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More than 7,00o tech professionals and military procurement officials convened this week at TechNet , the annual conference of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association . The event is one of the oldest conferences for military contractors (this was its 59th year), and also one of the most important, said Miriam F. Browning , a principal at McLean-based Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

If deals aren't quite hammered out on the trade show floor, Browning said, the seeds of contracts-to-come are certainly planted. It's where contracting executives polish their relationships with the folks behind the Pentagon's purse strings and check out the wares of partners and competitors.

The take-home message from TechNet this year is that -- because of issues like the one Coppola highlighted -- there is plenty of room for improvement in the military's networks.

The Pentagon is relying on private industry to help revamp its communication systems so the right information is available to the right person at the right time -- a push to create what military officials refer to as "network-centric" operations. The initiative calls for, among other things, the creation of a network that will allow service members from different branches of the military to access data from each other.

After a presentation on the initiative, Debra M. Filippi , a program director for the Defense Information Systems Agency , was asked if the Pentagon was open to suggestions from contractors. "There is always room for new ideas and new players," she responded. By the time Filippi stepped down from the podium, the line waiting to slip her a business card and make a fast pitch was 10 deep.

It looks as if things are picking up for ObjectVide o , the Reston video-surveillance company. Sales of ObjectVideo's software haven't boomed the way the firm's investors had hoped, but last week the company said that it was awarded a $3.2 million development contract with the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency and that today it will add a big name to its board of directors. ObjectVideo's executives are no doubt counting on their new director, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart , who served as commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), to bring in a few more government dollars.

Overheard:

"My second day as CEO, I said, 'Let's act bigger than we are on occasion,' and that has really captured people's imaginations," Kenneth C. Dahlberg , chief executive of Science Applications International Corp. told a crowd of 400 yesterday morning at a Northern Virginia Technology Council event. That's getting harder to do: The privately held SAIC has added 20,000 employees in the past five years -- pushing its total head count above 42,000.

Ellen McCarthy writes about the local tech scene every Thursday. Her e-mail address ismccarthye@washpost.com.