I have recently started a new position with an ICT research organisation, with responsibility for its online communication channels.
It's a role that is still being defined in many organisations, one that recognises the need for someone who straddles the "IT" and "Business" or "Corporate Comms" functions of website development together with project management.
It is as though the experiences of my last five years have prepared me for this job. I have been devoted to learning all that I can about the implementation of content management systems, the conflicting requirements of internal users and target audiences as well as the nuances of project managing in an environment where stakeholder interests range from mild to intense, even hostile.
In the user needs discovery phase of my new website redevelopment, I am faced with a new, and possibly not-too-uncommon dilemma - to blog or not to blog... That is the question! (apologies Mr Shakespeare)
As a knowledge organisation, do we encourage our research staff to blog? Do we facilitate it? Do the opinions of blogsites originators carry more credence or liability if they identify themselves with their employer? Does a Microsoft or Sun employee's blog carry with it some higher value, and therefor responsibility? What about the ensuing comments? Who's responsible for anonymous defamatory comments on a blog site? (Jason Akermanis, for one, would like to know!)
We find ourselves in a murky area where "mainstream publishers," lawyers, Internet service providers and litigious plaintiffs are circling.
To some degree, I say "blog and be dammed," but I find myself staring down a queue of bloggers whose online activity I can either support, promote, facilitate and in some way, moderate or pretend it's not there, keep it underground. And not only do I want these people to continue to produce content of value for our website, I need to find an appropriate response, a viable policy about enterprise blogging.
Does blogging dilute the value of the enterprise website? Where do blogsites fit in the context of user experience.
Perhaps we are not far from a time when real knowledge organisations truly reflect the aggregated knowledge of its workers and then some, if the sum of the parts is truly greater than the whole. Do such websites become well dressed portals to hundreds of blogsites? Or like Sun Microsystems do we aggregate and index the top 50 staff blog sites?
To blog or not to blog is NOT the question. It's how do the knowledge sector enterprise stakeholders leverage it, manage the risks and maintain some shred of freedom of collaborative open thought and discussion.
To squeeze one more pun into this post, the cat is clearly out of the blog.
Blogging
