I came upon a colleague’s web site yesterday. He works in a completely different business line and office than I do, so it would seem unlikely that I’d ever see his blog. If it weren’t for the fact that I read wide and far on subjects that are completely outside my job description, I wouldn’t have found it. Macro economics? Yes. I’ve been reading about the current account problem. Mea culpa.
Anyway, since very few of my co-workers blog, I took the opportunity to call him and ask a few questions about his experiences with blogs and the benefits/problems he saw with blogs in our workplace.
The first thing he said to me was, “I’ve been waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and ask what the hell I was doing.” So, what the hell has he been doing? Building web traffic for his and our organization’s research, having discussions about economic issues, building a dialog with colleagues, exploring the possibilities of this medium and the implications for how we run our sites. He came to many of the same conclusions that I have:
- Blogs increase our accountability while building our reputation
- It’s a better way to publicize research
- Discussion about our research with the public is healthy
- Easier to find out what’s important to our audience(s)
- Improves the way we communicate (less academic, more conversational)
We also agreed on many of the downsides to actively doing this in our organization:
- Reputational risk caused by negative comments
- People in power who do not use the web and don’t see the value of blogs
- Perceived technical barriers (though he admitted it was easy to set one up)
- Remaining politically neutral/not advocating policy
I’m encouraged to see this blog in the wild because it means that our organization’s policies haven’t hemmed in this creative avenue. It’s a sign of positive change that I can build on…until someone taps me on the shoulder.
