Greetings from the conference "Australia US Alliance Conference in Canberra Australia-US: The Alliance in an Emerging Asia" being held in Canberra today (and streamed live online): http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/06/australia-us-alliance-conference-in.html
The conference was opened by John Berry, United States Ambassador to Australia. Also speaking will be Julie Bishop, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Johnston, Minister for Defence, Tanya Plibersek, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, as well as assorted generals and former generals. The organisers of the conference have invited Tweeting with hashtag #Alliance21 and the event is being streamed and some speakers are by video-conference from the USA. However, apart from that the event is relatively low-tech and very highly structured. This contrasts with the high-tech events I attend which have the technology more integrated and are more interactive and fluid. I suggest that event organisers need to incorporate some un-conference features to make the events more interesting and productive. The same online working approach is also one which the US and Australian defence forces are yet to learn. The Internet is now a primary field for warfare, both in terms of direct cyber-warfare, attacking systems online and in terms of propaganda campaigns. Wars can now be lost by not defending online systems and by not being able to present a credible online threat to deter attack. Wars can also be lost by not being able to present the appropriate perceptions via social media. Worryingly other nations have shown more interest in cyber-warfare and even small terrorist organisations have shown greater ability to use the Internet to further their views online than have the USA and Australia. More at: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/06/australia-us-alliance-conference-in.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
