C. G. Lynch at CIO.com has Seven Reasons for Your Company to Start an Internal Blog from the just-completed Enterprise 2.0 conference:
Proponents say an in-house blog can be like a bulletin board, communication tool and culture enhancement. Plus, it's better than tracking projects by e-mail.
The primary focus of the discussion is around using blogs for project management, such as for project updates. Lynch interviewed several proponents of corporate blogging, and this is a pleasant and positive view of the value of blogging.
Here are the Seven Reasons to Start themselves:
- Your enterprise e-mail applications are not easy to search.
- Your e-mail is lost in the eye of the "cc storm."
- Ex-employees can take it with them.
- Too much wasted time checking in with colleagues.
- With blogs, the humble and the egotist both win.
- Organizational openness and accountability.
- People might already be using them.
In a recent discussion on the ACT-KM discussion list, someone mentioned that blogging is just one means of communication - that it isn't the be-all, end-all of knowledge sharing. I like this reminder because promoters tend to fall all over themselves with fantastic claims. On the other side, blogging provides a means of communication that people may need and don't currently have within their organization. This article suggests that some of the signs above are evidence that people are looking for some other means of communication.
[Thanks to Dennis D McDonald for the reminder to check the article.]