Gig Eagle – Revolutionizing National Defense Through AI and Flexible Workforce Platforms

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Welcome GigEagle

Human Cloud welcomes GigEagle – the US Department of Defense’s AI-driven talent platform that revolutionizes how the nation connects talent with national security needs.

Each week we’ll be dropping new highlight videos until the final release.

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Full Series

Part 1: What is GigEagle? A whole of nation approach to collaboration using AI, digital networks, and agentic teaming.

GigEagle uses a LinkedIn style skills-based repository on the supply side and Uber like marketplace on the demand side to “make an instant call and find that talent to get that response”. The result, is hundreds of candidates in hours solving the toughest challenges, along with a search function to find the skills and people you need rather than always fishing (literally, throwing the rod; or job description, and waiting for a fish).

Why GigEagle? Whole of nation collaboration

“So, this is bold. This is big and bold. What we’re talking about here is whole of nation collaboration for national security. 

What if I said there’s a new operational threat that occurs, and we’ve never seen this before. How do we this?”

What is GigEagle? A mashup of Uber and LinkedIn to keep the nation safe.

“It’s different than ever before. Our job is to keep the nation safe. And that requires a high degree of competence at all times and staying current with the latest. And so what we’ve done here in GigEagle is designed DODs, the Department of Defense’s first AI-driven platform to match people to mission at speed. It’s never been done before in this specific way. And we’re breaking down a ton of stovepipes.

Think of it in some ways as a mashup of Uber and LinkedIn, right? That’s a way for national security concerns. So what you have on the LinkedIn side is a skills-based repository with a level of granularity that we didn’t have before. And then you take the marketplace that is Uber, the ability to make an instant call and find that talent to get that response. That’s awesome. And again, what I love about this is this isn’t some grand invention that came out of the military internally, this is applying and leveraging the best of commercial technology and then actually bringing in a few together and taking an orthogonal approach. And in a use case, that is national security. So I’m going to hold off on getting into the details on the aspirations, but that’s all this really is, is a different way to think about identifying and engaging talent.

And I think that it’s been more important than ever that we get it right. And so it’s a new approach that we’re finding very effective in Gig Eagle.”

Agentic Teaming

I want to introduce you to a concept that I call agentic teaming.

So you’re probably familiar, you know, this is the agentic era we’re in right now, which is the use of artificial intelligence to really act as an agent to allow you to do so much more. But what if we use that power for teaming? And so where we’re going with this, and this this to me is incredibly exciting, is now instead of saying, I want to match one to one for somebody, it’s not just a jobs board. What we’re building here is the ability to solve a problem. I don’t care if that’s one person or if that’s an entire team of people.

Because what I can do now with the use of artificial intelligence is say, okay, Meredith has updated all of her skills so I can see everything that makes her who she is and all those skills she’s developed over course of a career. And then I can see Paul, Paul has a whole different set of skills, but together, right, one plus one is three. And so I can understand that the capabilities from one person coupled with others can give me something that is incredibly new in a novel.

And when you put together, that is the concept of agentic teaming. All I put in is the end user. This is the problem I’m trying to solve. And then through GigEagle, eventually, you will be able to go and identify the skill sets that are necessary, understand how they come together. Perhaps, ideally, I think we’re going to be getting there too, is you add in the effective demeanor. So, hey, Paul, you’ve taken a test when you joined the military to say, just give me some help me understand who you are as a person it takes into consideration. it’s not just cognitive, but it’s social emotional as well, because there’s a teaming concept. And then you can literally say, these are the components of what Mike asked for as a deliverable. And some of them can be done, can shoot out, get people to sign up, and they can provide components of that. If it’s a deliverable, if it’s, know, maybe sometimes it’s in person, sometimes it’s not, maybe to document, maybe to briefing, maybe say I need you to drive a truck. It doesn’t really matter.

The point is you have the flexibility to create entire teams of that can generate outputs and bring that back to the user in one fell swoop. So, I mean, it’s just the way you think about operations changes completely through the concept of agentic teaming.

Part 2: What are the results of GigEagle? From AI to in person disaster relief in hours.

GigEagle uses a LinkedIn style skills-based repository on the supply side and Uber like marketplace on the demand side to “make an instant call and find that talent to get that response”. The result, is hundreds of candidates in hours solving the toughest challenges, along with a search function to find the skills and people you need rather than always fishing (literally, throwing the rod; or job description, and waiting for a fish).

In under a few years, the US now has the power to access skills from translation to AI

I think the coolest thing to me is just really seeing the platform in action and seeing how we’ve gone in the span of less than a couple of years, really.

We have seen just these incredible talents and have brought them to bear for problems that we want to solve that are complicated, that are hard.

We’ve filled interpreter gigs for European command for specialized language skills. We’ve found software developers who have worked on an AI project for the Air Force just recently, and that’s now deployed. And so just seeing the platform bring its value proposition to the Department of Defense and know that we have such a long way to go, we have so much more that we can do.

How to generate hundreds of candidates in hours

Right before Hurricane Milton hit, we said, let’s test the platform. What can we do? And so we created a community and we looked for people with relevant skill sets, be it engineering or even people who could drive heavy equipment and who are located near the southeast, because you could put a geographical boundary in the platform. And we said, OK, let’s create a list of these folks. And then using the platform, we could engage them. We could actually send them text messages. We could email them as well. And so we sent text messages and said, who would be interested if it becomes a big issue in supporting a reconstitution or a cleanup of affected areas? And we got hundreds of responses within hours. I mean, this was immediate. This took the team, I don’t know, a couple of hours, less than that, to build and just to fine tune and then hit a button, it goes out to everybody. And then hundreds of people coming in saying, yes, we want to support this. That’s mind blowing.

Part 3: How does GigEagle fit into the bigger picture of work? It unlocks innovation, shatters myths, and rewires the contingent talent landscape.

How does GigEagle fit in the broader conversation about work? It highlights how the shift to flexible talent isn’t an incremental “HR Tech” trend, but a fundamentally new standard for how organizations and individuals work.

This new standard is flexibility over full time, and flexible talent networks over traditional HR and recruiting. GigEagle signals an inflection point that flexible talent is ready for the riskiest of environments.

Creating the next innovation

One of the reasons I got goosebumps when we first met last year was because when we looked at the past 50 years of innovation, I would argue the greatest invention since fire was the internet, right? That was incredible. And it built the stage for every next wave. if you look at compute, if you look at mobile, if you look at all the different waves, that was built off the internet.

Now, what you’re doing, I believe, could potentially be the next innovation, the next wave, which is literally people and how to organize people.

And we always talk about it as a better talent strategy to make money. But the way you talk about it is so much cooler and higher. This is a problem solving model to use today’s technology and today’s future technology to be the best damn problem solvers in the world. And this is how we’re going to move a country forward and bring our people along because listen, this is the best place in the world to be an entrepreneur, right? So you’re literally creating the next internet, I fully believe.

The Flexible Workforce Isn't "Temp to Hire"​

“These aren’t temp to hires. That’s still that’s that’s that’s only getting you like a tip toe step out of the traditional way of working, because everybody’s had to to hire forever. This is tapping into that expertise that MIT professor or whatever might that really honed expertise that you just don’t have sitting around in your organization waiting for a chance to work on that next project.”

The myth that you can pick up the phone and find the right talent compared to leveraging a digital network

The myth is, hey, if I need the talent, I’ll just pick up the phone. I know people, right?

And I’m thinking, and especially now, because we’re looking at this platform that is built out, and we have thousands of people on it, and we can see the skills.

And it is mind blowing. I you can just type in random, do random searches, right? And you’re going to find expertise you had no idea. And so the thought, yes, we all have networks, and as we get more senior, maybe they’re even larger. But in no way do you have a sense of what’s out there.

And once you see that, when you put that assumption, that myth to the test, and you say, well, pick some random skill, and you see it pop up, and it’s someone in a different service, and you just had no idea. That to me is, time and time again, when we show the demo, that’s what comes and said, I had no idea that it was that powerful.

Part 4: How can leaders "win with learn from GigEagle and apply military grade technology to their talent strategy?

How can your organization learn from GigEagle and take a military grade approach to talent? Introducing the Skyscraper approach.

The Skyscraper approach means making the perfect skyscraper by building each floor for it’s purpose. Here are examples of two floors in GigEagle.

1. A military spouse floor, specifically they’re building SOAR – Spouse Opportunity Access and Recognition.
2. C-suite leaders in the reserve.

Building flexible talent pools is like building a skyscraper

Imagine you’re building a skyscraper, and this is the superstructure. Every single floor that goes up, you can decorate in a different way, it can have a different purpose. And once you get that understanding of, my gosh, let me give you an example.

Military spouses is one floor. We’re actually working with OSD, Office of the Secretary of Defense for Personal and Readiness right now to build up one of those floors. We’re calling it SOAR, which is Spouse Opportunity Access and Recognition. So this community for military spouses to put in their skills so they can find employment as they’re moving around.

That’s awesome, but that’s very different than the other floor, which is leaders who are strategic, who understand the operational environment, and who bring in private sector experience. So guess what we did? We created a floor, we called a community, and we said, find me C-suite leaders who are in the reserve. Boom, hundreds. And you say, wait a second, I have hundreds of people who are in this C-suite in their private sector now can come in as we’re going through. Wow. Mind blowing. What would you have to pay in their private sector jobs? And now you can bring them onto the government and pay them as military folks.

Carving new pathways to enable the right talent to work on your problems

I will tell you that what really resonates and has I’ve seen people get really excited about Matt, you being one of them is this concept of carving new pathways for Americans to serve the country. Many people join the military, but not everyone does. And so the concept that we could begin to leverage America’s best talent and apply that to national security is one that I think every American can get behind. And so where we’re really starting is of course in the Department of Defense and using commercial technology to uncover the latent potential that we have in the department. And so we started in the reserve component. Those are members of the reserve and the national guard who have civilian skill sets who have experiences outside of their military specialty code.

So if you think of someone like Paul, who is a Navy Intel analyst, but also works for Human Cloud and has this breadth of experience that is not captured by our military personnel systems, it’s not in our data, right? So Gig Eagle gives us the opportunity to leverage Paul in ways that we may not otherwise be able to. We might not see that, we would never know it.

So if you think of a department of three million people and the problem sets that we have to solve in our current strategic competition threat environment, you have problems, you have talent, and that talent is often available somewhere in the department, but we don’t know that, and we can leverage that if we can see it. So Gig Eagle and the technology that we’re leveraging gives us the opportunity to kind of unleash that data or harness that data, depending on how you want to think of it.

But really, just to bring that to the problems we have at speed, make those matches and solve these problems at speed.

I’ll give one example that I think I’m pretty excited about that I was just interacting with the other day. Air Force reservist E5, in his military job is a medical tech. And on the civilian side is a data scientist. so headquarters space force was looking for someone in the S6, so that’s like their communications IT department to come in and provide, you know, some additional work for data work that they’re doing. So they found this Air Force Reservist E5 on Gig Eagle, immediately said, this looks awesome, connected with him, made the match, and now he’s working for Headquarters Space Force on a gig via Gig Eagle. So that is really the power of the platform and the power of this concept.

Part 5: How GigEagle is a radical recalibration of opportunity.

Matthew explains how GigEagle, and how every organization, can unlock a radically new recaliboration of opportunity.

Talent platforms are a radical recaliboration of opportunity

I’m going to call this pillar a radical recalibration of opportunity. And what I mean by that is, as an American, and I’ve lived all over, what’s unique about being an American is that no one cares where you came from, what your last name is. Literally nobody cares. But you need the opportunity to show that you’re gonna work your ass off and that you can create impact. And when I was 12, 13, 14, 15, you name it, I would be screaming for, hey, Gig Eagle is gonna give me an opportunity to serve my country and prove that I can work my ass off. 

What you’re doing is literally a radical recalibration of opportunity in a way that no other country enables their citizens to have this level of opportunity.

Stakeholders

Brigadier General Michael McGinley

Google | Director, GigEagle

Full Bio

Matthew Mottola

Human Cloud CEO, Author, Investor, Advisor on the future of work

10+ years of captivating Fortune 500 executive teams, investors, entrepreneurs, and policy leaders. From Saudi Arabia, to San Francisco, to Singapore, Matthew has made flexible work concepts simple, tactical, and impactful across 50+ stages and 10+ countries.

Past Keynotes

Major Meredith Kirchoff

Communications Lead, GigEagle | USAF Reservist

Full Bio

Tony Buffum

Human Cloud's Head of Enterprise Strategy, CHRO, Ex Upwork, FLIR Systems, Stanley Black & Decker, GE

20+ years of empowering HR practitioners to challenge the status quo, embrace technology and be champions of change that impacts talent and performance throughout the organization.

Full Bio

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