JBLM Facebook Town Hall to go live Thursday

  • Published
  • By David Poe
  • Northwest Guardian
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. --  Morning formations have been sources of information for military members for generations. At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the largest military installation on the West Coast, it would take Seattle's CenturyLink Field to house a community-wide formation, or just a Facebook account.

As pleasant as the Seahawks' and Sounders' home field might be, Col. Thomas Brittain, JBLM garrison commander, and his leadership team have chosen the second option as the venue to solicit feedback from the garrison's customers: Everyone who lives and works on JBLM.

Facilitated by the JBLM Public Affairs Office, Brittain will host a Virtual Town Hall Meeting Thursday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The commander said he hopes those who join him in cyberspace will both like and "like" the virtual effort, a first for the installation.

"Social media provides us with an excellent tool to interact with the members of our community," he said. "This virtual town hall meeting will allow us to speak directly to servicemembers and their families, answer their questions about the support they receive from the base and give them the opportunity to raise issues for our consideration. That's a very powerful capability, and we hope it provides our base and our community members with an effective tool for communication and information exchange."

JBLM leaders from across the garrison directorates, emergency services, family and morale, welfare and recreation (including Army Community Service) and public works, will be some of the experts virtually on hand to field questions from the audience.

JBLM Public Affairs Officer J.C. Mathews said though virtual town hall planning has been underway since November, last month's inclement weather highlighted the value of constructive communication through a popular social media cornerstone such as Facebook.

"Over a five-day period during the storm we reached 37,000 'unique users,'" Mathews said. "That's immensely powerful. There's no other button we can push on this installation that will do that."

He also credited command teams at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Benning, Ga., for showing that Facebook town halls can work. The west Texas installation welcomes guests in the thousands to its monthly Facebook town halls.

"Other installations have done this very successfully," Mathews said. "We're getting to the point where we feel comfortable enough with the medium to take this next step."

With everything JBLM's leaders feels a virtual town hall can be, they haven't lost sight of what it can't be. Issues that involve particular units and chain of command policies and decisions won't have a platform for this social media event. Nor will the town hall be a forum for airing of political views about national policy, the war or the upcoming elections.

The Thursday town hall will address installation services matters only.

"We'll have a fairly strict moderation policy in place, and we'll take immediate steps to ensure that the town hall doesn't get hijacked by national political or policy discussion," Mathews said. "We want this to be a productive discussion of the services provided by the garrison, everything from housing to recreation facilities to how law enforcement operates. We won't have unit commanders on the line answering questions about their units, but we do hope they and their Soldiers are participants, since they're one of our most important customer bases."

How to get involved:

Facebook users should connect with JBLM's Facebook page (facebook.com/JBLMGarrison) to take an active role in the online session, yet that's not the only way to participate. Brittain and the team will also be fielding questions emailed to jblm.townhall@us.army.mil. Email questions must be sent prior to the meeting.