Employee Blogging at EarthLink
Bernaisesource has a second home of sorts. Today, as some of you may have read on Earthling – EarthLink’s corporate blog, we unveiled an “extension.” It’s a list of links to official EarthLink product blogs and a directory of unofficial personal blogs of EarthLink employees including yours truly.
This directory is part of a journey we began last year to define the shape and direction of web 2.0 within
EarthLink. I am not sure that anyone knows the exact definition of web 2.0, but we are doing our best to embrace it. Through this directory, hopefully my colleagues and I will learn together. As part of the effort, we established an employee policy for blogging and online communications. We started a blogging boot camp to help employees who were interested in blogging. And who knows, maybe in the not too distant future we will explore Second Life and help employees get avatars. Among companies, I am sure there is a lot debate over how and even whether they should feature employee blogs. Some folks I have spoken to feel that participating in a directory of personal blogs – even done on a voluntary basis – would stifle creativity and hinder the free flow of ideas. From this perspective, it would be far better to let people hide in plain sight and blog on their own. Previously, Chris Barger who heads up blogging initiatives at IBM told me in an interview on Bernaisesource: “Unlike other companies, we don’t house our blogs in one place. There is no single template they have to use. We don’t necessarily know about all our employee blogs.” Others may be concerned that a directory is an endorsement of participating blogs. Without any restrictions, a company could find themselves in a difficult position if they did not like or disagreed with the content on an employee blog. In our case, it is a gamble worth taking. While we won’t censor content, participants must abide by our blogging policy. Complaints will have to be taken on a case by case basis. We also trust our employees to do the right thing. Since it is voluntary, it is also self regulating. Presumably, if employees had any doubts, they would think twice about being part of a directory in the first place. Over the years, we at EarthLink have had internal forums for employees to, in the immortal words of Saturday Night Live from days gone by, “talk amongst yourselves.” Debate has been lively at times. Now we are sharing a small part of our collective selves with the outside world. Hopefully it will give you a better understanding of me and my colleagues and encourage others to do the same at their companies.
This directory is part of a journey we began last year to define the shape and direction of web 2.0 within
EarthLink. I am not sure that anyone knows the exact definition of web 2.0, but we are doing our best to embrace it. Through this directory, hopefully my colleagues and I will learn together. As part of the effort, we established an employee policy for blogging and online communications. We started a blogging boot camp to help employees who were interested in blogging. And who knows, maybe in the not too distant future we will explore Second Life and help employees get avatars. Among companies, I am sure there is a lot debate over how and even whether they should feature employee blogs. Some folks I have spoken to feel that participating in a directory of personal blogs – even done on a voluntary basis – would stifle creativity and hinder the free flow of ideas. From this perspective, it would be far better to let people hide in plain sight and blog on their own. Previously, Chris Barger who heads up blogging initiatives at IBM told me in an interview on Bernaisesource: “Unlike other companies, we don’t house our blogs in one place. There is no single template they have to use. We don’t necessarily know about all our employee blogs.” Others may be concerned that a directory is an endorsement of participating blogs. Without any restrictions, a company could find themselves in a difficult position if they did not like or disagreed with the content on an employee blog. In our case, it is a gamble worth taking. While we won’t censor content, participants must abide by our blogging policy. Complaints will have to be taken on a case by case basis. We also trust our employees to do the right thing. Since it is voluntary, it is also self regulating. Presumably, if employees had any doubts, they would think twice about being part of a directory in the first place. Over the years, we at EarthLink have had internal forums for employees to, in the immortal words of Saturday Night Live from days gone by, “talk amongst yourselves.” Debate has been lively at times. Now we are sharing a small part of our collective selves with the outside world. Hopefully it will give you a better understanding of me and my colleagues and encourage others to do the same at their companies.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: EarthLink; Corporate Blogs; Corporate Communications; Earthling; Employees; Workplace; Chris Barger; Blogging;
