University Park, Pa. -- To the thousands of U.S. Army officers serving in Iraq, Steve Schweitzer and Pete Kilner are life savers.
Doctoral students at Penn State and majors in the U.S. Army, the men are two of four founders of CompanyCommand.com, a Web site where veteran commanders are sharing practical information from how to respond to ambushes to what medical equipment soldiers need in the field.
The advice, say officers who have posted comments, has saved lives.
Schweitzer in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is the programming brains behind the site's infrastructure and maintenance. Kilner who writes and edits content for the site is enrolled in the College of Education's Instructional Systems program.
"Today's Army is changing so fast, that people at the high end don't always know the best practices because they haven't lived it," Schweitzer said. "We provide people who are doing the same job in different places the ability to communicate. That's incredibly valuable."
The site was born about four years ago at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, where the four founders had teaching assignments. While the four have different military and educational backgrounds -- Schweitzer is a pilot with aerospace degrees, Kilner served as an infantry commander and has a graduate degree in philosophy -- and had different postings, they realized they had a common goal.
They wanted to share what they as company commanders had learned about everything from how to counsel soldiers and interact with their families to how to plan and conduct their units' training to develop better leaders. And they wanted to share those insights in an ongoing conversation.
"Our assumption is the expertise that will make our Army successful resides in the minds of our leaders and can be accessed and shared through conversation," Kilner said. "People learn in conversation, in the process of articulating their experiences."
CompanyCommand.com is far more than a chat room. As well as Q&A discussion forums, the site contains video clips, book reviews, command-based scenarios, peer mentors, interviews and quizzes.
Networking between officers is as common in the Army as in the corporate world. But putting a professional forum online was new, so initially the founders created the site on their own time and with their own money. CompanyCommand.com now has the Army's blessing and support.
It also has won accolades. In 2002, CompanyCommand.com received the Army's Most Innovative Knowledge Management System award and was also selected as one of the "Fast 50" innovative companies by Fast Company Magazine.
The Army's recognition that the site's peer-to-peer networking has powerful learning potential also is evidenced by the founders' current postings: All four officers are permanent professors at West Point and are currently in doctoral programs (the other two are enrolled at George Washington University).
Recently, CompanyCommand.com was featured in the Washington Post and on CNN for providing officers' first-hand accounts of Iraqi conditions, what Post reporter Thomas Hicks characterized as "an alternate history of the Army's experience...one that is often grimmer than the official accounts of steady progress."
That publicity resulted in a huge jump in readership -- from about 1,000 visits to 10,000 visits a day -- so the group decided to limit access to the site to military professionals to preserve commanders' candid accounts. The decision was the founders', not the Army's, Schweitzer and Kilner asserted.
CompanyCommand.com also is the focus of Schweitzer's and Kilner's doctoral research. A self-described technical designer, Schweitzer wants to figure out what core features and enhancements will best facilitate online conversation to benefit the organizations as well as the community's participants.
"I did it, I did it successfully, but I had little idea of how it worked," Schweitzer said. "Now I'm getting the theoretical background."
Kilner's focus is on how to design and facilitate better learning experiences whether in online professional forums, face-to-face seminars or classroom environments.
"CompanyCommand.com is a place where leaders can connect and converse with their peers -- that wins battles and brings soldiers home alive," Kilner said. "When committed professionals come together and share what they know, when every conversation is a learning opportunity, great things happen."
For photos of Steve Schweitzer and Pete Kilner, visit http://live.psu.edu/still_life/2004_03_05_companycommand/index.html