DARPA Confab has good news story to tell.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Technology Tomorrow - Conference notes

* The defense industry conference formerly known as DARPATech made a return in September, although with a different name and on a smaller scale.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency once put on that big splashy--and probably very expensive to produce --show about every two years. It was last held in Anaheim in 2007. Its main purpose was to put program managers on stage to communicate their needs to potential research-and-development partners. Hopeful contractors could also schedule private meetings with PMs to pitch their ideas.

Recruiting new program managers, who normally serve at the agency for only a few years, was another big part of the program. "Come join us," was a constant refrain from the podium.

DARPATech fell out of favor at the agency with smaller industry days now used to communicate its needs to potential contractors.

In September, DARPA held the "Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum" in St. Louis, its first conference of this size in eight years.

The three-day symposium and exhibition attracted Defense Secretary Ash Carter as a keynote speaker along with a sold-out crowd of 1,400 from research labs, companies and universities. Other speakers included experts from inside and outside the agency, who gave five-minute TED Talk-style presentations about cutting edge technologies.

The tone at this conference--streamed live on the Internet and archived on YouTube for anyone to watch--seemed markedly different. There was little about DARPA's technology wish list and more about what it's doing now and its accomplishments.

(It must be agency policy that DARPA's involvement creating the Internet be mentioned whenever the director makes a public speech.)

Indeed, the agency, which most Americans probably have never heard of, has made a profound impact in their everyday lives with the Internet and its early investment in what would be GPS serving as two of the most well-known examples.

Director Arati Prabhakar in her keynote speech said there are some 200 DARPA programs at any given time--many of them classified. The agency's purpose remains to "make the pivotal early investments in breakthrough technologies to create huge new possibilities for national security," she said.

DARPA's other notable successes making these early investments include stealth and precision-guided bombs. Yet many of these investments made for and by the Defense Department do end up serving a greater good. Several such technologies in development were...