some miniatures gaming.

FALL-IN! ™ Is again in Lancaster Pennsylvania in 2011, at the Lancaster Host. You will notice that the convention takes place on Halloween Weekend, Halloween being on the Monday after the show.

The theme for this years show is US Cavalry: From Horse to Helo. The theme is, in the vein of last year's Marine Corps Theme, both a tribute to our fighting men of the U. S. Armed Forces, and an opportunity to encourage games amongst a wide range of conflicts. The United States Cavalry have been involved in American history from the Revolution up to current engagements.

By: Brant

Connections, Day 4, Working Group Outbriefs

Working Group outbriefs

First group outbrief on Expanding the Applications of Wargaming didn't spend any of their time talking about how wargame tools can actually be applied in other places, but spent their briefing talking about how to reach out to new audiences. The part where I got up and walked out to "stretch my back" was when the speaker devolved into an infomercial for one particular company, repeating over and over again how great that one company does their job, and how they do such great things for people, and how they're the recognized leaders in the field, and how this NDU faculty member who is supposed to be presenting an impartial working group is going to completely ignore anything else any other company has done as a success story. It did *not* reflect well on the working group that they seemed to be so into the tank for that contractor.

The Toward a Better Adjudication was more entertaining, but I didn't have the computer out to catch more of it.
The group split into 2 sub-groups. The first was discussing wargaming PMESII problems, and how social science models can inform them. He also noted the that if you take the "M" out of DIME, you get to "DIE".
Second discussion was how to fight futures wargames. Some of the key takeaways I grabbed were that (a) the enemy is watching your technology developments, just like you are, so these things should surprise you, and (b) try to look for and focus on the large *negative* possible outcomes that could be potentially catastrophic, rather than trying to get to the "best" answer.

The working group I was a part of - Building a Wargame Profession - should be entertaining... I'm curious to see how much of the presentation is actually reflective of the discussions that went on, or if they're reflective of the canned presentations that were thrown at us before the discussions.
Aaaaaand the roster goes up, with *BOTH* of my names spelled wrong. Geez folks... My name, and company (which was wrong on an earlier slide) were both on my registration. It can't be that hard to get it right.
There's an "objectives" slide on-screen right now that we never saw yesterday. I guess it would've been nice to know what our objectives were in the working group yesterday. So now we're running through the "sub"-presentations - each condensed to a single slide. Methinks there's a restroom break coming up in a bit (too much water at breakfast). Besides, there's been enough that didn't seem accurate enough for me that I had to walk away for a second.
This has now devolved into "here's why we can't/shouldn't/won't do this". News flash to folks: the plan is already in the can. It can be done. It will be done. It will probably be done before the working group gets re-convened.

By: Brant

Connections, Day 3, Working Group Session

1330 - 1630 Working Groups: Building a Wargame Profession, Co-chairs: Mike Garrambone & Erik Kjonnerod
Speakers: Mr. Mike Garrambone, Professional Society Concepts; Mr. Bret Givens, Professional Societies; Dr. Yuna H. Wong, Social Sciences of Societies; Col John Lister, Professional Gaming at Quantico; Ms. Renee Carlucci, MORS COP*--Wargaming; Ms. Elizabeth Bartels, Inculcating the New Wargamer

Starting with Michael Garrambone:
Practical analytical uses for games:
- gaining insights
- Sources of questions
- practice decisionmaking
- organize technical facts
- explore feasibility and implications of plans, concepts, or new technologies
- communicating ideas in vivid & memorable ways

Professional society: a org whose members share a professional status with the same occupation
Professional: a person whose occupation requires extensive education and skill, high degree of specialized training and competence
Professional Orgs: help to organize the group

What does a professional society or organization look like and how would it be organized?

Switch to Bret Givens to talk about types of certifications or other assessments of knowledge.
ANSI standards for professional certifying organizations.

We're starting to devolve into a bit of a discussion about what are wargames, what are games, what's in and what's out, and how do you draw the lines.

more after the jump

Connections 2011, Day 3, Other Morning Panel

1010 - 1130 Toward More Comprehensive Wargame Adjudication Panel, Co-chairs: Jon Compton & Al Nofi
Speakers: Dr. Stephen Downes-Martin, Adjudication, the diabolus exmachina of wargaming; Rich Phares, The Why and How of Adjudication; Mike Markowitz, Wargaming the Future & the Future of Wargaming

as always, my comments in red

Dr. Stephen Downes-Martin talking about adjudication
Using it to solve useful conflict in a game between participants
NOT BOGSAT - it's not a wargame without a game, which implies the ability to figure out who won

Using the dice as a model to tell us what happened. Sorry Navy, there's a non-zero chance that the aircraft carrier would've sunk, and it just did. So now what?

How to build adjudication models looking into the future when no statistical model exists?
How to build adjudication models for things for which no statistical or historical model exists?
Posted the (in)famous spaghetti-bowl slide of the AfPak COIN and noted that this is the model through which the COIN needs to be adjudicated.
---- I think I was going a bit to fast to capture Dr Downes-Martin's true nuance here... please see his comments below

Deductive gaming* is useless - no statistical model. This is all inductive gaming.
---- ditto :)
If the adjudicators are trying to sort out the rules of the game as they work through it, why aren't they playing the game themselves first?
Multiple 'fraud factors' in wargames. Personal experience not always generalizable...
Design the game to include adjudicators as players and evaluate their inputs/outputs.
Design a belief-based system that includes player beliefs about self and adversary.

* later edit: Dr Downes-Martin was speaking of this particular context - PMESII and similar social science contexts

more after the jump

Connections 2011, Day 3, Morning Panel

0800 - 0950 Expanding The Application of Wargaming Panel, Co-chairs: Merle Robinson & Mark Montroll
Speakers: Steven P. Webber, Lt Col, USAF, AF Future Capabilities WG; Garth Jensen, About MMOWGLI; Skip Cole (whose arrival we're awaiting); Larry Bond, designer extraordinaire
(as always, we're going to try to link to the slides)

First up, Garth Jensen talking about MMOWGLI
What is MMOWGLI? (slide of Rorschach blot)
Online game designed to find and collectively grow breakthrough ideas to some of our most "wicked problems" - those 21st century threats that demand new forms of collaboration and truly outlying ideas
First scenario dealt with piracy off the coast of Somalia
Three books being highlighted:
Bennis, Organizing Genius
Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Schwartz, The Art of the Long View
---- and holy crap, -zero- mention of Surowiecki!?
Genesis of MMOWGLI from ONR, trying to get "innovations" into the hands of users
Hostility/indifference from Pentagon to ONR's "game-changing technology"
Discussions with the Institute For The Future about technology and how to leverage it.
---- Question to the crowd about how many people had been to IITSEC, disappointingly few hands went up...
Had some ideas coming from elsewhere on the ideas that no matter the interface or flashiness of the game, the game itself lives in the minds of the participants
---- a point that would be well-remembered by the last presentation from yesterday about Global Engagements
Mention of knowledge accidents - what happens in the brain when the 'aha' moments occur
Picked the Somali piracy scenario because (a) it's unclass, and (b) everyone has an opinion on it

Actual run of the game:
- 3 chapters set up by video: Somali-Yemeni union, and the aftermath
Play of "cards"
- Innovate (positive-ish)
--- Reaction cards: expand, counter, adapt, another one I didn't get quick enough
- Defend (negative-ish)

presentation cut off for time, but will try to get more later in Q&A.

more after the jump, including Larry Bond!

Connections 2011, Observations

A few observations:

1) *Big* crowd compared to last year. lots of agencies here, with no significant reduction in the 'regulars' like Markowitz, Nofi, Robinson, Gresham, etc.

2) Lots of people who had no clue how deep and rich wargaming is in both the military and (especially) the hobby world. The depth and breadth and decades of experience of the hobby crowd seems to be slightly overwhelming the military guys who are just trying to get a sense of what sort of wargaming is going on.

3) This leads to occasional things like yesterday's presentation of a 'wargaming tool' that is essentially a pretty-looking GUI on top of SharePoint-level functionality, because the creator had no clue what else was going on in the wargaming world.

4) Someone from TICM-Gaming should be required to be here, if only to see that FPS games have yet to be mentioned, except in passing and with much derision. I wonder, though, if they would disregard the entire conference because their pet projects aren't being lauded.

By: Brant

Connections 2011, Day 2, Demo Night!

Andean Abyss with Volko Ruhnke. Some very, very interesting mechanics on how to keep assets "underground" and how to juggle the turn sequence and look ahead to what's coming next and how much you want to try to do now, versus marshaling your strength and preparing for something bigger. A very interesting balance of mechanics that does well to simulate the non-kinetic/economic components of the situation.

By: Brant

Connections 2011, Day 2, Afternoon Panel

my comments in red

1520 - 1640 Anticipating the Future Through Wargaming Panel, Co-chairs: Christopher Weuve & Dave Ross
Speakers: Dr. Bob Barker, Using Wargames to See Over-the-Horizon; Christopher Weuve, The Naval War College and the New; Maritime Strategy: An Idiosyncratic View; R. A. “Rocky” Rochford, CAPT, USN, WG Global Engagement

Bob Barker talking up some background of wargaming, starting w/ board games from the classic era. CRTs as a set of non-deterministic probabilities affected by skewing factors (terrain, weather, etc).

Games are a way to learn and explore what-ifs fro both modern / futuristic warfare.
Important considerations of commercial strategy games - accurate / cheap / fun.
Retention / education improves if the players enjoy playing the games.

Barker draws a distinction between 'education' using strategy games and 'training' using arcade-style first-person shooters.
---- Not sure I agree with that paradigm, but it works in his context

STTRs through AFSOR / AFRL:
- High-powered microwave weaponry game (HPM / DEW)
- improved AI for gaming
- COIN wargaming
- future uses of UAVs

HPM/DEW modeling based on a mod of Point of Attack II in which HPM/DEW wpns were put in play as an option in the ORBATs available.
Tiller's Modern Air Power adopted by Air University; uses name of "Theater Air Visualization"
Current UCAV STTR scenario won by Tiller for ph II
- Ph I wargames have demonstrated that Chinese UCAVs could swarm/dominate Taiwan Straits
- DEW UCAVs could revolutionize SEAD

more after the jump

Connections 2011, Day 2, Afternoon Demos

1300 - 1500 Demos
Item to be demoed, names of demoers, organization of demoers
- Various, Joseph Miranda, Wargame Designer MCS Group
- Virtual AC2I Wargame Experiment, Mark Sturgell & Dr. Jonathan Compton, 711 Human Performance Wing, Air Force Research Lab
- Persian Incursion, Larry Bond and Chris Carlson
- Sandtable System, Nicholas Iorio, Bae Systems
- Sittingbad, Joe Saur, GTRI
- Simulation-Based Analysis & Training (SimBAT), Tim Smith
- Guerilla Checkers, Brian Train
- GEMSTONE, Ellie Bartels and Brant Guillory

So the 'demo' / playtest turned into a lot of talking about the game, rather than playing it. I think a lot of people learned a lot about how the model works and got a sense of what's going on under the hood, but we didn't really play the game at all.



By: Brant

Connections 2011, Day 2, Morning Panel

Today's Agenda

0800 - 0810 Welcome

0810 - 0950 Keynotes Panel, Moderator: Matt Caffrey
Speakers: James F. Dunnigan, Dr. Peter P. Perla, Dr. Richard Andres

1010 - 1130 Advances in Wargaming Panel, Co-chairs: Brian Guillory & Joseph Miranda
Speakers: Dr. Roger Mason, Beyond the Battle of the Bulge, Volko Ruhnke; "Boardgaming Politics in War"; Brian Train, Ploughing in the COIN Field

I was at the head table for this one, but will link back to the talks when we get to them. There was a lot of great material here. Dr Mason talked about how to sell yourself as a wargamer. Mr Ruhnke covered the development of terrorism in wargaming and getting at the roots of "why terror"? Mr Train talked about the development of different COIN wargames and how that model could be built out to other things.


By: Brant

Connections 2011, Day 2, Keynote Panel

my comments in red


0810 - 0950 Keynotes Panel, Moderator: Matt Caffrey
Speakers: James F. Dunnigan, Dr. Peter P. Perla, Dr. Richard Andres

THE LIVEBLOG IS AFTER THE JUMP
TRYING TO SAVE SOME SCREEN SPACE ON MAIN PAGE

Connections, Day 1, sort of...

OK, so I missed the bulk of today's activities, because I was in IPRs and briefings from 0830 - 1435, straight through lunch. I caught the tail end of Matt's lunch. The icebreaker was quite a bit of fun. In addition to finally meeting the inestimable Brian Train face-to-face, and hanging out with Rex Brynen, we also had Larry Bond, Peter Perla, and host of other luminaries schmoozing about the NDU atrium. Tonight, it's hanging in the hotel lobby with whoever's staying here with us, and tomorrow the real fun begins.

1200-1600
- Wargaming 101, Mr. Matt Caffrey, Col USAF (ret), AFRL
- U.S. National Defense 101, John Gresham, author
- Walking Tour of Fort McNair (1500 to 1600)
1600-1800 Ice Breaker

By: Brant

Connections!

I'm off to Connections this week. I'll report on as much as I can during the conference.

For a look back at last year's conference, check out the posts gathered under the Connections tag.

By: Brant