NEW CAPABILITIES AND CONCEPTS
many of those smaller operations have some pretty superior types of technologies to offer.”
“We are getting to novel and highly advanced technology in a very streamlined, efficient way.”
hands. It enables the DOD to quickly acquire critical technolo- gies in a way no other platform can.”
“We officially went live with the MVP [minimum viable prod- uct] Nov. 1, and that month we received 20 video submissions,” Evangelista said. “We started the first assessments in December, and 10 out of those 20 have made it into the marketplace. Te other 10 did not meet our standards, and that’s OK. We’re going to work with those vendors and figure out how they can refine their submissions, depending on the feedback they received from their assessments.”
Te marketplace received another 14 videos during December, and those were assessed in January. “It’s still super early, but I feel like we’ll start to see a lot of activity once people start to make contract awards,” she said. All in all, the team feels great about the progress it’s seen so far.
“We weren’t sure what to expect when we first launched the marketplace,” said Fianna Litvok, who supports the Tradewind initiative as director of federal contract communications for ARI. “We were ecstatic to get 20 videos in the first month. To have 10 that are viable is really exciting. We’ve been marketing heavily to industry, academics and innovators to encourage them to submit their solutions to the marketplace, and we’re working equally as hard to communicate our value propositions to government acquisition folks, that the demand is just as strong as the supply.”
“Of the videos we’ve received so far, probably 96 percent are from small companies—small, often veteran-owned or disadvantaged small businesses,” Del Coco said. “We’ve seen some submissions from the big guys, but they are few and far between.” He said it is very exciting to see so many submissions from small businesses, since they may sometimes struggle to compete for government contracts against bigger companies. “It’s so interesting because
https://asc.ar my.mil 23
Litvock agreed and said this platform is a game changer for smaller businesses hoping to compete in the AI space. “It completely levels the playing field.”
CONCLUSION Tough the Tradewind Solutions Marketplace is nominally focused on AI solutions, it is also receiving submissions in related fields like cybersecurity. Del Coco sees this as a logical step. “Te cyber domain is a very demanding one,” he said. “It changes rapidly and needs new technology very quickly, so we’ve seen a number of cyber-related videos come in, though most are tied in some way to some AI application.”
Evangelista agreed that similar technologies may be a good fit for the Tradewind Solutions Marketplace, and she thinks it may expand in the future. “Because we’re with the DOD Chief of Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, we are AI, digital and data oriented, but I see this marketplace being so cross-cutting,” Evangelista said. “I imagine we will add technical focus areas as hopefully program executive offices and others in government start adopting a similar methodology and asking to have their portfolio represented on the marketplace.”
For more information, go to
www.tradewindai.com or email
support@tradewindmarketplace.com.
ELLEN SUMMEY provides contract support to the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, as a communications project manager for SAIC. She holds an M.A. in human relations from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in mass communication from Louisiana State University. She has earned the Accreditation in Public Relations and Military Communication, is certified as a Project Management Professional, and has more than 18 years of communication experience in both the government and commercial sectors.
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