I received a very interesting and unique email last week regarding a LinkedIn group of which I’m a member. There are several things that make it fairly unique. For one thing, while this is not necessarily the first time, it still is very rare to receive a message of this nature via email sent specifically to me at one of my email addresses that is not in use or listed in or on my LinkedIn account/profile. Indeed, if any such message were to be sent out to an entire group or even, as in this case, just to “select” members of a group, it would almost always be done via LinkedIn’s messaging system. The fact that this was sent to me at a personal address not listed on my LinkedIn profile indicates it would likely be or in fact is a more pointed, personal and selective message to be sent only to certain “qualifying” entities and thus not to the entire group or even necessarily many in the LinkedIn group’s listed membership figures and members, as the group on LinkedIn doesn’t list a membership size anywhere close to the size mentioned in this email, nor does studying the listing of the members in the group on its LI page give an indication that many would be likely to receive a message of this nature. So, that’s fairly odd.

Another somewhat unique thing about this is during my 14 years on LinkedIn, I have been a member or am currently a member of a hell of a lot of groups — in a very diverse number of fields. Many of these have been at the invitation of members or group owners, while I also actually have not become a member of many groups I have been invited to join for one reason or another, often because I don’t feel it’s either a group I’m particularly interested in or perhaps necessarily qualified for. That being said, I have spent my entire life getting education, reading, studying, researching, discussing, engaging, writing about a TON of different things such that one might be inclined to say it’s simply nuts. Moreover, over the course of my lifetime, I have been or am currently a member of dozens of professional organizations, again with a wide disparity of professional specialties. If interested, I have listed on a Page tabbed at the top of this blog a fairly accurate list of Professional Organizations to which I belong. You can find it here. I don’t want to get too bogged down in this area because it isn’t the focus of this blog post, but you have to possess some measure of qualification to belong to most of them. Usually that entails one, two or more degrees in certain academic fields applicable to that organization as well as often 5-10 or even more years of experience in the field. And while some are fairly generous in defining their accepted qualifications, many of them are actually quite difficult to get into and some are what one might consider even “elite” and hence virtually impossible to get into for the majority of people, while many of them also are very narrowly focused and so the requirements are very narrowly defined, such as an organization for military special forces or electronic warfare experts or Foreign Service professionals (State Department), or physicists, etc. Some will basically take your word for it in listing specific degrees in specific subjects at specific named universities as well as specific job titles in specific companies or divisions of companies or federal agencies, etc. Many are tougher and will require evidence in the form of transcripts, proof of expertise or seniority within the industry they represent, and some require sponsorship from members or even actually multiple senior members. As such, one must go through a vetting process for many of these organizations, some of which are so thorough as to simulate or even be like a variation of a security clearance vetting, taking anywhere from 1-2 days to two weeks to 1-2 months, etc. Like I said, some are extremely selective. And like the LinkedIn groups, I didn’t necessarily request or apply to join and become a member of them all — I was invited. However, I often HAVE applied for membership with many, and to be perfectly candid, I have applied to quite a few where one might assume I wouldn’t meet the criteria at all and would thus be rejected. That makes sense. Common sense. After all, I’ve never officially been a Foreign Service Officer or worked for the State Department nor have I been a certified counselor and I’ve never been a professional scientist or physicist, or Air Force general, etc. Yet at the same time, I’ve never applied to an organization I felt I couldn’t prove I wasn’t practically or pragmatically qualified for. Just because I don’t officially have an Electrical Engineering degree doesn’t mean I didn’t spend four years at UCLA studying the material and pursuing a diploma only to not be able to finish and get the diploma because of unfortunately timed necessary geographical relocation, as well as having spent years working in that field. See? Qualified. Nor have I ever had a job where I had the official title of “Systems Engineer,” yet I’ve served in that function and filled that role one way or another in so many of my jobs at so many companies that I am actually a Senior Member of the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE)! And therefore to my shock at times, I’ve never been rejected when applying to any professional organization for which I felt I was qualified, despite a lack of a formal degree in the field or specific job title, etc., because my combination of education, work experience, research, publishing, knowledge, expertise in a large number of areas has apparently made up for the “deficiencies” one might presume regarding the more formal requirements. Still, I’ve been shocked plenty of times when admitted to organizations such as American Physical Society (APS Physics), Espionage Research Institute International (ERII) and the American Counseling Association (ACA) among others.

The purpose of the overly long preceding paragraph is meant to provide some context for the email message (or part of it) that I recently received from the group owner of one of the aforementioned LinkedIn groups of which I am currently a member. (At last glance, I’m currently a member in 96 LI groups, but have been leaving some because that’s just too many, so I’ve left probably 20+ more over the past year alone.) And so finally, one of the LI groups of which I’m a member is the Military Space Warfare Discussion Group (because, yes, that’s been one of my research and engagement areas for some time). The group, as listed on LI, doesn’t consist of too many members, so when I received the following email, I found it surprising, not only for what I’ve already shared, but because it literally gives a demographic/statistical breakdown of the 13,952 “hand-picked” members “with experience in Space Control and Space Domain Awareness (SDA).” I’ve literally never seen such a thing before, for any of these groups. Sure, you could stroll through the various member listings to see what, if listed, they do and in what capacity and for which entity (rarely listed in many of these groups), but who has the time for that? But as a person who has always loved stats, demographics, stuff like that, I got a real kick out of the data enclosed in the email. After the main body in the email there follows listings of various space warfare documents, files, doctrine, escalation ladders, etc., with links to numerous repositories of such. I won’t include that part of the email since it’s not intended for public viewing, but I’ll now post what seems like one of the more unique group/org emails I’ve ever received…

Wow! Wild, huh? And here’s something else that’s crazy: I actually have quite a few of the listed individuals as personal connections, in some cases for many years. And by a few, I mean a lot, from the bottom ranks to the very top (not only Joint Staff, but Joint Chiefs), Commander of US Army in Europe, Commander of US Army Pacific, Commander of NORAD, various Assistant Secretaries of Defense, many Assistant Secretaries of States and so on. Life is just surreal sometimes. I really have little more to say except that I think I’ll actually post a list of the LI groups to which I currently belong, in arbitrary order, just to show you how diverse and frankly wacky my professional interests are…

The LinkedIn Groups I’m A Member Of And The Number of Members They Have At The Time I Am Admitted To The Group The Present (1/20/2020):

1. EarthLink Alumni – 1,989
2. CSULB Alumni Association – 10,159
3. U of Tennessee Alumni Group-Official – 14,629
4. Queens University of Charlotte – 1,273
5. University of Tennessee, Knoxville – 23,024
6. Project Manager Network – 854,417
7. Society for Technical Communication – 11,738
8. NetworkTN – 9,613
9. Information Security Community – 398,124
10. Technical Writing & Content Management – 13,628
11. Entrepreneur’s Network – 60,675
12. Consultants Network – 462,708
13. IT & Software – 1,479
14. Information Systems Security Association– 55,539
15. IT Professionals – 224,675
16. Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI) – 110,311
17. USENIX Association – 3,145
18. Association of Old Crows – 10,920
19. Telecom & Wireless World – 7,643
20. Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) & Cyber Security – 61,354
21. COO Executive Group – 5,621
22. ISACA – 48,492
23. AFCEA International – 6,663
24. ASIS International – 100,050
25. US Nuclear Energy Foundation (USNEF) – 22
26. Cyber Intelligence Network – 31,403
27. Military Intelligence Group: China Region – 2,578
28. International Relations (IR) & Affairs Group – 100,479
29. China Studies Group – 4,731
30. The Intelligence Community – 71,801
31. Cyber Law & Information Security – 13,229
32. Quantum Computing – 6,838
33. Chief Executives | CEO, COO, CFO, CTO & CXO – 81,788
34. Cool Hand Nuke – 17,700
35. Foreign Policy Discussion Group – 4,282
36. Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning – 280,931
37. Quantum Mechanics/Physics/Theory/Leap/Computing Information Science! – 2,990
38. Executive Suite – 342,854
39. Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Saas & Virtualization – 493,061
40. IACD – Integrated Adaptive Cyber Defense – 1,040
41. Nuclear Security – 1,922
42. ACM Members – 14,763
43. Information Technology, FinTech, Blockchain and Bitcoin Innovation – 343,064
44. Chronic Pain Management Support – 10,042
45. Traumatic Brain Injury Support Group – 720
46. Nuclear Power – the next generation – 46,719
47. Asia Pacific Analysts, Consultants & Researchers Association – 2,144
48. IETF – The Internet Engineering Task Force – 8,630
49. Pittsburgh Penguins Fans – 2,487
50. Artificial Intelligence – 53,917
51. Cloud Security Alliance – 97,829
52. Strategic Planning Society (SPS) – 55,865
53. Big Data & Analytics – 378,331
54. HISTORY – Practical History – 14,000
55. Future Trends – 558,535
56. Data Science Central – 303,965
57. Nuclear Energy – 5,715
58. Machine Learning & Data Science – 103,342
59. Cloud Storage – 45,648
60. EW, Countermeasures – 2,206
61. European Commission – “External relations and foreign affairs” – 882
62. Defense & Aerospace – 138,691
63. The Virtualization & Cloud Computing Group – 97,535
64. Science, Technology & Innovation Policy – 27,423
65. Irregular Warfare Center of Excellence – 1,429
66. Robotics and Machine Intelligence – 6,934
67. Special Operations Research Association (SORA) – 345
68. Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) – 6,724
69. Business Intelligence Professionals (BI, Big Data, Analytics) – 244,491
70. Private Military & Security Contractors – 11,984
71. Digital & IT Strategy – 15,259
72. Business Analysis – 13,773
73. Neural Networks Club – 638
74. Global SOF Foundation – 3,800
75. APS Physics – 1,948
76. The Business Technology Forum – 44,185
77. INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY – 42,918
78. CHINA Debate – 1,233
79. IOSI: Counter-Terrorism & Geopolitical Security – 19,760
80. NeuroScience Network – 6,528
81. Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE) – 78,248
82. IEEE Systems, Man, & Cybernetics Society (SMCS) – 62
83. IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (IEEE RAS) – 23,225
84. Military Space Warfare Discussion Group – 188
85. Security, Intelligence & Risk Fusion Group – 363
86. IEEE Computational Intelligence Society CIS – 5,141
87. Technology & Society: the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) – 4,234
88. American Association of Political Consultants – 10,610
89. Creativity: Authors and Books | Artists and Paintings – 142,556
90. Politics, Diplomacy, Communication & Protocol (Think Tank) – 585
91. Sports Techie – 4,800
92. Business Analysis – 13,776
93. Defence IQ – 13,782
94. Aerospace & Security & Defence Technology & Business – 45,724
95. Space Situational Awareness – 730
96. Military History & Strategy – 10,838

FORMERLY A MEMBER OF (at least 22 more in the past two years):

• Knoxville Farragut HS Alumni
• Writing Professionals and Authors
• Network Chattanooga
• IT & Startups
• Online Sellers Community for eBay, Amazon,…
• Senior Executive Exchange
• The IT Entrepreneur
• Global Business Leaders
• Audiophile Enthusiast
• LinkEds & Writers
• Technical Writer Forum 
• Vinyl Record Collecting Network 
• Career Thought Leaders Consortium 
• Film & TV Tech Professionals 
• Positions for Scientists 
• Cybercrime Today 
• Technology Leaders Association 
• Chief Strategy Officer 
• Startup vs Corporate Innovation 
• Data Driven Drilling & Production 
• Advanced Clean Energy Summit 
• Technology and Society: the IEEE Society on Social Implication of Technology (SSIT) 

[If, for some reason, you would like to confirm this information, you can find the people I follow, companies I follow and LI groups of which I’m a member at the bottom of my LI profile, like everyone else’s:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottholstad/.]

[The top section of my LinkedIn profile…]