WM Coastie: Underway

Veteran bloggers can tell you that there is no real "right way" to get started. It's the real beauty of blogs: that their purpose, and ours in writing them, is to communicate personally and directly with our virtual community. Enter WM Coastie. We are students, instructors, and advisors at Coast Guard Auxiliary Detachment 054-06-07 at The College of William and Mary. We hope to make this a forum for discussion with communities in which we operate: students on campus, the Coast Guard and Coast Guard Auxiliary beyond our walls, and the public that our students are preparing to serve. We will speak openly and directly, taking up both deep issues and passing matters over which we can all connect. Ours is a training environment, so we hope that you will speak back and join our discussion.

We already have great examples to follow. The Coast Guard is rapidly becoming a leader, a true innovator, in the social media revolution. Led by our Commandant, Admiral Thad Allen, who communicates with coasties at throughout the organization through his own blog, our service is increasingly embracing the "flat world" paradigm that sites such as Facebook and Blogger have helped to create. The Detachment is preparing to launch its own Facebook page--we'll keep you updated--so make sure you click through and "become a fan" as soon as our members have that put together. And, finally, we have the great inspiration of our shipmates in Seattle, who we met on the floor of the Coast Guard Innovation Expo last week. They were live-blogging the three-day long event and posting to YouTube as soon as new footage was shot. The Expo featured them, and they featured us. Thanks for the free publicity!

...So, with this first post, we are underway. We hope you'll follow along and join the conversation.