The Asia Pacific Civil-Military Centre of Excellence held its annual Civil-Military Interaction Seminar (CMIS) in Sydney, 7-10 November 2011.
With beautiful Sydney Harbour and its iconic bridge as a backdrop, participants representing 21 countries, the United Nations and the African Union were treated to presentations and case studies from a range of Australian and international speakers.
One session that attracted considerable interest was on how social media technologies can be used in international responses to natural disasters, armed conflict and complex emergencies.
Ms Heather Blanchard, Co-founder of CrisisCommons, USA and speaker at the seminar said: “Now more than ever, using social media during a disaster or crisis is a must do, rather than a nice to do.
“If you don’t listen to and communicate with the community you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. The conversation is happening around you; ignore it at your peril.”
Professor Bill Maley from the Australian National University, Australia also spoke at the seminar. His presentation was entitled: “Preventive Diplomacy: Past Practices, Future Opportunities”.
“Building the capacity of civilian and military actors to work cooperatively in disrupted states is a key challenge for modern governments,” Professor Maley said:
“The Civil Military Interaction Seminar is a brilliant example of how this can be done economically, effectively, and with genuine long-term benefit for Australia and its region.”
Technology also played a key role in supporting the proceedings. For the first time, the Centre used collaborative computer technology to capture ideas and comments during the conference which will feed into the final report. This approach was well received by participants and the Centre hopes to continue using the technology in future events.
Speaker slide presentations and photos of the proceedings have been published online and will be available as an ongoing resource. As with last year’s conference, nearly a dozen video interviews were recorded for the Centre’s YouTube channel. In addition over 400 ‘tweets’ were generated both by conference participants and their followers around the world on the conference Twitter hashtag #cmis11. Many of these resources have been compiled on Storify and are embedded below.
For the Centre, this year’s CMIS was particularly special as it was the last under the stewardship of Executive Director Mike Smith, who is retiring in early December.
A copy of the conference proceedings and outcomes will be published on the Centre website.
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