The Army Asks David a Good Quesiton

When I decided last week to make the theme this week Web 2.0, I got lucky. We are seeing movement on all fronts in both the Army and the Coast Guard, and now David Axe is running a great discussion based on an email sent to him by LTC Tony Burgess.

You will have to read the short post at David's to get everything in context, but I'm stealing the letter that sparks the conversation.

David:

I am on my way to Iraq to interview company commanders and platoon leaders. Over the last three weeks, we rolled out the new version of the professional forums and, as a direct impact of your articles, we are indeed calling the overall learning system “MilSpace.” We will be incorporating new features and capabilities at a rate of about one per month over the next year - in a process of continuous improvement. I just wanted to say thanks and to invite you to feed us additional ideas.

One question I would love to have you thinking about on our behalf is, “What is emerging at the cutting edge that we need to know about and/or consider integrating into the forums?”

Take care,

LTC Tony Burgess

at Ft Benning — on the way to Iraq

David has background on this Army initiative in his role as both a journalist and blogger here, here, and here. More information about “MilSpace” can be found here described as:

One way that leaders are connecting in conversation is through online professional forums (aka online communities) like the Company Command (CC) and Platoon Leader (PL) forums. These forums bring together leaders from across the Army to share ideas and experiences and to improve our collective effectiveness. The PL forum specifically also gives cadets at West Point and in ROTC unprecedented access to the ongoing conversation of the profession they are preparing to join. It is like having a four-year CTLT experience plugged into a living curriculum grounded in the cutting-edge, current experiences of actual platoon leaders.

The Center for Company-level Leaders (CCL) was established at West Point to be a support cell-a small team that exists as a catalyst for members of the profession to connect, to engage with each other, and to advance the profession. CCL serves company-level leaders as well as the cadets who are preparing to lead Soldiers now. In addition to developing and operating professional forums and otherwise connecting leaders across the Army in conversation about leading and growing combat-effective teams, the CCL provides the Army with research on leader development and organizational learning.

A lot more information at the Center for Company-level Leaders (CCL) website (also see PPT here). The last question is an interesting question, “What is emerging at the cutting edge that we need to know about and/or consider integrating into the forums?”

I have not fully caught up with what the Army is doing exactly, but this sounds like an IT project. This is my advice, keep it simple, stick to standard formats of information distribution, and build tools that support those IT standards. Avoid the traps of proprietary technologies, because as time goes on, proprietary technologies always evolve towards the standards to compete.

A few suggestions. First, the forum should have a ranking system so readers can vote on quality of content. As a veteran of online forums, I believe adding that rating system encourages better content, and I would promote the ranking system and encourage users to use it as a way to elevate better content. There are many good examples online where rating systems clearly work to the advantage of the community, two interesting but different models can be seen at Above Top Secret and DailyKos. Neither specific system may be the system the Army should use, but both serve as excellent examples.

I honestly believe blogging is sort of a trap for the services; some can do it, others not so well. It is very difficult for the services to directly support blogs because blogs are driven by opinion, and there is a legitimate concern regarding damage to ones career when giving a critical opinion. A photo blog, unit blog, or blog very specific to a topic are possiblilities, but I am unaware of a mature policy in any military service that would support an official blog or blogging netowrk.

With that said, I think the Coast Guard has it exactly right by promoting service members to engage the blogosphere through comments, and like the Coast Guard, I would make it transparent and require a disclaimer.

Second, distribute content with RSS or Atom, or both. If there is one Web 2.0 technology the services should use it would be social bookmarks, and by embracing the standard of RSS or Atom, military services can adapt to new technologies that adopt the standards in use. A server based, user authenticated portal that supports RSS/Atom for categorized internal and external content distribution to a supported standard like RSS, distributing content to both personal computers and PDAs, would be an easy and optimal way to leverage Web 2.0 information flow for the services. If a "MilSpace" type forum is distributing posts in RSS to a feed reader on a PDA able to account for the ranking system, I think the partisipation would be higher. If the same feed reader was also pulling content from an internal social bookmark system that had links to catagorized external, relevant content where a user had added a personal comment to the bookmark, that would also open up the content flow considerably. The social bookmark system should also leverage rankings.

A smart system would allow authenticated users to customize feeds to be delivered to their client reader. The purpose of a server based feed distribution system would be to cut down on bandwidth usage for new media, centralize the security model for external touch, and leverage a supported standards driven client system supported on multiple platforms including PDAs for the broad distribution of information. The higher the distribution potential, the more likely the system will generate partisipation.

The Army should avoid anything "cutting edge" not using standard formats like RSS or Atom. In that way the Web 2.0 system scales by simply adding support to new accepted standard formats, rather than requiring a new IT integration project for the forum everytime the next big thing comes along.

If you have suggestions, leave them in the comments here, or at David Axe's place.