[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: Blogging Systems

• To: "'lauren@t...'" <lauren@t...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Blogging Systems
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 09:00:48 -0500

Thanks Lauren.   So:

1.  Blogging is appropriate for internal communications, 
and as Tim notes, a low rent app.   It is appropriate 
for external communications but the corporation is advised 
to provide a policy for posts.

2.  As in any communication that is not precisely formally 
defined, individual initiative is required.  The corporation 
should reward people who master this informal approach.

3.  Discovery is an issue.  I would hazard that this 
is a content type issue, that is, people who need to 
keep up with HR issues subscribe to HR authors, and 
so forth, but it is fundamental that anyone be able 
to subscribe to anything.

From those perspectives, I believe that blogging can 
become a powerful and very cheap means to modify the 
culture of any company that has become rigidly 
hierarchical with the usual dose of inside cliques 
formed over the years.   Companies that are profit 
restarts with new management can use blogging to 
erode the ossified walls of resistance to changes 
of direction and performance metrics.   Where rewards 
have been based on measures of the C2 hierarchy 
performance, measures are now oriented to networking 
performance.  This would be particularly useful in 
companies that must develop synergies among the 
vertical components, products, sales and marketing. 

Being a just-in-time medium, it should also improve 
response and adaptation as long as the users become 
adept at selection and response.   Many a good idea 
emerges in the wrong place at the right time for 
another unit.  Willingness to enable the success 
of a neighbor is a hard trait to train into employees 
who have previously mastered the direct report and 
the closed door meeting.  In companies where noone 
is anyone who doesn't have a secret, blogging will 
be resisted fiercely.

len

From: Lauren Wood [mailto:lauren@t...]

Internal blogs can be made to work under at least one of two 
conditions:
1) the authors can post to it and/or be notified of new messages via 
email
2) the blog pages are close to (whatever that means in web space) 
where they get other documents they need to refer to.

The *necessary* condition for it to work is that the people involved 
be motivated. For some people, talking to each other or the outside 
world is sufficient. For other people (and particularly if it's 
internal) they will need rewards. The rewards vary with the people 
and the company. If the blog is meant to end up as a knowledge 
repository of some sort, then it's important to reward people for 
filling that repository.

• Prev by Date: Re: A few general questions about SVG
• Next by Date: converting character entities to us-ascii /equivalents/
• Previous by thread: RE: Blogging Systems
• Next by thread: Atom Hackathon to be featured at XML 2004
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread