Every year I like to give a “State of the Company” address at the company Christmas party. However as we have grown to almost 350 employees in 15 states and have 4-5 different Christmas parties spread over the months of December and January, it has become increasingly difficult for me to share company news. I hope this blog will provide a way for us to overcome that difficulty by establishing open communications among our many employees distributed across the US as well as others outside of BRC that have an interest in and can benefit from the topics we hope to discuss. These will range from internal company news items to technology, Business mentoring and advice, and other topics of general interest to the Department of Defense contracting and customer communities…..SO…here we go….Edition 1, January 4, 2019.

1) THE BLOG: The first announcement of course is that we have established this blog so that I can share information, insights and mentoring on a weekly or daily basis if needed. I will use the blog not only to spread the latest news about BRC to our employees and friends but to communicate with our many small business protégé’s as well.

Many people don’t know that for over 25 years we have provided free small business mentoring to small startup businesses in the DOD contracting community. In fact, BRC was the smallest Mentor ever to participate in the DOD mentor-Protégé program becoming an official mentor when we had just seven (7) employees in 1998. As small as we were we had been very successful with our private protégé’s so DISA reached out to us and asked us to join their program to help “mentor the mentors” in methods of teaching small businesses to succeed. Over a three-year period we were asked to brief several DOD organizations, large mentors, and even Congressional staffers on Capitol Hill. Eventually we left the official DOD program to get away from the paperwork burden but we continued to mentor small businessmen and women for free and continue to do so to this day. One of the things I offer is that any protégé can call, email or visit me at any time for help, advice or just a shoulder to cry on. I have noticed over the years however that few of them take advantage of this offer because they feel that they would be bothering me. Having the blog gives me and my protégés (or anyone for that matter) an open communications channel to help overcome this reluctance to communicate. Why is this important? Because over the last 40 years (almost 30 of them as a company President or CEO), I have surely made every mistake that could be made. If I can help a new businessperson avoid these mistakes it will greatly facilitate their journey to success in the business world. You can access the blog directly at blog.brc2.com.

2) Do You Know who We Are? I would like to announce that starting immediately we are kicking off a year-long promotional campaign titled, “Do You Know Who We Are?” For the past 27 years BRC employees have quietly worked within the DOD and other defense agency (ODA) communities doing advanced work in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Over those years we have advanced the state of the art in cognitive processing, created advanced tools that allow non-experts to apply AI/ML principles and provided many intelligent products to our customers to solve difficult one-of-a-kind technical problems. In fact the number of AI/ML “firsts” that we have had over the years would take several pages to describe. The quiet nature of our work however means that many agencies still do not know who we are. With the renewed interest in AI/ML within the DOD we felt that it was time that we went public with our story so that new customers would not be taken in by “the HERD”, i.e. the herd of companies that claim they are experts overnight in an attempt to follow the latest fad in the market. Our soldiers, sailors, and airmen deserve better than an old technical solution wrapped in a bright shiny wrapper by slick marketing teams thundering around almost daily from market-to-market with the HERD. As a Vietnam Veteran from a military family I am especially sensitive to this issue. So what is the answer to the question….. “Do you Know Who We Are?”…We (BRC) are an experienced Artificial Intelligence Company.

I have more exciting news to share but I will save it for another day. Send me comments, questions, criticism (please keep it civil…life is too short to deal with anger, hate or other stupidity). I can’t promise to be able to respond immediately but I look forward to open, frank discussions about the topics on the blog that hopefully will benefit everyone.

Dr. Andy

BRC CEO and CTO

“Cognitive Psychophysicist with an interest in almost everything”