Publish with Us
Disruptive Thinkers, a tribute to the organization’s original name, is a media platform curated by the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. It seeks to inspire, connect, and empower people in the national security community in order to promote a culture of innovation. There are lots of ways to contribute.
We built this blog to share ideas — our ideas and yours. Some content is generated as a way of keeping people informed about various goings-on, your typical organizational blog, but we want as much as possible to be based on ideas from the DEF community.
One trend that emerged around the same time as DEF was decreased barriers to entry for collaboration by individuals anywhere in a bureaucratic organization. Military bloggers and civilian counterparts demonstrated that people can and should be able to share their perspectives to better those around them and their mission, and doing so in writing has multiple benefits.
Some people have been writing since they could pick up a pen — others have incredible ideas, but may not know the first place to start when trying to share them with others (or may be intimidated by the process of getting published).
Regardless of where you may be in your writing journey, or how you feel about it, we are here for you. To better explain what you can expect, here are some general questions and answers.
✅ What Gets Published?
- We’re looking for content that helps people tackle challenges and build community across the national security enterprise — this means not just those in the military or intelligence organizations, but many related fields. Don’t count yourself out if you think this might be you!
- Because this is a DEF blog, we expect that anyone who submits is part of the community; if you found this post and are interested, but not yet part of the virtuous insurgency, it’s free and easy to join.
- We’ve found that graphics are important (pictures, GIFs, videos). Aside from making your work look better, it will be easier to read when chunks of text are more broken-up. Not sure where to start? We can help.
- While we deliberately have no requirement for word count, a good rule of thumb is to shoot for 500 to 1000 words. If it makes sense, we may split a longer article into two or more shorter articles.
- We always encourage writers to ask for help from a friend, co-worker, or family member prior to submission. We help with editing, but are also volunteers, so the more work done the work up front, the easier to publish.
🚫 What Doesn’t Get Published?
This outlet is by and for the DEF community. That means a few things, which we’ve simplified into “no-go territory”:
- We will not publish anything inconsistent with our mission (promote a culture of innovation in the U.S. national security community) or values (action-oriented, agile, decentralized, inclusive, people-focused).
- We will not publish work that promotes a specific commercial product or service (our goal is to spread ideas, not ads) or that degrades or attacks anyone (it’s easy to be angry, we want you to get creative).
Got something that doesn’t violate either of those simple conditions? Great!
Other Things to Know 👌
Articles are also shared with DEF followers on social media and other communication channels, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and The Dispatch, our email newsletter.
We typically include a short biography about the author at the bottom of a post to help people get to know them and connect on social media. Once your piece is getting ready to publish, we’ll be looking for that from you.
We can include any necessary bylines, and will also append a brief explainer at the very end (like the one at the bottom of this post) that talks about what DEF is and how people can get involved.
How Do I Get Started? 🏁
We want to hear from you! Even if you’re not sure what you’re doing, but you have an idea you want to explore, our hope is to help put more ideas out there for people to connect with in changing culture.
Let us know your ideas, questions, or concerns in the comments, or email us at hello@def.org.
Already have an idea or ready to submit? Give us a shout on the form below to get the ball rolling.
Happy Writing! 😃
The Defense Entrepreneurs Forum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that inspires, connects and empowers people by convening events, forging partnerships and delivering tangible solutions. Our mission is to promote a culture of innovation in the U.S. national security community.
If you are a civil servant, military member, academic, entrepreneur, policymaker, or technologist (or just find the idea of helping solve tough problems enticing), we’d love to have you join the DEF Community!
