Wanted to pass on information from a recent announcement posted on the Defense Acquisition Portal that you may have seen: “The Defense Acquisition University (DAU) will host a one-day training symposium on Tue, 7 Apr 2015, at its Fort Belvoir campus (Scott Hall). The symposium is presented by the DAU Alumni Association (DAUAA) on behalf of DAU. The theme is “Achieving Dominant Capabilities through Technical Excellence and Innovation.” The forum will provide an opportunity for both government and industry acquisition professionals to receive training and perspectives on implementing the Better Buying Power (BBP) 3.0 initiatives of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Through a series of plenary and classroom training sessions, attendees will learn about such topics as Critical Thinking for Effective Acquisition Outcomes; Improving Interfaces between the Acquisition, Intelligence and Requirements Communities; Hands-on Implementation of Product Support – including a PBL Guidebook Tutorial; Incentive Contracting Tools and Techniques that Work; Second Annual PARCA Report on Performance of the Defense Acquisition System; DCMA – What’s working and What’s not with weapon systems development and production; and the Hirsch Research Paper Competition Presentation focusing on Improving Professionalism of the Total Acquisition Workforce. In a period of fiscal and technological challenges, the sessions will focus on learning hard skills, i.e., training in the latest USD(AT&L) policy, practices, and techniques that attendees can take back to the workplace and apply. The low-cost training symposium will take place from 8am–5pm and be fed via VTC to numerous DAU regional campuses and sites. The symposium provides five (5) Continuous Learning Points (CLP) for continued DoD acquisition certification.”

Note that this symposium will feature a 'Hands-on Implementation of Product Support' training session that regular readers of this blog should find compelling.