First Ever Milblogging Conference a Success

The first ever Milblogging Conference in Washington, DC was a success with many prominent milbloggers highlighting the many positive aspects of the military blogging community:

Overregulation of military weblogs by the defense officials will not only demoralize troops but also silence many of the military’s strongest advocates, a panel of leading bloggers said Saturday.

There’s a growing gap between people who have no contact with the military and people who have contact every day,said Scott Koenig, better known as the blogger L.T. Smash. and one thing we can do (to counter that) is tell our story, and tell it effectively, and tell it intelligently.

However, milbloggers also have their critics who’s complaints are mostly OPSEC oriented:

But the blogging experts also warned that servicemembers and military families who use weblogs must be vigilant in what they post, because carelessness could easily enrage military leaders and possibly risk lives…………..
Last week, Pentagon officials announced the Defense Science Board, a 40-member body that advises the Pentagon on technical and other matters, will study a host of online tools, including blogs, to determine the challenges they present to military readiness and morale.

In addition, in the last year each of the four services has also issued its own directive on troops posting pictures and stories online.

The military has recently began mandatory OPSEC training for all unit leaders in order to educate military leaders on this new virtual battle ground in the War on Terror. Terrorists are monitoring websites run by US soldiers in order to track the effectiveness of their terrorist attacks, to learn US tactics, and to find out information in order to plot future terrorist attacks against US military targets. Here is a cartoon that highlights the danger very well:

I don’t think the terrorists are going to find any useful information off this site because everything I post is from public sources anyway. The people that cause problems are those who take pictures of the inside of military facilities or equipment for example. What concerns the military brass the most are those who post about tactics such as how the military counters IED’s in Iraq on their webpage which terrorists can in turn read and learn from in order to modify their own tactics.

This recent OPSEC training did give me the excuse I needed to change my banner on my site to include a disclaimer that the military now encourages bloggers to have on their site. Any comments on the new banner? Do any of you out there like this banner or should I go back to the old one? Or does anyone have a better suggestion for a banner?

By the way I did receive an online invite to participate in the conference this weekend but unfortunately I was to busy this weekend to participate but hopefully I can do so in the future. The conference does appear to have been a great success in promoting the milblogging community.