How to Speed Up Tech Transition Pathways with Casey Perley

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:02]:
I am Bonnie Evangelista with the chief digital and artificial intelligence office, having the pleasure to be joined by Casey Perley.

Casey Perley [00:00:09]:
Yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:10]:
And I just learned you are the newly anointed director under a year ago.

Casey Perley [00:00:16]:
I became the director last May.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:18]:
Last May.

Casey Perley [00:00:18]:
So been in the seat for a little bit.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:20]:
A little bit. So I'm just slow on the uptake.

Casey Perley [00:00:22]:
That's good.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:24]:
Tell me a little bit about what it's like being the director of army or army applications lab.

Casey Perley [00:00:29]:
Yeah. So it's crazy. I've been in the lab for five years, and I've had five different jobs, so I feel like I've gotten to touch all aspects of the lab. I spent some time on our tech team, spent some time leading tech and cv, spent some time as our deputy director, and now I'm here. And I think one of my big focuses was data driven. Like, let's get our decisions to be data driven. Let's have our data up to date. Let's make a big push for metrics.

Casey Perley [00:00:52]:
And it's been fun to be able to spend nine months with the team really making that happen and making that a priority.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:58]:
Okay. What? Let's see. I'm not even sure where to start this because being under AFC, Al, what are some, I would say, targets or objectives that you guys are going after?

Casey Perley [00:01:12]:
It's a great question. So AAl's mission is to help the army get the best tech in the hands of the warfighters faster. And there's a lot of other organizations that have a similar mission. Our niche is really helping the army expand its access to the civil innovation base, which is industry and academia, and helping them pivot their technology into the DoD. So we don't have a tech area we focus on. You know, we've got projects right now from power and energy to human performance to robotics, unmanned systems. So we really get to touch the whole gamut of tech. And our priorities are set by army senior leaders like General Rainey.

Casey Perley [00:01:56]:
We get them from the force. We have an army innovation network that we get to tap into to understand what soldiers and units problems are that we can go after. And then sometimes we get our friends in asault or our friends in the labs come to us and say, I have a gap. I think industry can really help. Is this in your wheelhouse?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:02:13]:
So, you said get capabilities in the hands of soldiers as fast as possible, but you're a lab.

Casey Perley [00:02:20]:
We're a lab in name only. So we don't have lab benches. We don't have pipettes. We don't have soldering irons. We are a lab because we experiment with commercial technology. But now to your point, we are remit is really technology readiness level three. So you've got to have something already cooking to technology readiness level six integrated. When you start getting into those real high TRL levels, that's when we have done a nice, warm, solid handoff, not like a pitch over the valley of death with our transition partners.

Casey Perley [00:02:53]:
Most of the time, that's a salt. But for human performance, that could be trade off for new building techniques, that could be MC. So we sometimes work with those non traditional transition partners as well.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:04]:
How hard or easy is it to maintain those relationships with the transition partners? Because admittedly, that's probably the biggest criticism it is we get right.

Casey Perley [00:03:14]:
It is the most critical thing that we do. So with very rare exception, we do not start a project unless two things are in place. One is who is the transition partner? Are they on board? And that includes helping write the solicitation, reviewing in the down select, participating in the progress briefing, however often they go on giving that consistent feedback. We also want to make sure we have the end users involved. So who is the unit that's going to be doing all of our touch points, all of our soldier integrated design work, because we want to make sure to incorporate them super early in the process as well.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:47]:
What, what about, so I hear what you're saying. Dau does something similar. They won't start a project without the transition partner. What if you're hearing from the field or from the end users that you talk to that they want to go after x and you can't, or the transition partner that you think should catch the capability is like, nah, I don't think so.

Casey Perley [00:04:10]:
So we don't struggle with that so much as sometimes technology may not have a clear transition partner because it's new. The army doesn't have anything like it, so you don't know where it's going to slot or it falls conveniently in the gray area between two peos and you're like, ooh, which one of you is going to take this?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:30]:
And, you know, they're both raising their hand saying, pick me. Pick me, right?

Casey Perley [00:04:33]:
You might not be what happens? So if it's in that gray zone, okay, we're going to bring both of them on board. That's. That's kind of the easy solution. And I think you always run the risk of maybe neither of them being as engaged as you want because they're like, it's really going to be the other guy.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:48]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:04:48]:
Um, but we're very persistent.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:51]:
You're persistent.

Casey Perley [00:04:51]:
And that helps for the time where it's really like where the heck does this go? Because the army has nothing like it. Sometimes that's where we take on a little bit of risk. And we work really closely with the requirements writers in our capability development integration directorates as well. And we work closely with them on every project. But especially where that transition pathway is very unclear because there's no clear home. Working closely with them, understanding, do we need a new requirements document? Do we need to modify an existing one? Often those discussions can elucidate where is the likely path that the tech will take to transition.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:05:28]:
So I can tell you, so you've thought about. At least you're thinking about it even if you don't know the answer. Exactly what happens. I'm imagining a scenario where being in a PEO or a PM shop, we have jobs. And like I would argue, and I'm hesitating because I'm not trying to, I'm making a generalization that may not be fair. PM's don't have time to do exploration and discovery like they do have to do market research. I got it. But they, you know, this might, this is gonna fall in the not my maybe immediate priority bucket.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:06:08]:
So how do you still build a bridge with them when that is probably something you have to face a lot.

Casey Perley [00:06:14]:
So I think it's a mixture of being respectful of their time. Like we're not going to ask for an hour a day or even an hour a week, but what are the priority things that we really need them at and really need their feedback at, and prioritizing getting them to those versus just constant poking and prodding. It's a good balancing act. The second is culturally not all PM's are the same. There are some that really lean in to this type of innovation work exploration, especially if we can line it up with their tech insertion timelines, which we try to do whenever possible. But innovation always doesn't always line up with pre planned timelines. And some of them just maybe don't have that mindset as much. So when we take on projects, the willingness of that transition partner to be involved does play a role in project selection here.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:07:09]:
This might be a slight pivot to what we're talking about, but I think you would have a good perspective on this. So the sense of time between the end user and I'll say the Pentagon is way different, 100%. So when you talk about that alignment or the, what did you call it? The tech insertion timeline insertion timeline. I'm like, what are we talking about?

Casey Perley [00:07:32]:
So, I mean, and you know, this program managers have a technology roadmap that they're going to follow over the course of the program, and they have points identified where they can insert technologies. It's going to vary depending on a capital platform versus an attritable platform and the like. But the general premise is the same. Yeah, and you're right. That timeline is going to be very different than what end users are typically hoping for, who are like, I'm seeing something a company has. It's TrL six, but I would use it tomorrow.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:01]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:08:02]:
How do I get it now? I don't want to wait for all of the safety releases and all of the testing. Right. And that's hard.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:10]:
Super hard.

Casey Perley [00:08:11]:
Super hard. So one of the things we do, especially because we don't, we're here in capital factory, just across the wall from where we're taping. We don't have like a Conex storage space where we can take all the cool tech that the companies develop. So one thing we do is if we've worked with a unit to develop the tech and there is leave behind capability, we offer it to that unit. If they don't want it, we don't want it to be cluttering up their conexes and we'll find a different home. Right. Maybe the seated wants to experiment with it to further refine requirements or understand how soldiers may use it and how that may shape other aspects of the tech adoption in the military.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:50]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:08:52]:
We've had some technology that's gotten in the hands of soldiers already, and it's taken very circuitous routes to get there, neither of which has been insertion into a typical program or record. And it frustrates me a little bit because I feel like companies shouldn't have to hack the system to get their tech to companies sooner or to units sooner. I don't have solutions. It frustrates me daily.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:15]:
Yeah, well, even if you don't have solutions, what would make it better or worse?

Casey Perley [00:09:20]:
I'm really fascinated by this concept that Mike Brown, the former DIU director, put forth in congressional testimony in 2022. It was a concept called a capability of record. Have you heard of it?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:32]:
I have not.

Casey Perley [00:09:33]:
Ok.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:33]:
I've heard a continuous operational need statement which has been fascinating me recently.

Casey Perley [00:09:39]:
I haven't heard of that. My guess is they're getting after the similar thing.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:42]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:09:43]:
The idea that Mike Brown posited was for technologies like unmanned aerial systems, let's say, that are evolving very, very rapidly in the commercial sector, we shouldn't be writing very specific requirement documents that become out of date by the time they're through our approval pipeline. Even before we can get to fielding, we should write a requirement document for a capability, and we should do tranche based fielding. So tranche one is whatever the best unmanned aerial platform is right now. And when it comes time for the next set of units to get it, let's go out and recompete. Because commercial industry, now we're 18 months later, they've moved on. We have something better that can obviously be very complicated for like a logistics sustainment tail. But if the system is attritable, meaning it breaks, you throw it away, that reduces some of that complexity. That idea, this also, this idea of tranche based fielding, I think is a way to get better technology into the hands of our soldiers.

Casey Perley [00:10:49]:
Faster.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:10:50]:
Faster.

Casey Perley [00:10:50]:
Right. With a continuous.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:10:52]:
And get to the iteration that's required because of the domain.

Casey Perley [00:10:56]:
Exactly. And the units that got that first tranche, the army is going to be taking the lessons. They've learned both the. I need that. The button that's on the right side of my controller, you need to move it to my left. But also, I can only do 80% of the functions I want with this. I really need something that has a tilt rotor instead of a fixed rotor so I can accomplish these other missions.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:11:16]:
That's interesting. One of the first panels of today, Adam Briley, the Navy side, talked about really having empathy with the end user and really trying to understand, when they say, I want the button on the left side, or I need whatever rotor wing you were just talking about, there's probably a reason for that and trying to actually understand what the reason is, rather than questioning it. I think it's really important to what you're talking about.

Casey Perley [00:11:47]:
It is. I think it's also really important when a soldier comes to you and says, I need this thing, they're just inartfully saying, I have a problem and trying to decompose. You've already found a solution. That's great. But tell me what you're trying to solve, because sometimes the solution may be out in commercial industry. Sometimes it may be on the shelf in one of our labs and centers. Sometimes it may be with a sister service. And when that happens, there could potentially be an even faster way for them to get access to it.

Casey Perley [00:12:15]:
Right. You're just trying to understand what that problem is.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:12:18]:
Yeah. When you mentioned, like, having soldiers in units trying to hack the system, and that frustrates me, too. That, to me, is almost like a symptom of. Well, the system's not giving them what they want, right? So how do we give them what and when I say give them what we want, because I've heard the debate in the Pentagon, there's reasons to do that and to not do that. Um, but if you're. If we're completely shutting them off, like, they're. They're resilient, they're going to find a way. So, like, how do we meet them? Where they're at?

Casey Perley [00:12:51]:
Right. It's. Once again, I'm not sure I have clear answers to this, but it's something we think about, right? Like, because from a big army perspective, we don't have the budget. Like, we don't have unlimited budgets.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:05]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:13:05]:
There are going to always be priorities and things that fall below the cut line. And some of our programs, like, some of our potential transitions, have fallen victim to that. Right. Where there's a budget cut or there's a challenge elsewhere in the PM's portfolio, they've got to make a trade space decision.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:24]:
Right?

Casey Perley [00:13:24]:
And now you're below the cut line.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:27]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:13:28]:
And that stings a little bit because, like, the company had the tech, right. They did exactly what we asked them to, perhaps even better than we asked, and it still doesn't work. But to that end, we can't just be telling soldiers, you don't know what you need.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:42]:
Right, exactly.

Casey Perley [00:13:43]:
There's a great program run out of Arl army research lab called Catalyst Pathfinder that helps soldiers take their ideas. Sometimes they can work in a maker space to make them a possibility. Sometimes they compare them with local academia and industry. Often these are very low cost solutions to problems they have that make their life better on a daily basis. And I think the army has a lot to learn, because if five units are all making a similar type thing, that's probably a demand signal that we at big army are missing.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:14:17]:
Right?

Casey Perley [00:14:18]:
How are we capturing that? And similarly, if there's six or seven brigade commanders out there who are all saying the same thing, we need to be listening to that, right? Because that's telling us somewhere along the way, we've lost a demand signal that we should be capturing.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:14:34]:
Yeah, I. What I think what you're offering is, I'm not sure if it's. It's not. I hope it's not difficult, but it's strange for in workforce at large, to humbly and tactfully go to the end user and say, how can I help you? And not presume that you, like you said, you, you know what they need. And to truly walk into the conversation assuming, you know, nothing.

Casey Perley [00:15:04]:
Yeah. So, two things. One, army futures command has stood up this thing called the Army Innovation Network, and it's where we convene innovation officers and leadership from units across the army every month to ask them, one, what are you innovating on within your own formations that can look really different? You know, each unit tackles it differently, but once again, we're looking for synergies and ways we can help. The second thing is, one of my favorite stories about AAL was when we took. It was our first project we ever did. It's called field artillery autonomous resupply. And the premise was, in order to maximize our field artillery, its effectiveness, we had to be able to resupply them faster in the field so they could effectively shoot more ammunition faster.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:15:50]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:15:50]:
Because the longer the resupply takes, you can't get to that second round of shooting as quickly. So we took six commercial companies to Fort Bliss to watch this process happen live in the field. It was like the one day a year that it rains at Fort Bliss, the TMP van got stuck. The soldiers watched the ammunition handling forms, like, disintegrate in the rain. They watched that supply sergeant back into the whiteboard and accidentally erase half the data. And two companies went up to the CFT director in the PM and they said, you know, we could automate all of this inventory management for you. And those two soldiers looked at each other and said, I never realized that inventory management was the problem. So I think, in general, we have to humble ourselves, one, to listen to soldiers and not assume we know everything, but also listen to industry.

Casey Perley [00:16:45]:
When they not prescribe the solution so much that they can come in, take a look at our problems and processes and say, y'all are trying to solve x, you really need to be solving.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:16:57]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:16:58]:
Right.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:16:58]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:16:58]:
But it's the same principle.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:17:00]:
That's big. That's big. Also, again, not a practice skill in the government. No, I'm learning. One key I think you would have some great narrative on is when my team, I think this is maybe more familiar with them, where we start with problems and we start with use cases, we start with, like, where are the gaps or the needs? And how do we communicate that with industry? And I'm not saying we've got it perfect yet, but we're putting the reps in to try and iterate on that, make that language a little bit easier so industry can come to us and be like, yeah, you're saying you think it's this, but, like, in your example, it's an inventory management problem, and we didn't know that. And being okay with thinking or thinking of that as a real solution. So one thing when we talk about how do you write a problem statement, like how do you put this in practice? I mean, we could talk about tips on how to do that in general. But the piece I'm most interested in is, it's not just about saying, here's the gap, but having this end state of uncertainty or iteration where you have an idea of an outcome you're looking for, but you're not driving the outputs.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:18:20]:
Industry should drive the outputs. But how do you know if the outputs are getting you closer to the outcome you want? I think you know where I'm going. Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:18:27]:
So I'm going to say a couple of things. One, we are really big. Like, we spend a lot of time on problem statements.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:18:34]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:18:35]:
Not just ensuring we scoped the problem correctly, which is important. Like, you don't want to, you don't want to close off a part accidentally. Right. You want to leave it as broad for industry to be as creative as possible with within the bounds of what you can't change. Like, if I'm working on a problem for a weapons platform, you may not redesign the hull of that weapons platform to get your solution to work. But any, any of the rest of the trade space is good. We put it in plain language. We purposely don't use jargon.

Casey Perley [00:19:05]:
And if it's really, really complicated, we're going to put out a webinar that walks you through how we do it today. So we don't presuppose that a company has a veteran on staff that is skilled in the right area that we are looking at that can say, I know how to do an artillery crew drill, or I know how a medic trains to evaluate a patient. The second thing we do is we write business cases internal to the lab for every project that we take on. And we actually put in there the quantitative and qualitative metrics of success. And when you're starting with a big, big problem, those can be really broad measures. Like in general, I want to improve the speed of resupply by, remember what we said, maybe 50%. I want to reduce medic hesitancy in treating female casualties by 25%. The other thing we do is we often bring in cohorts of companies, say five to 15, to work on a problem.

Casey Perley [00:20:04]:
We don't expect them all to bring a complete solution. We want them to bring what they're best at.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:20:08]:
When you say work on a problem. You mean address a problem.

Casey Perley [00:20:11]:
Address a problem.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:20:11]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:20:12]:
Right. Solve that field artillery problem. Or solve that female trauma mannequin hesitancy problem. We create environments that foster collaboration so that they want to work together. And as we move through the project, maybe those 15 companies go down to five. But then we relook that business statement and we say, now, based on what we have, is there more fidelity on what we want to be measuring to know if we're successful based on what we've learned, is that even the right measure of success still, or should we be relooking that?

Bonnie Evangelista [00:20:47]:
How long has AAl been around?

Casey Perley [00:20:48]:
Five years.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:20:50]:
So, I mean, that's a play out of early Aff works.

Casey Perley [00:20:52]:
It is a play out. We've learned a lot from DiU and affworks. We are so fortunate, you know, Diu stood up in, I think, 2015.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:21:00]:
I don't. Yeah. I mean, not long ago. Right, right. Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:21:03]:
And we learned all the great lessons from DiU 1.0 about, there is a market in commercial and dual use tech to come work with the DoD. This was before all the VC's went nuts for investing in defense. Right. From afworks, we learned about the speed to getting money on contract and how quickly you can do it, and that we should be doing that all the time because the, you know, the benefits to the. So we didn't have to make a lot of the. We made our own mistakes, don't get me wrong.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:21:29]:
Oh, yeah.

Casey Perley [00:21:29]:
But we didn't have to make the same mistakes. We got to start by standing on the shoulders of our peers. And that's also the benefit of being here in capital factory. We're all here.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:21:37]:
Yeah. There's something to be said about getting the right humans in the room to tackle the problem. And that's been a theme today. One of the other guests I talked to today before you said the exact same thing, and so it's the fact that multiple people are saying it. There's probably truth in it, and we shouldn't ignore it, because that is not, I would say, a general practice or way of doing business where the focus is more on getting a group or a community together to focus on the problem. That's. We're very oriented towards, like, let's just throw something out there. Industry will respond to it, and then we decide, we try and fix, use confidence ratings to be like, okay, I think that's gonna get me the thing.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:22:26]:
At the end of the day, I'm.

Casey Perley [00:22:29]:
Big on cross functional teams, not just because the army has. Has made a lot of them to support its major modernization priorities. Yeah, I've seen the success when us Aff works. Diu, Ensin, naval X, all work together. I've watched us say, hey, this isn't the right solution for me, but I think this solves a problem you have and that type of collaboration. I've watched as we all try to co invest towards similar goals so that our money can work together, which is really beneficial. And I've watched the success of the cross functional teams we form for every one of our projects, where we've got the soldiers and the requirements writers and the scientists and the transition partner, and maybe we're also bringing in a joint partner to that.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:23:10]:
Yeah. So going back to metrics, that's easy to say. I think it's harder to do. Any tips or ways of how do you get to the point where you can identify at least a couple, meaning full metrics of success, like how are we getting toward the outcome or the vision of the product or solution we're trying to get to?

Casey Perley [00:23:33]:
Welcome to the last five years of my life. This is literally what I've been thinking about since I joined Aal just after south by in 2019. I think there's a lot of ways, and I think the first thing is when we think of return on investment, we have to think of it as what is the return on investment, in my case, to the army.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:23:50]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:23:51]:
But also, what is my return on investment to industry? Because if I'm not providing ROI to them, they're not going to want to come and work with us. And that I'm not going to get access to the best tech for the army. So inside the army, transition, I think, is still an important metric for giving.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:24:06]:
Them a clear path.

Casey Perley [00:24:08]:
Clear path. And also what percentage of my work is moving on? What percentage of any organization's work is moving on? I get full credit if I transition to another service, if I transition back to industry, if I go straight to a unit, because they're going to use their op tempo funds for it. So I think there's a value in emitting transition can look a whole lot of different ways. But, you know, if I'm only transitioning 1% of the time, I'm not probably providing ROI. Nobody's told me what the right number is yet, but I know it's not 1%.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:24:39]:
This might be a squirrel, but me going down a squirrel path. You mentioned transition and to. Sorry, do you have lab authority?

Casey Perley [00:24:49]:
No.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:24:50]:
Okay. Because now I'm thinking also tech transfer. So if you have soldiers innovating. How do you get that to industry?

Casey Perley [00:24:56]:
So the. The group that does the soldier innovating, that's catalyst, Pathfinder. They are ARL. They have lab authority.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:03]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:25:03]:
I work 99% of my time with commercial industry. We will occasionally help fund a lab or center. If they're going to do something that impacts an industry project, I need them to do some integration work.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:16]:
Right.

Casey Perley [00:25:17]:
All right. Everything we do is tied back to industry. So tech transfer is not a big deal for us.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:21]:
Right. Right. Okay.

Casey Perley [00:25:23]:
Also on the ROI piece, like, how much co investment am I getting from both industry and joint partners to drive.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:29]:
Down innovation costs for the army co investment and what.

Casey Perley [00:25:34]:
So what are they bringing to the project? So if I throw in. We have a project right now with affworks where we've invested 2 million and they've invested, I think, six or seven in the same product. Why are we going to develop two different things? That's silly. We should develop the same thing and make our money go further. We also do industry match, so a lot of times companies can bring up to $250,000 and we'll match that either through SBIR or RDT and e funds. So different types of money that the government has. So we're getting some co investment that way as well. There's a lot of also innovation funds that exist elsewhere in the DoD.

Casey Perley [00:26:11]:
People may have heard of Raider or TMI, operational energy capability, incentive fund. Sometimes we are able to get funds from those to augment a project we're working on. Right. So that type of co investment is.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:26:25]:
The army CBR program under Al or ARL?

Casey Perley [00:26:28]:
Neither. There is a portion that resides under a salt and there is a portion that resides under Devcom, which is bigger than just ARL, but ARL is certainly a part of it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:26:38]:
Got it. Okay. I was just. Because I'm thinking that that's interconnected with what you're talking about.

Casey Perley [00:26:44]:
Right.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:26:44]:
Because bringing in new tech through sibers.

Casey Perley [00:26:49]:
Are great way to do that, especially for young companies that. I mean, any company that wants a non dilutive investment, it's a great option for. For me, also the. The ability to sole source follow on. Oh, yeah, $100 million.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:27:01]:
Oh, yeah. That's.

Casey Perley [00:27:02]:
That's worth more than whatever money you got.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:27:04]:
We gotta. We gotta, I don't know, raise the flag on that, because I think every acquisition professional, their first question to any company is, do you have a sibber? Are you on the trade wind solutions marketplace? Because those are paths to contracts that are.

Casey Perley [00:27:19]:
Yes, I think in general, publicizing phase three, Sbirs how you do them, how you can take advantage of them, that they've already met competition requirements. You don't need to go recompete. I think all of Dod, we could use solid education across the board in that.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:27:37]:
Yeah. Because most the companies that do know to pitch that when they're talking to their government customers, a lot of people on the government side are never heard of it. Yeah. They never heard of it, or they're not familiar with it. So they're thinking, they got to do jnas. I think there's some army people out there that do that, just saying. Yeah, but so that's just a reality. So, uh, with regard to metrics like the.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:03]:
From my experience, the easiest way or the, like, lowest hanging fruit on how we try to do something, just, uh. Or to put something on paper to get something to happen, is we. We ask people like, what is the ten x improvement to the end user that you're trying to drive at, even if it's not maybe exactly where it's going? But that's. If you start talking like that, like, how do we make that person's life better?

Casey Perley [00:28:29]:
It drives a conversation.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:30]:
Yes. Right.

Casey Perley [00:28:31]:
I often tell my team, like, when we're doing these business cases, sometimes I get. I don't. I don't know what percentage this technology could improve the problem I'm trying to solve by. And so we'll make. Yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:41]:
Yeah.

Casey Perley [00:28:41]:
If we beat it, great. If we don't meet it, great.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:44]:
That's learning, too.

Casey Perley [00:28:45]:
That's learning, too. Right? Like, nobody's going to be mad if you're saying, I want a five x improvement and you only get a 4.2.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:50]:
X improvement, because the reality is, like you said, the person in the field is like, I would still take that.

Casey Perley [00:28:58]:
Right. Exactly.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:58]:
Better than whiteboards and disintegrating paper when it rains. And, yeah, I think we also have to.

Casey Perley [00:29:05]:
And I mean, at AAO, we're slightly guilty of this as well. This is cultural, is we have to break this idea that the solution must be 100% perfect to get to the soldier, 80% perfect, 75% perfect, if it is safe, is good enough because they're going to use it now and we can work on doing the rest of the development iteratively later on.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:29:23]:
Yeah, my. Before I joined the DoD, I've only been the DoD for maybe six years now. Before I was in a federal civilian agency, prominently, mostly doing work with the Transportation Security Administration. And I had a boss there and something he said, it is carried with me through and through. I don't know, all. After all these years. But he had a sign. He said this all the time, but he had a piece of paper, and he.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:29:45]:
He put them up all over the place, and it said, done is better than perfect.

Casey Perley [00:29:48]:
Yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:29:49]:
And that. Some people debate me on this, and I love that. I love the debate. But I think the reality is most people would welcome that, especially in the field.

Casey Perley [00:29:59]:
I say it a little bit differently, but it's the same principle. Usability is better than perfect. If it's usable now, let's go for it.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:06]:
Yeah. Very cool. So my new favorite way of ending the show.

Casey Perley [00:30:11]:
Awesome.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:12]:
Is a very, very serious question. Okay, you ready?

Casey Perley [00:30:15]:
I'm ready.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:17]:
Would you dip your grilled cheese?

Casey Perley [00:30:20]:
Yes.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:20]:
In hot chocolate?

Casey Perley [00:30:22]:
No, because chocolate gives me migraines.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:24]:
Mmm.

Casey Perley [00:30:25]:
So.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:26]:
Okay, wait, wait.

Casey Perley [00:30:27]:
I'm out on that.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:28]:
Would you dip your peanut butter and jelly sandwich in chili? Did I just blow your mind or what? Maybe.

Casey Perley [00:30:38]:
I don't know. I'm gonna say probably not. But I also, my mom's from Cincinnati, so I grew up with the really thick Cincinnati chili that's got, like, the spaghetti on it. And I'm just struggling with how.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:50]:
How would you.

Casey Perley [00:30:51]:
How am I gonna make that work? Right? It's not like the soupy chili that I know. That I know other people grew up with.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:56]:
So apparently the midwest likes to do those things. People in the midwest, like, it's. And so I gotta. I gotta know who's doing this, who's not. Cause I've never heard of it.

Casey Perley [00:31:07]:
I will say before I got bad migraines and I could have chocolate, I did dip my wendy's french fries and frosties.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:15]:
So that was the counter argument when a group of us were like, what? We never do that. And the counter argument was, it's not a far stretch from dipping your french fry in a frosty. And then we were like, ah, you got us.

Casey Perley [00:31:27]:
Yeah, that's a fair point. Yeah, that's a fair point.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:30]:
All right, well, thanks for having a little fun with me today. Give me your time.

Casey Perley [00:31:33]:
Thank you for inviting me. This has been great.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:35]:
Yeah. Awesome, awesome.