Corporate bloggers should interview other bloggers

Great idea for corporate bloggers. In fact, if I were telling a company what to do, advice now would be:1) Get an RSS aggregator.2) Read 50 blogs for at least two weeks that interest you.3) Interview at least five of those bloggers.That will get you to start thinking about blogging as a listening device rather than something that you can use to get your message out.

Scobleizer – Microsoft Geek Blogger » Love bloggers who do interviews…

Filed under: blogging, km

What’s needed to make RSS simple – behind the firewall

I’m actually a lot more worried about other things rather than can an average user figure out what subscribing is for. I have no doubt they’ll figure it out. … the thing I’ll be asking in my next interview is just how manageable have they made the feeds. After getting several hundred feeds myself it just is a mess. People move URL’s all the time. What happens then?

Scobleizer – Microsoft Geek Blogger » Tom Biro wonders when RSS is really gonna get simple?

Robert Scoble asks some good questions regarding the long term usability of RSS and suggests a number of requirements.

Some of the same questions apply when using feeds inside an enterprise. Employees don’t want to cut and paste URLs. They need a single page which lists all the internal feeds available and a simple subscribe/unsubscribe button. And they need an Intranet page (like a behind the firewall Bloglines) where all their feeds are aggregated.

technorati tags: blogging, rss, internal blogging

Filed under: blogging, km, rss, smif

In Praise of Wikipedia

The December issue of Online Currents (sorry, paid subscription required) has a good article by Glena Browne titled In Praise of Wikipedia. Glenda is very specific about what she likes (free, collaborative, explicit, can be challenged, useful features, well-structured, big, growing, fun and fast) and what’s wrong (no guarantee of accuracy, readability, appropriatness or balance, and no firm content). Glenda then goes on to make the excellent point that not all print publications are error or bias free.

All in all, I thought it was a well balanced and timely article considering the recent online and press coverage of Wikipedia issues.

Glenda, if you’re reading this, I’m sure lots of people would like to read your article if you could find a way for it to be freely available online.

Filed under: km

The sorry state of Australian blogging

Very interesting post from Ross Dawson about the sorry state of Australian blogging.

While business success increasingly depends on enabling more open information flows inside and outside the organization, actually making this happen requires substantial courage and foresight. Despite Australia’s relative economic success, the corporate sector still seems to be driven more by cost-containment than opportunity-seeking. In an increasingly global, interdependent economy, this will not work well indefinitely.

Perhaps some Australian companies are experimenting with blogs on their Intranets before dipping their toes in the Internet blogosphere. I hope so.

Filed under: blogging, km, smif

So where are all the enterprises using blogs inside the firewall?

Had a very interesting lunch yesterday disucssing the topic of social media inside the firewall. Mostly touching on topics of RSS, blogs, wikis and podcasts but also other social tools like SNA and tagging. Lots of interesting people including Ross Dawson, Trevor Cook, James Dellow, Matt Moore, Brad Kassell, Ben Cooper, and Robert Perey. Frank Arrigo could not make it.
As I’ve written previously,

I see this as an opportunity to jump start the conversations and networks that may form the basis of a revolution in internal communications and knowledge management within Australian enterprises. Sounds big, I know, but there is so much value to be had from using the tools we discussed to lubricate knowledge and information flow. My big questions for the conversation are:

• Who’s doing this already? Or thinking about doing it?
• How do we get started and sustain the effort?

Lots of interesting free flowing discussion, lots of personal networks created and/or strengthened. Unfortunately, we did not really get to the heart of the matter.

I’m still interested in finding out about any examples of enterprises blogging behind the firewall. That is, for an internal audience only. I’m paticularly interested in examples of professional service firms, australian firms, and smaller (non- Fortune 1000) firms. Can anyone help?

Filed under: km

Where does my weblog title come from?

My weblog title is a post from one of my favourite children’s books: Hattie and the fox, by Mem Fox. In it, the cow is always asking “What’s next?”. I like that.

Filed under: fun