chief conversation officer

Last night, Dave Armano posted a Tweet about Chief Bloggers in relation to an interview with Ad Age re this. Sean Craphammer writes "Blogging is not about publishing". And he's right. The parallel here is with Public Relations. Now the sad truth is that most PR people do not spend a lot of time relating to the public. They hang out with journalists. They understand the news cycles for their particular industries and their sets of issues. Some of them might have been journalists once but they don't necessarily write articles. They influence the writing of articles*.

Organisations need Social Media Relations people. And because of the participatory nature of the social media, these people will have to blog. And comment on other blogs. And Twitter. And all that other stuff. They will encourage, advise and look out for bloggers and social media headz in their own organisations. And they will have to believe in what their organisations do (be it curing cancer or causing it) or else they will get found out.

Everyone wants to be Chief Talking Officer. Who wants to be Chief Conversation Officer?

*And wanting to influence people is fine so long as you are open about it.

wikis for ray

Ray Sims made some comments on the Twitter post. This led to these two pictures which I am really not happy with. Can anyone come up with some better suggestions?

blogging and you don't know it

I was talking to a couple of people about RSS and blogs today and suddenly we all realised that if you RSS enable different parts of your site, even if you don't have a site blog, the material will still appear blog-like in an RSS feedreader.

And then later on, Russ Weakley came into discuss the planned changes to the Australian Museum website - which involve tagging (both author & user generated) and reader comments.

Mix the two together (RSS + Tags + User Generated Content coupled with Organisational Content) and blogs disappear - instead everything is a blog (but not as we know it, Jim).

One possible future is that the majority of websites become hyperblogs such as this and the majority of intranets become next-gen wikis.

Go figure.

blog dress - further reflections on the pew report

Put on that dress

I'm going out dancing

These thoughts are triggered by seeing Hell Hath No Fury (which I enjoyed but also agreed with the opinions of the reviewer thru the link), the Pew report referred to in the previous post and the lyrics of PJ Harvey's Dress*.

As a teen, public display is important - esp. as your body changes under the influence of hormones. Are you wearing the right clothes? The wrong clothes? What do they say about you? Do they fit in with the people you want to fit in with? And from what I remember, this is more important for teenage girls than boys. And critically its much more social. Most of my male contemporaries did not talk to each other about style tips or haircare. But for girls, going shopping together for outfits was normal.

How do we clothe our identities online? Words are one way of doing it. Creating a lexical sheath for ourselves. Blogs are often compared to online diaries but they are also public displays. Has anyone done any work on fashion trends in teenage girl blogs? The apps? The fonts, colours and formatting? What's in this blogging season?

Also, to what extent is posting a comment on a blog a form of social grooming?

Photo: cryptdang

*Which on reflection also has too much of a man focus. Women mainly dress for each other, not for men, no matter what we may choose to believe.

blog council

The Blog Star Chamber Council is a shadowy organisation devoted to world domination corporate blogging. Definitely not funded by a bizarre neo-con / left-liberal conspiracy hell-bent on, er, using Word Press a bit more. It kinda feels like a security blanket for corporate communications dudes - nothing wrong with that...

You're talking about stuff I haven't done yet in the past tense and it's driving me crazy

To answer the question from Ray Jimenez, we can't tell them what to do. We can work on it with them. I'm conscious in next week's double-act with Keith, I cannot give the people there "best practice". Because there isn't any yet (and when there is, I'll probably lose interest). There are things that have worked and things that haven't. And sometimes they're the same thing.

S'funny. I was explaining the blog thang to someone at work today. We had the "won't another tool confuse people" thang.

James R uses the "portfolio" word - which I can quite keen on. The notion that the risks of collaboration are managed by using a range of tools. But "armoury" is perhaps a better term. And you need a "collaboration" map for these things as well...

Microblogging

James D talks about microblogging & Luis talks about a specific application for emergency services. I've noted my personal preferences recently but for me microblogging has got F.A. to do with blogging. My posts tend towards the terse but I generally break the 160 character barrier. For me, a blog post has to have an idea in there. It may not be yours. It may not be any good. But it's there.

I see Twitter & Facebook status info as presencing technologies and as James notes, they have more to do with SMS & IM than blogs & wikis. And these will have important uses for people working remotely from each other (i.e. increasingly all of us).

N.B. As a side bet, literary forms will emerge out of presencing technologies. SMS poetry for example.

State blogging

Euan Semple & Simon Dickson talk about acts of blogging breaking in the UK government. While here in Australia, the Australian government has released a consultation paper about a consultation blog. Respond Australia Fair! Cheers Trevor.

Do as you would be done by

I was having a conversation with someone I like & respect at the last NSW KM Forum*. He was thinking about starting a blog (for the 3rd time). We talked briefly about his ideas regarding scope of said blog but as we talked, I thought about this post by Stephen Collins. His wife has a blog (it's good - click on that link now). But she needs to get out more.

On this blog, I am a writer. I write because I want to & to an extent because I have to. It makes me a happier person. And far less annoying & prone to acts of random violence to those around me. Whether it does the same for you or not ain't my problem. However I also want people to read this. If only because comments & intelligent responses on the blogs of others makes life more interesting and prods my own idea glands into sluggish action.

And what I have found is that if I want others to read & comment on my work, I must do the same for them. I have to do what I want others to do. I have to "give it up & turn it loose". This is the critical lesson I would share with all would-be bloggers - "ask not what the blogosphere can do for you but what you can do for the blogosphere". What most writers crave is an engaged reader. Be that engaged reader for them and they may do the same for you.

The thing is you can't fake it. None of this "Hey, I see that you love cheese! I love sub-atomic physics! Visit my blog!" You have to genuinely engage with them. Be a reader first & foremost and you will never be short of readers.

*Which isn't giving too much away because I like & respect most of the people that show up.

Enterprise 2.0 Questions & Answers

So when you start talking about Enterprise 2.0 stuff, certain questions keep coming up. Here are some of the ones that I have heard from people in different organisations.

• Have you heard similar ones?
• Which other ones have you heard?
• Do my answers make sense?
• Do you have better answers?

1. We've had Forums / Lotus Notes around for ages. What's new about these tools?

Some social media technologies have been around for a over a decade. What is new is their pervasiveness on the internet and the way they are now leveraged to make connections. They are significantly simpler than previous enterprise collaboration technologies. However some (e.g. podcasts, social networking software) are genuinely new in the corporate environment.

2. Will these tools by themselves make people collaborate?

Implementing a wiki will not lead to collaboration by itself. However the simplicity of these tools can provide very usable platforms for groups (teams, communities, directorates) to achieve their collaborative goals.

3. Are they just fads?

Some deployments of these tools are faddish. However, many organisations are experimenting with them and seeing benefits. The longevity of some of these tools (e.g. blogs have been around for over 10 years) suggests there is more to them than "cool" value.

4. Do they fit into our IT architecture?

They certainly can. Our IT architecture should not quash experimentation & innovation but it should position it correctly. "Just enough" governance of these tools is a critical part of their implementation.

5. Won't more tools just confuse people?

If we are not clear on its role then any new tool is confusing. If there is a clear role for a new tool then we need to communicate it to potential users and position it next to other tools. This is another governance issue.

6. Are their security risks associated with these tools?

If they are implemented poorly there could be a security risk but then this is true for any communications technology. If users are clear on what they should and should not share then security risks are minimal.

7. How will we manage all this content?

Some social media tools promote content management (e.g. folksonomies & social networking software) through non-traditional means. From a broader perspective, we need to examine the findability for all of its content – not just social media. Robust search and analytics tools are critical for effective management of these resources.