By Tara Clements
The award-winning Army AL&T magazine, the premier career and professional news source for the Army acquisition, logistics and technology community, held its third annual writer’s workshop at the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications – Tactical (PEO C3T) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, April 29. At the end of the program, Editor-in-Chief Nelson McCouch presented the annual ALTies awards for the best article, commentary, photo, graphic and advertisement, which were announced in the magazine’s April – June issue.
“Army AL&T magazine is almost entirely written by nonprofessional writers, most of whom are acquisition professionals and subject matter experts,” McCouch said. “That’s one of the reasons that the magazine is such a useful resource. But that’s also why we need the level of expertise we have on our very lean editorial staff. Our team does a remarkable job, day-in and day-out, helping these authors make their articles as good as they are. This magazine wouldn’t be the award-winning publication it is without their many contributions. That’s why I started this workshop three years ago—and why I started the ALTies awards, which honor each year’s best work.”
Attendees at the writer’s workshop included Tara Clements, editor for Access AL&T; Lawrence Grega, who explained how Army AL&T readers and contributors can use milSuite to magnify the impact of their content; and PEO C3T’s Argiro Sarantinos-Perrin.
In a sense, he continued, the writer’s workshop brings the editing and graphics staff to public affairs personnel and the writers to help them understand how the magazine works, how the magazine’s processes work and help them get their work published. “We have an extremely accomplished staff,” said McCouch. “In Peggy Roth and Steve Stark we have two published authors who really understand the craft. In Catherine DeRan, we have an extremely accomplished photographer and graphic artist who also does a wide variety of other things for the magazine,” he said. “Bringing together our staff with its contributors in a collegial atmosphere to talk about how we work and what we expect and need just makes good business sense.” For future workshops, he said he’s looking at the possibility of attendees earning continuous learning points.
Staff walked attendees through the magazine’s various processes and procedures, and emphasized the recently updated writers guidelines, which outline everything potential AL&T authors need to know to become contributors.
The guest speaker at the event was Military.com’s Kris Osborn, who has written multiple articles for the magazine and has an extensive background in defense and military journalism. Before moving to his current post, Osborn was a highly qualified expert and information liaison in Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology at the Pentagon. He has served as the land warfare reporter at Defense News, and has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and The Military Channel. In 2004, he spent three weeks embedded with the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, reporting from Tikrit, Baqubah and Baghdad as a freelance military reporter with the Washington Times.
Osborn said he was delighted to speak at the workshop because “AL&T magazine is an impressive publication that succeeds in combining academic sophistication with news-oriented journalistic rigor and clarity of expression,” he said. “The publication nicely captures and clearly articulates pertinent happenings in Army acquisition, science and technology.”
Military.com’s Kris Osborn (right) gave the keynote address at the writer’s workshop, which was led by Army AL&T Editor in Chief Nelson McCouch.
Lawrence Grega concluded the workshop with a discussion of the milSuite site (Common Access Card login required), a robust, user-centric multifunction tool available DOD-wide. Based on the JIVE platform and managed by PEO C3T, milSuite allows the DOD community to connect and collaborate. Grega elaborated on ways that Army AL&T magazine authors and readers can connect and magnify the impact of their content using the tool.
The ALTies
BEST ARTICLE
Winner: “Evolving Innovation”
LTC Joel Dillon, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology; Dr. Jason Augustyn, FutureScout LLC; Ms. Julia Kim, University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies; and Mr. Dominic Ju, Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation.
April – June 2014
Runner-up: “The Academic Angle”
COL Michael E. Sloane, MAJ Toby Birdsell and CPT(P) Tom Beyerl, Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier
April – June 2014
Runner-up: “Lessons Outside the Lines”
Mr. Thom Hawkins and Ms. Cheryl McCullough, PEO Command, Control and Communications – Tactical (PEO C3T)
October – December 2014
Runner-up: “Case in Point”
Mr. Michael V. Doney, Mr. William Salazar and Dr. Christina Bates, PEO Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors
January – March 2014
BEST COMMENTARY
Winner: “Time to Think”
Mr. Harry P. Hallock, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement
October – December 2014
Runner-up: “A Plan to Make—and Break”
Mr. Dale A. Ormond, then-director, U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command
April – June 2014
BEST PHOTO (TIE)
Winners: Toward Greater Interoperability
Nancy Jones-Bonbrest, PEO C3T
April – June 2014
Integrating Lessons
Amy Walker, PEO C3T
October – December 2014
Runner-up: In the Driver’s Seat
Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement
October – December 2014
BEST GRAPHIC
Winner: Quick-Change
Nick Bradley, PEO Soldier
April – June 2014
Runner-up: Drilling Down
PEO C3T
October – December 2014
BEST ADVERTISEMENT
Winner: Times Change
PEO Soldier
October – December 2014
Runner-up: Connecting Our Soldiers
PEO C3T
April – June 2014
Runner-up: Connecting the Global Force
Product Manager for Power Projection Enablers, PEO Enterprise Information Systems
January – March 2014
October – December 2014
Army AL&T’s Nelson McCouch presents the ALTie award for best photo to Amy Walker, PEO C3T. Walker shared the award with Nancy Jones-Bonbrest, also with PEO C3T.
The writer’s workshop slides are available here for download and make sure to visit our Flickr site to see the more photos from the event.
Access AL&T is the premier online news source for the Army Acquisition Workforce.
Click to Subscribe
