General Information Regarding Excalibur Process

First, to restate our policy on Classified Information, Operational Security, and Company Proprietary Information

Under no circumstances is anyone authorized to post classified information or company proprietary information. Additionally, individuals have a responsibility to maintain and safeguard information under the general heading of operations security (OPSEC) or essential elements of friendly information. If EXCALIBUR suspects classified or business proprietary information has been disclosed, we will contact the appropriate agency or personnel.

However, we do seek companies or organizations to participate in this process but you must acknowledge that this information is being submitted by someone with a vested interest in their concept or idea. Our intent is not to limit any participation but rather to fully acknowledge the nature of the submission.

Additionally, we will not tolerate "sock puppetry." From Wikipedia:

A sockpuppet (sometimes known also as a socket, glove puppet, shadow puppet, mule, alias, alternate, ghostnic, or joke account) is a pejorative term for a false online identity used for purposes of deception within an Internet community, According to WordSpy, "A sock puppet .. is a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to, like a puppeteer manipulating a hand puppet." In the simplest cases, a sockpuppet defends or praises its puppeteer. The unifying theme here is not merely posting under a pseudonym but dishonest use of that pseudonym to hide the true motivation behind its expressed opinions.

This does not mean you can't use a pseudonym or call sign. It means EXCALIBUR must be informed of your potential conflicts and or potential to gain. Bottom line is to be truthful in who you are, what you represent, and whether you stand to gain.

Collaboration and Innovation Process

Our goal is to actively seek concepts and collaborative participation from a wide swath of Americans and other interested parties. We are creating a process by which we intend to support government organizations, companies, and others with rapid innovative and collaborative solutions. The process will begin with us receiving a tasking or requirement, we will then conduct some basic background research and frame the problem or challenge for presenting to our network. This framing or presentation will most often take the form of an interactive webpage which will take the viewer through the problem to inform the network as we understand it.

The intent for this Project Outline webpage is to allow the viewer to gain an initial understanding of the challenge which would then allow them to consider alternatives and proposals for submission to Excalibur. This Project Outline webpage will show or link to images, papers, briefing materials, or other webpage's, similar to a Wikipedia style page.

We will seek ideas or concepts from our network and these submitted ideas could be a post on the blog, e-mails with basic ideas, or in many cases, we will establish a protocol to submit the ideas in the form of a text submission that will allow us to later analyze using a variety of tools. Additionally, in many cases, individuals may have already conducted research or other work in the field (dissertations, proposals, and papers) and we will seek those as background information to allow us to more fully understand your submission. Our intent is to fully read the submissions and as the process matures, analyze all the submissions to see what may be the best course of action or proposals to submit to our clients.

Based upon known information (i.e. participant is a known individual to Excalibur staff) or based upon individuals submitted background information, we will assign a rating to the person which will help us in determining how much to weigh the submission. This rating can improve based upon the quality of the individual's participation. In most cases, this rating may not come into play, however, during a crisis situation when we are conducting real time problem solving, the rating of an individual will probably determine how much access we will allow, i.e. which chat room they may be placed in or how much of the process is opened to them. We intend to track submissions from individuals and as we evaluate submissions, we will "promote" you allowing more access and participation.

As this process evolves and as contracts are received, we will figure out the best ways to reward participation in EXCALIBUR. Throughout, we seek your help in both solving the challenges but also in the iterative process. This is a true self adaptive, neural network.