I am working on a conference paper that explores the use of Web 2.0 technologies to support distributed training exercises that are driven by computer simulations (imagine the movie War games, but with people playing their roles). I have founda number of very useful things in teh Web 2.0 toolkit. But as I piece them together to cover all of the jobs that need to be done I am finding that many tools overlap and that there are a number of spaces that are not covered at all. Lets look at some examples.

Training exercises begin with planning meetings to define the tasks that will be trained, where it will be held, which units will participate, and which simulations will be used. The products of these face-to-face meetings are generally captured in MS Office documents that are then passed around via email to the various participants. You can see a number of Web 2.0 tools jumping into this right away. First, we could hold the meetings virtually using WebEx, Adobe Breeze, or Second Life. Second, we could capture the info in Google Docs that are shared online or post it to a Wiki. Third, for geographic information like the layout ofthe scenario we could use a Google Maps mashup. Fourth, the schedule of simulated events could be planned out in Google Calendar or in a spreadsheet at Google Docs.

For this initial phase I used a lot of Google tools. Things like facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube, and Flickr come in later once the simulation starts running and people start playing their role. That are is much more complex and still in the works.

The coverage of Web 2.0 tools on this specific problem area looks like a mosaic. There is a lot of promise there, but a lot of missing pieces too. Below is the Abstract I have written for the paper. I'll give you more details later.

ABSTRACT: Web 2.0 and Warfighter Training

Simulation-based training has always wrestled with issues concerning user interfaces, collaboration, networking, standardization, and interoperability. These problems have often been more advanced than the issues faced in the business IT and C4I communities. As a result we have developed a culture in which we develop our own software, hardware, and networking solutions. However, recent advances in fields like computer gaming have shown that commercial technologies can become the basis for simulation systems. Over the last two years consumer IT applications have emerged that share many of the goals and provide interesting solutions to problems very similar to those of the interactive simulation community. These applications have been grouped under the label “Web 2.0” and include social networks, wikis, blogs, web tagging and sharing, photo and video sharing, and new tools for personal 3D game development. The Web 2.0 label usually refers to an application that allows users to create, publish, and share their own content. It creates a 2-way relationship between users of the web, rather than the 1-way relationship typical of traditionally published web sites and services.

Web 2.0 companies are creating tools which answer important problems around distributed, interoperable, interactive, user centered experiences. This paper identifies many of these applications, defines useful categories for them, and illustrates valuable applications in simulation and training. Just as computer games brought powerful commercial technologies to military training, the Web 2.0 generation of applications has similar potential which is not yet generally recognized. The goal of this paper is to begin a dialog on the usefulness and adoption of these technologies within the interactive simulation community.