Effective use of blogs in business: How companies can talk to

themselves

2nd December 2004Olympia

The Big Blog Company

Doughnuts, is there anything they can't do? -Homer Simpson

BLOGS

Links to other sources

Links to that article/post

Posting contentCompany and contact info

Ability to track events

Company name

Posts stored for future reference

Images

Ability to track links to that post

Distribute via RSS

Blogs are optimised nodes Content is only half the job Distribution is the other half

Network effect of blogosphere Ease, immediacy, speed and

interaction Creativity and dynamism

Replicate inside the company network

Portals different forms of information on one page, easy to

update & customisable

Intranets secure slice of the web, place for tools to support

collaboration

KM applications top-down IT projects

Weblogs designed for individual interaction and networking

Blogs have the right balance between unstructured creativity and structured format

Forum is a collective drawing - mess of lines

Blog is a painting untouched but commented upon

1st principleInformation organisations, knowledge economy

2nd principleNothing was ever invented in a meeting

3rd principleBasic unit is the individual - not a process, department or even a team

Collaboration & creativity is a human problem, not a technological one

If we all do this, marvellous things happene.g. if we all contribute to this new KM/CMS/collaborative software, we unleash a fount of creativity, knowledge, interaction, experience etc.

These are company’s goals

What’s in it for them?

Collaboration and information sharing must not be a chore

Bottom-up motivation not top-down imposition

Idea ownership

Immediate benefit to individual employee

Job easier or another value

Key to effective use of internal blogs

How do you get employees to accept the new methodologies and paradigms?

Don't tell users there are new methodologies and paradigms, they don't care or need to know

Show them that the new systems allow them to get their work done

Show them that you can fix problems that prevent them from getting their work done going forward

Possible with blogs and emergent technologies as they are a ‘multiple orders of magnitude cheaper’

Disney

Google

InfoWorld

London Internet Exchange

Disney internal communication Track cable operations across the world Messages by technical operators Programming, marketing, traffic, operations

Shiftlog From proprietary DB to blog software

Improving efficiency and coordination

Source: Disney Presentation at O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, February 9-12, 2004

Internal expertise and information sharing Knowledge best shared through a system that notifies

users of new content Email notification replaced by RSS

Blogs and RSS aggregators the answer Easy for each group member to store and share

content Keeps group members coming back, easy to find out

when new content is available Encourages others to share

“Need people willing to share information to get people to use blogs, wikis and other collaborative systems”

Use of blogs within Google

Keeping track of meeting notes Sharing diagnostics information Sharing snippets of code More personal uses – sharing what people

are thinking about and what they're up to

“It really helps grow the intranet and the internal base of documents”

InfoWorld six-months IT initiative

Coherent roadmap on weblog No need for agendas, handouts in meetings Changes distributed via RSS to anyone who

wants updates Accountability within IT team and to non-IT

colleagues

“Amazing how a system so simple and easy can produce such profound results”

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/05/21/21OPconnection_1.html

LINX internal blog for member updates More permanent record of announcements than

the pre-existing mailing lists Archiving and clustering of topics easier More accurate classification and labelling Tracking and analysis of audience more accurate Balance of time spent on topics Timeliness leading to more feedback

Change in dynamics satisfying short and long term reporting

Blogs persistent conversation, dynamic info flows Movable Type, Expression Engine

Wikis ideal for collaborative documents created by

many Web Collaborator, Wiki 2.0, MediaWiki, Social

Text

RSS readers Replace email notification, internal news feeds Newsgator (Outlook integration)

Format Match with purpose and activity Evolving and dynamic

IT aspect Flexible Low cost Easy to implement

Human dimension Most important and complex Individual matters Collective result emergent rather than imposed