For a long time, when the question has been raised online “Where is the Air Force blogosphere?”, the answer has been associated with the sound of crickets. Today while reading an excellent discussion put forth by George Smiley at In From the Cold, a spook blog many have long considered a lone Air Force blog lost in the wilderness online, George highlighted two interesting discussions.
Apparently back in December, Global Nerdy and Web Ink Now happened across a UFO in the blogosphere. Using a highly classified radar system that can apparently track stealth online, they have made positive identification… it’s the Air Force! David Meerman Scott at Web Ink Now captures a summery of what’s going on.
Capt. Faggard and his Air Force Emerging Technology team is responsible for developing strategy, policy and plans for an ever-changing communication landscape for communicators worldwide. What was most interesting is that with Capt. Faggard leading the way, the Air Force employs 330,000 communicators! Their mission is to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public. Yes, that’s right, the goal of the program is that every single Airman is an on-line communicator.
Global Nerdy has a very interesting PDF flow chart available online called Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment V.2. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth a look. I wish Capt. Faggard and his team success, because it looks like they have an interesting training model of a service wide information campaign infrastructure in development. I would also encourage Captain Faggard to carefully consider the advice and criticism offered by George Smiley.
While the service’s move into social media is commendable, the USAF remains somewhat ambivalent towards the blogosphere, and participation by its personnel. Less than a year ago, the Air Force blocked access to virtually any independent site with “blog” in its web address. That means that USAF members can’t access most military or defense blogs–including this one–from their computers at work.
According to the Air Force, the ban isn’t aimed at specific blogs. When the service switched to BlueCoat web filtering in early 2008, the new software blocked almost anything that contained blog as part of its URL. The system is flexible, allowing network monitors to override restrictions imposed by the software. But, at last report, the USAF’s general restrictions on workplace blog access remained in place.
Workplace standards for internet access are important to every organization, and given the complete absence of a truly networked Air Force blogosphere (at least that I am aware of), I can see why the Air Force has taken an ambivalent approach towards blogs. As a blog network emerges with consistent analysis and discussion of professional Air Force topics, I think we will see the Air Force adjust policy accordingly.
And that last point is key. All of the military services have taken a unique approach to Web 2.0 technologies, including blogging, but there are a lot of factors that go into why each approach is different. The reason we see so much activity in the Coast Guard and Air Force public affairs offices towards Web 2.0 is because unlike the Army and Navy, the Coast Guard has a relatively small blogosphere right now and the Air Force blogosphere is non-existent. Those services have to develop their own networks, where organizations like CHINFO don’t, they have a large number of Navy bloggers already doing the work of getting accurate information with integrity out to the masses, including via the USNI blog.
Why should the Army reinvent the wheel? The Small Wars Journal already covers both sides of the major ground forces strategic debates with integrity, and both services also enjoy the advantage of thousands of veterans who blog in a variety of aspects of interest.
However, with independent operators handling the role of Web 2.0 communications in the information space for Army and Navy, those services face an entirely different set of challenges for the Public Affairs Offices in dealing with Web 2.0. It will be very interesting to see looking back in a decade which model paid the most dividends for the services, or if it even mattered. Does having the Public Affairs Offices engaged directly in the Web 2.0 process have benefits? Does it have disadvantages yet unforeseen? Does having independent operators doing that work for the Public Affairs Offices in the Web 2.0 space add significant value to the work, or less value?
It may not even matter. While a lot of people suggest the Information Age is old hat and the services are moving too slow in the Web 2.0 space, I would note that we are still in the very early stages of the communication phase of the Information Age. During this communication phase a rapid evolution of social networking tools is taking place, and it may not be fiscally responsible for any service to invest too much in any single technology yet. From 2001 to 2009 the tools available to the services have literally evolved from IRC coordination of two military campaigns (very interesting read PDF format) to the potential of a couple of BloggingHeads holding a conversation about the NOC 09 release sharing what impresses and what doesn’t.
In 2000, I was very comfortable with my limited action pay-by-the-minute cell phone, but less than a decade later I don’t know how I’d get through the day without checking my email and surfing the internet on my Blackberry. In 2015, when you hit the link on my blog to call me directly on my pocket video phone, we talk face to face for 20 minutes, and I turn around and call my blog to upload new content as a result of that conversation, I’d wager the way the content is distributed from the blog is different than today too.
Image created by me
