Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Glenn Bischoff

I try not to have too many rules regarding how I live my life. It's not that rules are bad. It's just that I have a difficult time following them, so I tend to prefer guidelines. However, there is one hard-and-fast rule to which I adhere, and that is to watch any documentary produced by Ken Burns. Right now, I'm watching The War, an exhaustive look at World War II through the eyes of four disparate American towns.

While watching, I began to think of Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded the Allies in the European Theater. While the buck clearly stopped at his desk, Eisenhower, like most good leaders, often relied on input from expert advisers.

Although he didn't always follow that advice — for instance, his bitter disagreement with Gen. Omar Bradley over how to best push the advance into Germany resulted in the ill-fated Operation Market-Garden, which claimed more than 18,000 Allied casualties — Eisenhower well understood that knowing what is happening in the field is crucial to forming effective strategies.

It works in a similar fashion — albeit on a much smaller scale — in the magazine business. Which is why I am pleased to announce the formation of the MRT Editorial Advisory Council, listed in the masthead to the right.

You might notice that many of the members hail from the public-safety sector. There's a good reason for this. Over the past four years, MRT has evolved into a publication focused on communications technologies for the homeland security, public-safety and public-service sectors. We are dedicating even more resources, attention and effort to these vital sectors and what we like to call “urgent communications.”

The first step is the formation of the council. I'm looking forward to working with each of them to make MRT even more valuable to its readers.

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