Unbound Spiral

This is my second posting to my moveable type weblog. I'm going to cut and past from my Radio Userland site and see what happens with content. Have to get a few pages filling and a few posts to really see what is happening. This post was from yesterday... Just looked at the preview. It is not picking up the url links... http://radio.weblogs.com/0114925/

The following post reflects why I too think there are great possiblities for KM Blogs..

Making group-forming ridiculously easy.

Weblogs have a potential for group-forming like no other medium. However I'm convinced that much of it to this day remains untapped. I'd like to explain an idea that I have been bouncing around for a while. It might well be a reformulation of what others have said previously. I believe that implementing this properly would give a nice boost to the blogosphere's social aggregation capability.

Basically the goal is to push the threshold for group creation to an unprecedented low. I think Reed's Law should be refined to state:

The value of a group-forming network increases exponentially with the number of people in the network, and in inverse proportion to the effort required to start a group.

Here's a sample motivating scenario. Not long ago I wrote an item on professions in the blogosphere. The post caught the interest of other bloggers. A few replies came here and there. If you search diligently enough you'll find them, but it's not easy. Presumably, those who have taken part in the discussion would like to hear about it if the topic comes up again, but currently this will only happen by chance. This kind of situation is very common.

[Charles Nadeau: Knowledge management]

Joi, thanks for sharing your comment on the living web (below)".

My feeling is it's "real-time", yet it's not a conversation without exchange. And yet here's an exchange that I persume will be logged. If the "living web" provides "simulated annealing" then we can use "chaos" to contol "chaos". On their own, weblogs (are we reaching hypergrowth yet?) are being linked and I imagine the more the merrier. Afterall a little bedlam can a be a good thing for crowds and data flow. The noise should simply add to the creativity and enable us all to learn faster.

So we do it to live new conversations. Seek out new voices and outside perspectives.... We aim to "live in" the conversation. We can by seeking new -- perhaps slightly controlled elements, that are different and outside our usual perspectives.

Reminds me that I must check on complexity metaphors around blogging. Probably, it's already been done. Yet for my blog to be part of a swarm... I'll need to connect it in new ways.

Joi Ito's conversation with the living web [ Blogging about Blogging ]
by Joichi Ito at November 01, 2002 10:35 PM
What do you think of the slogan, "Joi Ito's conversation with the living web"? I got the conversation part from The Cluetrain Manifesto and the living web part from 10 Tips to Writing the Living Web. People kept asking me what the difference was between a blog and a web site. I said it was different because I wasn't publishing, I was having a conversation. I didn't have "readers" I was part of a "living web". I have no idea if that gets the message across, but I sure like the sound of it.

Michael Lissack on simulated annealing: "Simulated annealing, for example, translates into ascribing a creative value to "noise" and seeking to make use of that value --in one example, by bringing outside perspectives into focus groups at critical moments when making decisions."

Participating in online communities is not only growing easier, the results more positive. Kuro5hin is also more than a weblog. It's been around for awhile and yet today I ended up giving it much closer attention as I considered voting on an MLP posting on the Nickel Exchange, was asked for other help with editing, etc.

Various links took me to SCOOP and you learn quickly about the collaborative media application behind Kuro5hin and other communities.

My journey started today looking for methods improve my MT posting and reporting options. I've had in mind the opportunity for a MT based community. Clearly plausible yet not self-organizing. When one compares Smart Mobs with Kuro5hin it becomes clear how obvious this is. I will be looking at Scoop further.

Kuro5hin.org is a community of people who like to think. This is a site for people who want to discuss the world they live in. It's a site for people who are on the ground in the modern world, and who sometimes look around and wonder what they have wrought.

Scoop empowers participants to play a role in the newsmaking. This is not the only application however. My searching located Eric Hanson andShouldExist around ideas;as an idea exchange. Check out their description Eric's list also proved to me how sharing can close and create new links... Some we don't even know. While looking at his "people" section I found myself linked back to Seb's Open Resesearch. who has a great blog going on knowledge sharing, communities and innovation.

Note:"ShouldExist.org is a non-profit website, founded on the belief that individuals are more successful when we work together through open standards, modularity and decentralized control." His project list also includes others. Check it out.

Part of my interest in the first place was driven by the question posed to me. Should the NICKEL EXCHANGE story be posted? I'm going to watch over the next couple of days. We will be revisiting "Nickel Exchange" for I still believe the next frontier is in solving highly decentralised P2P transactions. Frankly... the nickel exchange looks premature, needs consumer friendly content, and a little more to give it legitimacy. I didn't yet try to see if it works.

Then today Movielink launched. This is the site offered by the movie moguls to provide downloadable movies to American broadband connections. Incredibly slow to appear, you would almost think the site is down. Obviously checking out my system for compatibility. I'm waiting for it to be cracked, then Kazaa movies etc might take on a whole new meaning.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Click to the clique Good overview by Ben Hammersley of emerging social networks.

Note to self. Must check out FOAF files.

Clipped straight from the Guardian.

"A new technology, however, is being developed that will allow you to stay away from such commercial operations as Friendster and Ryze. FOAF, or "friend of a friend", is a special computer language that can be used to describe ourselves, our work and our friends."

The newer version, is more complex but not entirely polished yet. Either version asks questions and produces a file you can then place online and register at other FOAF applications, such as Jim Ley's FOAFNaut at http://jibbering.com/foaf.

For a week I've had "Conversational Blogging" as a point I've wanted to make.  Has it really caught on?  Posted. WIP.....

First problem is how we define conversational blogging.  A nice article in the Guardian Secret of their success said:

The best blogs are written with conversation in mind, writes Steve Bowbrick I've noticed that good blogging is a kind of conversation. Not the literal, verbal conversation of a face-to-face encounter, but the give-and-take of an unconditional and open dialogue.

There's certainly a good degree of truth in it.  My question is for myself as well.  If Conversation Blogging is humming why do I see so few comments on mine or other blogs (except for the real noted ones)? What the reason for the reticence?  Why don't we comment more?  Are we reading them all though newsreaders? 

There have been some wonderful postings recently about blogging by Ton Ziljstra, Lilia Efimova.  So far I think I've seen none about the design and layout of the "Professional Blog". 

Have you really thought about the blog format that you are using today?  Most of us started blogging with standard templates.  So we follow the crowd.  Adding search functions, blogrolling, etc.  There is usually a few site links to a profile or contact details.  Most of these blogs also allow comments.  I don't see them getting many.  For the most part it doesn't go much further.  A quick link to the top 100 will give you a sense of the design practices (layouts) that are most common. 

This seems to be the current "professional blogging" paradigm the design or layout emerging from a "personal publishing" paradigm. This seems in start contrast to blogs I've seen in Live Journal or Blurty where comments on a friends postings are numerous.  Similarly with youth their blogging space provides the capability to add additional comment, communication and guestbook features to a site. 

Examples are: 

Guestmap, SignMyGuestbook, Zonkboard (a blabber board). various Sitemeters, geo sites like Geobytes  and more playfully imood:  (keep in touch with others moods).

I'm really thinking we must look at the "professional blog" formats really demonstrated by the Radio / MT professionals that have taken it up versus the 18/24 year old who has a substantially richer feedback environment and are using them not just to "tell the world". They also have friends and profile components.

Similarly when we thing about Knowlege Innovation I think the concept of value and knowlege flows is very relevant, however, are blog-centric views limiting perspective? Blogs are only one item on the personal dashboard and current conversational instrumentation is too limited. If the publishing projects are part of a personal ecosystems repository then capture, feedback, related comments, conversations can be captured by even non-writers.

For example the CEO asks many questions, others blog answers into his blog.... the CEO is then comment centric, more conversational with perhaps only periodic briefings which are more likely to be performance, policy, people, planning related. Effectively making the organization more transparent. Categorizing the CEO blog eg project categories, promotional announcements etc, competitive activity... (not sure this is right!)

Why toy with this idea? Power people and knowledge people may be different. Both need conversational space. Do blogs focus too much on the object - the post and not enough on the broader environment. If it is the latter then "newsreaders" and feedback are actually more important.

Two interesting comments emerged on a recent "Conversational Blogging" post. Ton (it's here - obviously my new blog pinged (which this one doesn't) - how to fix? Next week) picked up on my design / layout query and Denham's comments below I'm reposting here and in comments to keep the thread.

"My experience is 'blog' dialog is weak by all accounts:

• the record is fragmented not easy to follow or aggregated.
• Bloggers tend to retreat to their enclaves and then reply. This is a very different form of reciprocity to dialog within the same 'container'.
• Strong personal opinions do not encourage extended dialog - good questions are the key.
• Most posts are message orientated rather than open exploration - this does not encourage 'conversation' and turn-taking

These strike me as all valid.  I've probably fallen at one time or another for all of these traps too.  Yet if I had not blogged I would'nt have had access to this conversation or point of view today. It's no substitute for face to face and finding real ways to collaborate. 

So Denham when I received your message (e-mail notification), I pushed reply and then considered:

• Where should the reply go?
• Assumed public?
• Checked your wiki; should I respond there?
• Where might further question best be posed?

This is where metalayer solves this conversational issue.  While looking at the wiki I also noted links to Nancy White, Americ Azevedo, and Carol Tucker all whom I know one way or another.  Two met via Ryze. Not sure any have "real" blogs.  Do check out Carol's PKM space.  So easy to get diverted!

Now for me none of these systems work really effectively. I started blogging because I felt it was important to get writing (See Mitch Radciffe Cogitating) and the focus would emerge.  I think it is. I'll add another category today (wasn't using them before effectively) for conversational blogging

From my perspective blogging's been a lot better than stradling many forums while not ever really finding a home. I also prefer newsfeeds to e-mail lists.  It's more efficient - IMHO.

• Are there a majority of bloggers uncomfortable (perhaps untrained) in threaded discussions / container forums?
• Are the time issues (blogging vs forums) such that the broader net cast for a blogger provides more perceived value than the "tight knit" group in the forum space? Is this related to networking vs learning or knowledge seeking?
• While blogs may not "container" info very effectively it appears to me they project and push snippets very effectively. How can we encourage these dialogues / conversations automatically into better forums, so optimising discovery and accelerating learning?
• Could trackback have helped us? No compatibility yet. 
• Last for now.  Aren't blogs better than Wiki's for letting you know what is happening in realtime?  Are pages like Ryze better at sharing human profiles?  

Few aspects that have frustrated my blogging. 

1. Lack of data to analyse. I'm fixing that by moving my server.  I've also been working all those new blogging tools that report on networks, connections etc.  Frankly I want to know who reads, who links, who I helped to ask a better question. 
2. My layout, and the functionality that is there. I've only started working on it.  Will be asking around for help.  I'm still sorting trackbacks (working on my new server!),  I want a guestbook, will try moving my posts comments to forums. There is some neat Comment Leader boards etc that are beginning to appear.  Zonkboard and IM capabilities too. 
3. Community.  I'd like to link co-create my blog as part of a small community where there is more reciprocity in it.  Perhaps it just requries the creation of an offering.

Back to quotes:

"I'm struck by low number of blog posts that have replies - and after something is offerred, not many bloggers take the trouble to reply so the emergent thread dies." 

Sometimes the threads die to the outside world.  Other times they are lost in a phone call.  What struck me was looking at Live Journal and Blurty pages recently.  Many had comments in double digits.  More like Asynchonous IM.  

When you throw a post out there it is nice to get something back.  A big thanks to all recent commenters!

Now I'm still not sure about the correct protocol for answering comments.  In the comments thread?  Somewhere else?  As the "blogging community" is amorphous, there aren't the "cues" that one finds in RYZE or in Live Journal. 

So what "values" would you promote to create a successful small blogging community? Is there an illustration already out there?

I'd also like to know what wiki one should try and why? 

I'm wondering if Conversational Blogging will merge into a new thread around the impact of using emerging blogging tools, for accelerating innovation, and trust across communities.  Check out Collective Intelligence and Community Inelligence: 

George Por blogs on: Knowledge <- Intelligence <- Wisdom writing about complexity and urgency is clearly seeing the tools take a new direction and the shift in values summing it up by closing: "Exploring and embodying together these questions is the highest adventure I can think of for the rest of my life's work."

In a separate posting on a related blog, Erik identifies three ways in a recent posting Value-Creation by Communities of Practice to introduce diversity in innovation communities

• geographical diversity (e.g. The Asia Office with The European Office)
• social diversity (e.g. bringing sales people into a business development community)
• organizational diversity (e.g. bringng customers into the innovation community)

I think there is another that represents little danger for the organization with enormous upside. 

Consider "Remarkable People". They tend to look at the world through different lenses often spanning disciplines.  Sometimes the counter-intuitive question, the fresh perspectives from people not immersed in the culture and beliefs of the organization is often extremely enriching - leading to breakthroughs.

Conversations that develop around around critical uncertainties (certain/important - just do it / uncertain/unimportant - why contemplate it) at the intersection of importance and uncertainty, tend to be more interesting and lead to more new perspectives.  Don't you think?

One of the outcomes of my trip to France was a renewed desire to build a more collaborative and collective blogging space.  Thus that's what I've been doing for the last week.  More will be forthcoming.  However, it's worth sharing some observations now. 

My objective is to setup a new public site (new business) that embraces emerging conversational tools while trying to create it around a blogging framework.  I've recently observed the impact that trackbacks and visibility have.  They create a form of social credit and strengthen bonds of mutual interest. 

Similarly, I've yet to see a company that blogs product releases in a way that gets comments and trackbacks.  They may well be there but certainly not with the big guys. Are not Trackback like word of mouth marketing?  When you create a release you immediately find your suppliers blogging it with trackbacks and putting their slant on it. 

As we are currently working with 5 team members we thought we'd continue with MT despite it's scalablilty and taxonomy shortcomings (well aware of Drupal / Scoop which have been blogged here earlier.) Using MT to create a public site has taken me on a new journey.  By developing and harnessing the power of categories I can see a lot more can be done with "Category Driven Blogs" and corresponding RSS feeds. 

It's also allowing the creation of new pages.  The first opportunity is to create pages that pull from select categories.  Eg About Us, Product Updates, Press Releases, etc. Of course authored by now becomes relevant.  Last five extracts keeping a profile up to date with no work what so ever. 

One thing I'm missing and would like to have.  Is the ability to easily sort comment and trackbacks received by author.  So far it seems there's no easy MT solution.  I've recently experimented with MTCollate which enables postings, comments trackbacks etc to be organized in a timeline.  Some additional functionality around this would make for an intersting dashboard design.   See MT-Plugins

Like most things it turns out Blikis' and BlogWiki's are not new, in fact a few pioneering spirits have been working on this meme for some time. In my last post I mentioned my desire to explore wiki/MT connections.   

See BlogTweaks which should be written as a WikiWord is Chris Dents integration of Purple numbers and his MT blog.  It's not clear to me yet if this has progressed to an MT plug-in. 

Collaboration Roadmap (WebSeitzWiki) Bob Seitz says he's interested in making groups more effective at both thinking and doing.  "Collective Intelligence" is the paradigm I think he's looking for.  I particularly like his "Universal Inbox".  The word "dashboard" is particularly appropriate. 

Martin Fowler's Bliki says "I wanted something that was a cross between a wiki and a blog - which Ward Cunningham immediately dubbed a bliki. Like a blog, it allows me to post short thoughts when I have them. Like a wiki it will build up a body of cross-linked pieces that I hope will still be interesting in a year's time." This later thought could be very powerful in a collaborative blogging environment.

From there I caught a link to SnipSnap  some free and easy to install Weblog and Wiki Software written in Java. I was ready to download that too and try it.  Except the install instructions were on the cryptic side. I wasn't really sure I'd get it to work on my server in just a few minutes.   

Are blogs and wiki's converging?  Are bliki's the future?  There's merits in following this scenario and keeping more than a watching eye. 

Tom Coates article "Discussion and Citation in the Blogsphere" is a must read for anyone thinking about the impact of blogging on threaded discusssions.  Great diagrams and analysis. 

What made this post particularly relevant for me it I'm trapped between a set of forums and an online blog discussion.  Not to mention e-mail, IM and Wiki's.  I've been on a mission, both personal and with colleagues to create a more collaborative roadmap for ourselves, while innovatively using many of the lightweight tools that are emerging.  None of us are programmers --- our use and roles is helping to define and prototype how we use them and move future forward while overcoming distance and lack of resources. 

As a group trying to come together to form a new proposition I'm sure we are not alone.  It's an iterative conversational process. However, few would be experimenting concurrently with so many tools.  When conversations get split between e-mails, blogs, forums, IM, wiki's it becomes apparent that improved methods to thread them all together is required. 

For the brainstorming and general freeflowing conversations we've been using a private blog.  We've been stumbling when it comes to forums.  The discussion seems to be whether blog are up to the challenge (note there are differing degrees of forum / blog / other experience in this group):

• Beat the Forum's structure from the home page though the 4-level nested hieracthy - category, forum, topic, reply (each of which can be referenced with its own URL).   and...
• Quick Representation - whether there's topic with new content since last visit, the number of topics and posts, date and author of the last post.  and 
• Access Rights by forums and groups of users

I tend to find forums very hierarchial in their structure and format.  How does one rewrite a business development proposition in a forum?  It's not easy.  In a wiki I'd make additions and the diff key would highlight the amendments for others. Paste is simplified.  Notations are made directly.  With two people problems of version control are easily handled.  When three or more become involved then it becomes more difficult. 

Perhaps that why I'm trying out some of the WikiBlog tools that are emerging.  If someone has one for me I'd be happy to use it and report!  Need a collective set of testers?

After blogging for sometime being able the reach a piece of my personal content that also links to others is a valuable "connectivity" tool easily shared and for both parties creates an intermingling that couldn't have happened otherwise.  On the collective level I'm wondering if the reverse is not true.  If blogs were feeding a wiki and vice versa then the collective repository would become much more valuable overtime.  Similarly, edits and revisions could contain quite a history.  

Of course this post could have been a category 4 summary if Tom and I both both had Purple Numbers .  I could provide a summary linking to each diagram without pasting them in and knowing relevance was retained.  (Now would that create a mess for Google?).  Similarly my comments could be more descrete. Instead go and read it for yourself.   

Allan Karl The Digital Tavern  picks up on corporate blogging following the weekend's weak NY Times article.   I hear an underlying cry for retaining  personality in posts through the synthesis rather than cumbersome  staging of the message.  His O'Reilly example reinforces why highly structured corporate blogging is going to destroy creativity and leave posts "flat". 

... corporations need to embrace weblog technologies, methodologies and find a way to create a synergistic relationship with PR, advertising, marketing and internal communications in an effort to leverage and extend the corporate brand while refining and enhancing the voice of the company. Even more, when these blogs can open up the dialog between company and customers, employees and suppliers/partners, then we'll start to see corporate blogs take off.

Let's look to decentralizing the experience.  I'm not sure thinking communications silos will work for corporate blogging.  Rather providing every employee with an RSS feed and enable Kuro5hin type reviews.  Then corporate bloggers build reputation (individually and collectively).  Both are important and reinforce the need for collaboration.  Important posts must not only be projected into the ether (without a corporate rating they are of no consequence) but accelerated around the organization.  Blogs work at the fringe and at the center. 

While the desire is there to take corporate blogging and doing it publically, building brands... I believe in focussing on small team internal blogs first behind firewalls.  Please keep it simple.  Corporates need to crawl first, and the independent blogging by the few will not define "Collective Blogging" or the organization.  Only then will corporate blogging really begin to evolve and embrace "Living the Brand". 

The perceived model for large organization is very different from a smaller private company with 25 to 125 employees.  (Large org  perceptionsmakes the reality harder.) Small operations will "Corporate Blog" first and their speed and stories will build brand equity far faster than the big guys can.  The key difference -- the little entrepreneurs can think dynamic brand communities.  They tell stories and easily adopt a conversational tone. 

A couple of reminders recently to provide readers with what they really want.  RSS Feeds that contain the full post.  It's now done - isn't choice wonderful?  You can choose.  If you desire a full post rather than the excerpt, please change your subscription to:

Full Posts (XML) http://www.henshall.com/blog/index2.rdf 

Why is it that MT's default setting is excerpts?

Makes me think about my own newreader.  I wish I could toggle between full and excerpts.  Even better scan quickly on excepts and then toggle to full posts.  Early on I tried AmphetaDesk and currently just use the Radio one.  Except I get posts that blow its formating from time to time.  Is there a newreader that can improve my experience?  Is there one I can install on my server? That is also easy to do?How does a group go collective newsreading?  A my, yours, ours subscription file? Are there tools mapping subscriptions in this format? 

I had to have a little fun with the title. Allan gets his wisdom teeth pulled for the sake of clarity - The Digital Tavern and then allows me to draw new parallels that suggest "see Corporate Blogging 3" is like pulling teeth. So I've finished on a more serious and practical note. 

Actually rather than thinking extraction alone we should think orthodontistry, more art for a smile than techniques to cure infection and disease.  Then there's the odd piece of bridgework required, perhaps a few implants and bingo even corporates will blog with pearly whites.  Then P&G or Colgate will produce some new fangled brightener while OralB puts some bent bristle brushes into action. That could confuse things unless the correct blogging technique is maintained.

Still most corporates will be required to lose their "wisdom" teeth. It's affecting their bite and they're leaving no room for growth.  The sooner blogging becomes daily the more rapidly plaque and gum disease will come under control --- not to mention the dreaded halitosis.  There's a stench when corporate communications fail to be transparent. They are not compelling when they lose their smile and character.  Yep we need engineering.  Full plates are not in vogue.  Toothy tattoos may be in.  Possibly every org needs new blogging hygienists and dental technicians.  Yet it's not only hygiene that blogpaste is working on.

Like the emerging PictureRolls, with faces, we want real smiles and real people when we dock with an organization. Blogging, like FaceRolls is more transparent.  Organizations that learn to blog well will do more good than evil.  Blogs will also engender more competition, and cooperation.  Those employees that fail to visit the bloggist when their colleagues begin their daily routine will find they get more than their teeth pulled long term. 

Really seriously Allan isn’t into dentistry and may be a little concerned about his remaining wisdoms.  I do sense something new in the making.  There’s an opportunity for an agency developing Collaborative Live Brand Communities. There’s a lot from Brand Marketing, Advertising, PR etc that could be merged.

From my days leading sales and marketing teams, “good news”, was part of improving both the batting average and raising the team bar.  Start with core groups from brand marketing, key accounts sales and customer service.  A blog a day could really keep the doctor away. 

It may be too late to add a serious angle to this post.  Yet I feel I’m challenging myself too.  I know if I was again running a sales marketing organization we would be blogging.  I’d start with some core categories.  These are top of mind. I'm sure in a group discussion and appropriate context we would come up with something better.  

1. Daily Update (Everyone! How did you build the business today?). A minimum amount of structure. Give those sales guys camera phones and micro keypads. Make it real basic. They have done daily reports for years… this is a minor change. Help them bring their customers and channels into the business.  Marketers, help me build categories, stories elevator pitches.  If there isn’t a business building action /insight per day then the business is in trouble.  Etc.   (Improve the bite!)
2. Team Brief (a weekly hierarchy driven piece to begin). I’ve written on Team Briefs before.  In the beginning they are top down. I do believe in the end they will be bottom up. If we aren’t encouraging / doing enough appreciating each other in 1 above then start here! Similarly over time weekly summaries will become easy. (Encourage the Smile)
3. Key Projects (These have corporate wide impact – no more than 4). When they make corporate news daily something happens.  We are back to the boss only has to read it. I’d be looking for good posts, real action, and quality of thinking.  These are win-win blogs.  Their beauty also has to be more than skin deep.  (Enhance Visibility)
4. Measures / Expectations:  Enable everyone to blog on “our blogging performance”.  I’d start this with names optional. (Routinize - Develop Blogpaste)
5. Dashboard:  Enable all these pieces to be brought together.  And quickly sorted. Comments and trackbacks need to be very visible.   (Mouth the Results)

The ad agency, the PR co etc are involved from the beginning.  Get them writing some summaries.  Providing some points of view.  Give them access.  Let them comment on competitors, great campaigns, idea, etc.  Get them involved in the design discussion, the dashboard and messaging. At the moment this is all private – behind the firewall. They will begin pressing early on for going public.  Resist this temptation, it’s not worth it and bloggers don’t go public they emerge.  Similarly the agency will try to speak with one voice.  Don't allow it.  You need them from creative to media planner.... visibly impacting involved and sharing on your business.  Get their commitment to your blogging --- make it part of their contract. Blogging should not increase their charges to you! Still I'm yet to see the agency that says "blogging with you is synonomous with our business model.  Yet we are close.

If your agency won't go this way they will never take you Corporate Blogging!  So make the decision now.  Get a new agency!  Or hedge your bets short-term... find an agency thatwill take you blogging. I may just know the one.    

Frankly this is all much easier than pulling teeth!  

I had to have a little fun with the title. Allan gets his wisdom teeth pulled for the sake of clarity - The Digital Tavern and then allows me to draw new parallels that suggest "see Corporate Blogging 3" is like pulling teeth. So I've finished on a more serious and practical note. 

Actually rather than thinking extraction alone we should think orthodontistry, more art for a smile than techniques to cure infection and disease.  Then there's the odd piece of bridgework required, perhaps a few implants and bingo even corporates will blog with pearly whites.  Then P&G or Colgate will produce some new fangled brightener while OralB puts some bent bristle brushes into action. That could confuse things unless the correct blogging technique is maintained.

Still most corporates will be required to lose their "wisdom" teeth. It's affecting their bite and they're leaving no room for growth.  The sooner blogging becomes daily the more rapidly plaque and gum disease will come under control --- not to mention the dreaded halitosis.  There's a stench when corporate communications fail to be transparent. They are not compelling when they lose their smile and character.  Yep we need engineering.  Full plates are not in vogue.  Toothy tattoos may be in.  Possibly every org needs new blogging hygienists and dental technicians.  Yet it's not only hygiene that blogpaste is working on.

Like the emerging PictureRolls, with faces, we want real smiles and real people when we dock with an organization. Blogging, like FaceRolls is more transparent.  Organizations that learn to blog well will do more good than evil.  Blogs will also engender more competition, and cooperation.  Those employees that fail to visit the bloggist when their colleagues begin their daily routine will find they get more than their teeth pulled long term. 

Really seriously Allan isn’t into dentistry and may be a little concerned about his remaining wisdoms.  I do sense something new in the making.  There’s an opportunity for an agency developing Collaborative Live Brand Communities. There’s a lot from Brand Marketing, Advertising, PR etc that could be merged.

From my days leading sales and marketing teams, “good news”, was part of improving both the batting average and raising the team bar.  Start with core groups from brand marketing, key accounts sales and customer service.  A blog a day could really keep the doctor away. 

It may be too late to add a serious angle to this post.  Yet I feel I’m challenging myself too.  I know if I was again running a sales marketing organization we would be blogging.  I’d start with some core categories.  These are top of mind. I'm sure in a group discussion and appropriate context we would come up with something better.  

1. Daily Update (Everyone! How did you build the business today?). A minimum amount of structure. Give those sales guys camera phones and micro keypads. Make it real basic. They have done daily reports for years… this is a minor change. Help them bring their customers and channels into the business.  Marketers, help me build categories, stories elevator pitches.  If there isn’t a business building action /insight per day then the business is in trouble.  Etc.   (Improve the bite!)
2. Team Brief (a weekly hierarchy driven piece to begin). I’ve written on Team Briefs before.  In the beginning they are top down. I do believe in the end they will be bottom up. If we aren’t encouraging / doing enough appreciating each other in 1 above then start here! Similarly over time weekly summaries will become easy. (Encourage the Smile)
3. Key Projects (These have corporate wide impact – no more than 4). When they make corporate news daily something happens.  We are back to the boss only has to read it. I’d be looking for good posts, real action, and quality of thinking.  These are win-win blogs.  Their beauty also has to be more than skin deep.  (Enhance Visibility)
4. Measures / Expectations:  Enable everyone to blog on “our blogging performance”.  I’d start this with names optional. (Routinize - Develop Blogpaste)
5. Dashboard:  Enable all these pieces to be brought together.  And quickly sorted. Comments and trackbacks need to be very visible.   (Mouth the Results)

The ad agency, the PR co etc are involved from the beginning.  Get them writing some summaries.  Providing some points of view.  Give them access.  Let them comment on competitors, great campaigns, idea, etc.  Get them involved in the design discussion, the dashboard and messaging. At the moment this is all private – behind the firewall. They will begin pressing early on for going public.  Resist this temptation, it’s not worth it and bloggers don’t go public they emerge.  Similarly the agency will try to speak with one voice.  Don't allow it.  You need them from creative to media planner.... visibly impacting involved and sharing on your business.  Get their commitment to your blogging --- make it part of their contract. Blogging should not increase their charges to you! Still I'm yet to see the agency that says "blogging with you is synonomous with our business model.  Yet we are close.

If your agency won't go this way they will never take you Corporate Blogging!  So make the decision now.  Get a new agency!  Or hedge your bets short-term... find an agency thatwill take you blogging. I may just know the one.    

Frankly this is all much easier than pulling teeth!  

I feel there's a ready interest in making blogs more conversational.  So I find it particularly frustrating when contributing to different forums and then finding myself exhausted and too tired to sum it up for my blog.  At that point I feel like I'm suffering all this information is being posted to separate places - different communities and my retrieval is difficult. 

Mark Carey created an interesting slant on his new blog Web Dawn which contains more than one posting on Blogs vs Forums.  He created a forum view after a threaded discussion.  I quickly experimented with it here.  After reading it and flicking around I've found my self rereading my "Conversational Blogging" Category. The comments from Abe, Marc, Roger and more  on Mark's post here are insightful.

I believe that blogs are not forums and forums should not be blogs, however clearly connecting them up creates additional value. Blogs from time to time do take on the attribute of forums.  There are an interesting set of posting at the Knowledge Board and Dave Pollard recently posted his thoughts on the Communications and Media Forms.  What I like about Dave's post is in this thought:

"I see the weblog becoming a ubiquitous communication medium, a proxy for every individual, where everything you want to know about that individual (which they have given you permission to see) can be called up. The effect of that will be to eliminate many communications whose purpose is simply to get information. The blog will be the main vehicle by which we educate, inform and explain"...

This is another good slant on blogging lifestreams and I agree that integrated voice - video chat is a killer app.  What I think I'm missing in these descriptions is how inbound communications will be handled.  Will blogs also become RSS / newsreader feed centric?  If so I need to be getting updates on the comments that are placed on the blogs I read.  Good posts that I'm interested in in my newsreader should also enable me to track comments and trackbacks to them.  At the moment I don't know how to get this easily....

Then finally as a note to Mark Carey's comments:  MT has a plug-in that can be adapted to work with simple comments called Collate.  However, I've not worked how to provide separate labels for trackbacks and comments yet.  I have experimented with it as part of a personal dashboard.

From the New York Times another article on blogging (signs of improvement?) on Blogs in the Workplace.  The real impact will be on creating smarter teams. Some snips:

"People are going to the blogs every day as a source for news," Mr. Jarvis said. But, he added, "I am disappointed in the tool," because the hoped-for exchange of ideas among departments has not spontaneously developed. "You need specific goals," Mr. Jarvis said. Typically, though, such experiments are not expensive to mount. 

Indeed it is not the tools it is how you learn to use them. Establishing the correct learning agenda and context is key.  I remember bringing in Laptops to the salesforce many years ago.  Each one at the time was worth 20% of the salespersons annual salary (very high tax country) and the economic justification was hard.  From my perspective the real payout came in intangibles.  My salesforce learning new tools, image - leading the pack, new interest in presenting data and crunching numbers, and answering my queries at night.  Was still hard to put a value on P-Spend savings or better shelf management and thus share gains.  Still in those days they learnt to use the tools on their time, and longer hours began. Now too many of them are slaves to the system.   

So this time the upgrade expense is not in the equipment and software, the expense will be in finding the right individuals to help facilitate the change. Like Mr. Tang below.... people want to work smarter not longer.  He gets it!

When I want to know something I check the Web log," Mr. Tang said. "It saves me the trouble of e-mailing people or yelling across the room to get a status update." 

Mr Tang is in an IM centric company, hardly typical yet apparently using blogs to get control of his time. 

Corporate Blogging is only just the beginning, the companies that understand the power of a "continuous team briefing process" and enable the grass roots to fuel the exchange will be the organizations that begin learning faster.  It's time to RSSify your org.  The result will be moving work off e-mails and back into community work. My bet is intelligent solutions will quickly emerge just as other examples in the article are showing. 

Of note these new tools are being brought in from the fringe. What makes this really exciting is the potential to create entirely new operating systems.  We already know the hardware is a commodity and the software is cheap or open source.  Corporate Blogging is just the edge of a revolution that will harness the collective intelligence of organizations in new ways. It's time to start thinking about the right people to have on board. 

Hmmm.... check you buddy list.....start your web cam, will your next employee be a blogger?  How long must they have blogged to be considered?  That reminds me of another post I never made on S-Blogs... search-blogs.  Blogs set up by individuals in the job search process.  Perhaps it is time to pull that one out too. 

The Venomites are speaking up.  Electric Venom:Blogs Without Comments "And so the debate continues whether a blog needs comments or it's just a website, or whether TrackBack is sufficient."

My recent EV comment: So comments are like sowing seeds... May the Venomites rise up and be heard... front page. Way to go! Makes tripping rather than RSS reading much more fun. Alway enjoy my visits.

So really--- are comments just part of an intimacy gradient? Are trackbacks... just new fences? Territorial boundaries? Perhaps we take it all too seriously. Set fire to the fields or quench the flames.

Comments and trackbacks are important to me.  I don't mind admitting that I don't like blogs that don't have comments. It does tell me something about the who or them behind it.  But here's a request.  At least it may work for the MT crowd that makes all the trackback noise anyways. 

Enable other MT blogs so that when I leave a comment on their blog... it is automatically e-mailed to my blog when I check the right comment box and thus posted (title comment on VK's xxx entry) and saved in a category "comments on other blogs" with sub-categories by blog.  Then I can go commenting and feel I'm adding broader value at the same time.  It would generate more thoughtful comments, and enable me to share both more personally and broadly at the same time. It would also keep a record for me of comments I've made on other blogs.  Something sadly lacking today. 

While we should be happy to give away -- our comments --- those with failing memories might like a record.  Makes it easier to find later. It also makes it easier to make later referrals.  "Ah we connected on that!" See... 

Plus hitting a trackback right now will make it even easier to see how Kate's blog is working! 

Another brilliant post in the SEVEN SURVIVAL TIPS FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGERS Kept me up tonight for a few last thoughts.  I really liked it. 

Dave describes three new, looser methods to standardize how things get done, shown on the chart. 

I'd like to add a fourth.  Stretch and Learning: Every organization today must be able to to stretch to new futures, and perceive alternate environments in which their decisions may play out.  This requires the capability to embrace uncertainty, complexity, and an element of chaos.  So doing creates the intuition, the creative space where new solutions are found. 

Dave then adds "What does this mean for the struggling, once-hyped discipline of 'knowledge management'? Here's a 7-point strategy for knowledge managers ...."

1. Focus knowledge and learning systems on 'know-who', not 'know-how'. 
2. Introduce new social network enablement software and weblogs to capture the 'know-who'. 
3. Keep only selected, highly-filtered knowledge in your central repositories. 
4. Don't overlook the value of plain-old 'data'. 
5. The bibliography may be more valuable than the document itself.
6. Don't wait for people to look for it, send it out, using 'killer' channels.
7. Create an internal market for your offerings by giving valuable stuff away.

For my final two cents of the night.  My favorites are numbers one and two and five.  In this area more attention must be placed on helping to design personal dashboards.  When connectivity is embedded at the fingertips or at the click of a mouse then richer conversations will evolve.  When we have great dialogues we have great organizations.  Lets not forget the soft skills the CKO needs as organizations seek personalized knowledge in a way that also creates real deep community brands.  When we can all live this way... then we will have organizations that compell people to operate around stategy number 7.  I think it's called the common good!

I've been struggling to get going with blogging since returning from Europe.  Many of my thoughts just prior to going away had an increasingly Corporate Blogging thrust from thinking about teams to also how the news is collected. 

So it was nice to see this timely reminder from Rob Patterson to use blogging to change our world.  He says: " it's not about making the corporation better..." he writes about human voices, conversations, discovery.  From his previous day post I'll add in community and learning...

And that is exactly why we need to stretch the perceptions and understanding of individuals in organizations. I still believe early organizational bloggers will have power.  They also need to explore how they will share with their colleagues - some who will be threatened.  They may emerge as experts as they talk with a voice that can influence internally and perhaps externally. They accelerate their learning and provide new opportunities to share organizational success --- and good strategy comes from great conversations. Similarly smart blogging strategies will simplify and streamline their communication channels.  So, blogging can and will improve institutional learning. 

This is exactly why Rob's desire for an eBay market for knowledge will also impact.  Just like the wreckless claims that all large organizations should start organising "Bringing Silicon Valley Inside" like venture firms, blogging may well stimulate new knowledge communities and in that may have a more lasting impact on instituitions.  Knowledge in such a format is inherently cooperative.  Thus the ownership structures may change providing the fuel for revolutionizing the corporate institutions. 

Rob: "For me the big challenge is how can we create a safe community where we can learn from each other?" 

As an individual being part of a blogging community is something I desire.  In the life before blogging I had many colleagues almost none of which currently blog.  While I've not asked them much... few have ever asked me about my blogging.  It why it is so enlightening and enriching to make contact with other bloggers who see the potential. The free flowing implicit connections are not institutionalized and yet my desire remains for more explicit connections that force me to "raise the bar".  I feel there is a merry dance in there.  Few blogger that I really know or correspond with have been blogging longer than two years.  We are thus a mass of loose ties... weakly joined. The potential for collective action is enormous.

So perhaps the challenge is to link or cross syndicate blogs - perhaps for time periods possibly for lifetimes.  The contracts can be explicit... We maintain the individual augmented by their thought networks.  I'm not blogging alone... and yet I'd like to be blogging as part of a more collaborative group. I need more input - perhaps that is just me. However, blogging in a groups still fits with my belief that all of us is better than anyone of us. 

Back to the CEO --- exploring the possiblities of blogging will open up the flow of information in organizations.  Increased flow makes everything more transparent. The hierarchies approach to organizations rather than wirearchy means a lack of transparency, creating powerlessness and leaves CEO's listening too often to too few voices. If the organizational environment could even begin to approach the blogging stream of thought (See Mitch & John R example re making "connections") then the emphasis will move one tick closer to "learning faster".  I

I'm sure there is a percentage point where people get a bigger kick out of what they are doing when they are learning more.  Those that are blessed with the 20%+ of time type number will almost automatically put confidence and leadership back into an organization.  The CEO that fails to explore blogging will fail to harness the changing social nature of work.   

I arrived at Stanford tonight for the Vlab event on "Social Networking is There Really a Business Model?" Traffic was light, so I had a little time to take some notes from my newsreader. So I began reading Denham Grey's new blog.

Knowledge-at-Work started this week. It's a unique opportunity to get in at a ground zero and grow as his blog develops. My first thought was how lucky I am. He'll tickle my newsreader a few times a week, and is always going to make me think. It's a more public "persistent conversation" that he is engaging in and I welcome it. I'm in a soundbite world. I will have something more tangible to trackback to. There is a good chance his blog will open his other knowledge spaces to me. With my own links I may indeed learn to use it better and perhaps gift a little in return. I'm still interested in Jazz-Blogging

His last post "On asking hard questions" was the one that forced me to take the time to study all his posts (5) to date. While I'm for hard questions I really prefer "better" questions, however that is just semantics. My net takeaway is that these questions are very systemic, and thus leave room for another set of questions that include, intuition, beliefs, and readiness for change. The best questions in the world won't help the organization that's in denial. While the philosophy that seeks better questions and runs with the accelerator down simply learns to be smarter faster.

A previous post provides interesting dataon the changing KM Discussions Link to KMBloggers for a sample of Denham's KMwiki!

A knowledge space is where we gather to: share awareness, conduct productive inquiries, reflect upon persistent conversations and capture our thinking together.

A large part of the focus in my KmWiki has been to collect links and thoughts on tools, practices and design for collaborative spaces for knowledge work. The Wiki page serves as a summary and pointer to that work. The central theme has been to explore virtual spaces, affordances, rituals and tools that support social knowledge creation and innovation rather than storage, access, organization and retrieval of information. Some people feel I take the social aspects too far!

There is something enticing, exciting and alluring about knowledge spaces. In one very real sense, such spaces, when they exhibit effective social affordances, offer a glimpse of the future - collaborative innovation, continuous learning, profitable practice and strongly supported development.

It's time to work on syndicating the KM Blogs in some way together.

When words return it makes blogging a lot more satisfying. When I receive a call from a new Skype user who clicks on my blog and introduces himself as the organizer of last nights event you know answering created more value than ever losing him to a profile link on your site. I hope he doesn't mind my sharing... he was using MP3 headphones as the speaker (see Skype help) and it worked just fine. Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to check out new technology. I'm sympathetic with his interest.

And no it's not the only call I've had today. I began to think... wouldn't it be nice to have a LiveBlogger behind every blog. I saw Don Parks post --- too late his Skype link was gone. Would have liked his input. So all this connecting had me reflecting on LivePerson a business that I visited a few years ago. So I checked up on their claims for small businesses. Thought they may give me a hint as to the value of reaching a "LiveBlogger". Here's their pitch. :

INCREASE YOUR SALES
Sell “instantly”by chatting with your customers.
Offer them special deals, up-sell, cross-sell…

DECREASE YOUR COST
Easily assist multiple customers simultaneously, save money over phone calls.

IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE
Give them the service they deserve from a real person.

Camilla: This chat service is text and image based
you: ok
Camilla: We don't support voice over IP as of yet
you: right thanks - are you planning too?
Camilla: Are you familiar with our services and features?
you: i checked the listing
Camilla: Yes, voice is still in development

Camilla: Another great feature commonly used in text chats
Camilla: is the canned response feature

My takeaway, SkyperBloggerPhone makes me more accessible, accelerates conversations, bridges gaps the poorly or quickly written word can't cover at no cost to me other than my time. Better personal linkages mean more referrals, and ulitmately better blogging from me.

Now as Ken noted. I just need an audible "Speak to my blog feature" that automatically forwards to my e-mail when I'm away and plays on opening. So who's going to offer me a voice message facility to go with this?

Well that sums it up. Should LivePerson hustle on their VoIP solution? What's the impact of the Skype model on their business, and how it is structured? Only time will tell.

Is e-mail and managing-up the missing links in activating the corporate blog? It's nice to see excitement in posts. Weblogs as Status Reports 2.0 hits a chord. I've advocated Team Briefs for some time, using language that perhaps was too attuned to "down under" (NZ / Australia) and so "Status Reports" just hit a note with me and both Roland and Jim. Blogs are also not easy to introduce. Their comments only briefly linked here are better read on their blogs. They also stimulated another line of inquiry.

Weblogs as status reports - It can work but the barrier is cultural not technological. (SOURCE:Rands In Repose: Status Reports 2.0 via McGee's Musings)- We've tried over the last 2 years to replace status reports with blogs at a e-commerce company I do consulting for. Success has been mixed. Even though most of the people are engineering staff (i.e. technical people who should have no problem with the 'geekiness' of today's blogging tools), getting them to document in real time what they do has been more difficult than I anticipated. Roland Tanglao

Status reporting should become more about discovering and understanding the implications in those variations. [McGee's Musings]

I'm sure many bloggers have multiple methods to post to their blogs. I certainly do. So why the tendency to introduce potential new bloggers to weblogs via the blogging tool interface? Let's be realistic. If the format is set up, they are an author on a team or project blog then why introduce them before they are ready. As the manager you need content. You need to make the capture simple, it has to repurpose work that is already done. It also has to be understood that this "blog" is internal vs external.

How might this solution track?
Consider introducing your co-bloggers to blogging via e-mail. Give them the remote@typepad.com or equivalent address. Redirect all status reports or what you are trying to capture to the blog e-mail. What's missing here is any capability to add categories. However now a project manager can do that easily converting the posts from drafts to publish status. The new participant can see the updates in the "blog" via the url. In fact confirmations could be posted back to them. Dependent on the blog... either subscribe your new bloggers or alternatively add NewsGator so their RSS feeds become active. It won't be until you are swamped with posts or editing issues that the team needs to become more active and responsible.

Now we get multiple participants with the blogging manager / owner assigning categories and coaching on posts. In this process there is never anything to stop the new blogger from going direct to the authoring tool. In fact now's the time to start the second blog in parallel that reports on the implementation, enables questions and answers. This is simply a place for learning about blogging. As it is an internal blog, combine it with other easy to navigate features and enable a quick log-in from the home page.

What's different in this strategy? These initial blogs are more likely to be informative rather than linking blogs. Blogs involved in research and for gathering ideas and spreading memes are more likely to come later or be specific to a particular department. I'd not advocate the above for a research department, however using e-mail to move my reps from e-mail to blogs might well make sense. Similarly with marketing and HR.

My rule remains that you need the square root of the number of people in the company to really change the culture. Once those up the chain find it is easier, quicker and smarter to access the blog for information you've won. So this brings me back to the old set of questions around you as a manager. As a manager what is your first responsibility? No.... it is not... Your first responsibility is to manage yourself. Now you have that straight, what is your next responsibility? No... it is not!. Now you must manage your peers! So you are being a pretty good manager, your time is controlled, your peers are happy..... Now what must you do? Manage your boss!!! For those that operate in this way will find their reports are already managing them.

So for my two cents. One of the things we are missing in internal BLOG implementations, is the idea of managing up! We talk about it and see it as a grass roots phenomena. It's why you will really need so few to change the work pattern. When a blog helps you personally manage better, flows more effective information from your department into buckets (categories) that are consistent with what your peers want then you are on the way to winning the blog vs e-mail challenge.

Using e-mail to initiate blogs starts with tools that people are already comfortable with. Appointing a manager (or two or three) that manage the initial flow helps to build categories and the "managing up" dashboards that blogging pages easily adapt to. Adding subscriptions and RSS keeps people in the loop and yet begins the recategorization process. You copy the blog not CC the world.

To close I've mentioned before that I'd like to be able to post more easily from Outlook to my MT blog. Even better if it was supported with a plug-in that would enable choice of which blog and the category. When asked today about an upcoming virtual conference, I thought it would be nice to enable all registered attendees to immediately be able to post session comments via e-mail to the blog. Perhaps not so simple. However did wonder if anyone is doing this?

I began updating a list of references on Blogging and Social Networks last week. As I prepared to post this I begin to realize what I've left out. It started as a list supporting "Jazz in the Blogosphere". It was also meant to provide a range... from introductory to more topical posts. From newspapers and magazines to personal blogs. Additional references would be welcome!

Time stopped me adding further to the list, and where does a list start and stop. However it makes me realize the need to invest time in developing appropriate "posting categories". Similarly some posts are more worthy of retrieval than others. As I looked back on some of these posts, it also is a shame that trackback is not enabled for so many of them. I'm not going to suggest that a list will bring them back to "current" however trackbacks on older posts are just another way of communicating their continued value and validity.

Marcia Stepanek. “John Patrick on Weblogs” CIO Insight November 25, 2003 Leading visionary talks about the future. http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3048,a=113189,00.asp

David Duval "An Introduction to Weblogs” Personal Blog October 31, 2003 Provides useful definitions and history on weblogs. http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002399.html

George Siemens. "