JD on EP

1) Why do you blog for your company? I come out of technical support, and have always partipated in discussion boards, newsgroups, and mailing lists. A weblog offers certain efficiencies.

2) What goals did you set for the blog? Primary: To reduce the number of retypings made into various newsgroups and mailing lists, particularly when a hot issue broke... to provide a web address for given essays. Secondary: To create a searchable archive of relevant resources... to gain the ability to ask questions of customers more efficiently and quickly... to join the more efficient customer-writers who were migrating to blogs from lists... to gain more exposure among relevant non-customers who were not on any subject-specific mailing lists.

3) How do you think your blog fits into your company's communications strategy? Not sure how to answer, because it wasn't a "strategy-first" approach, and it's not just me... lots of us public-facing staffers have tried maintaining a weblog, and some have found it didn't suit their daily goals, while others did. From the company's point-of-view, I guess my blog is an asset that offers quick response and interactivity, but it doesn't have the authority of materials which appear in the core sections of the Macromedida website itself.

(Hmm, that last point is important and could use expansion... in all my writings online over the years, whatever the format, I've been just one person who works with a group of others. I am not the group; I am just myself. The group speaks for itself on the company's website. There are dangers in "the royal we" when individuals write words... I've seen lots of people get confused about who they were, and how much they could speak for the group. The group speaks slowly, but when it does speak, it speaks authoritatively -- I can speak quickly, and speak accurately enough for myself and my own perceptions, but I cannot speak for the group as the group itself can.)

4) Tell me about the publishing mechanics of your blog. How often do you publish? How do you decide what to publish? Any special publishing techniques? I usually write Monday-Friday, about ten items a day, but it varies greatly with the particular day. I read blogs regularly through the week... I usually have a morning session at home, then go into the office and handle internal email and mailing lists and most of the blogging/news, then do a final check at home before going to sleep, seven days a week. The goal is to minimize the time that I'm out of the conversation, and so my work is spread throughout the day and throughout the week.

For "What to publish?" I ask whether it might be something useful or interesting for a reader who invests their time here... any self-expression is within the bounds of perceived reader priorities.

5) Who writes the blog? Who contributes to the blog on a regular basis? Me.

6) Have you achieved your original communications goals? Yes. I've gotten a little distracted by blogging-specific issues, but not as much as I had worried might occur.

7) Were there any any unexpected communications or learning consequences as a result of publishing your blog? The biggest surprise was how smoothly it originally went... I had thought about opening a work-related weblog for awhile, and started a personal blog first to explore the process, and then regularly sought out internal face-to-face feedback with others inside the company during those first few weeks. It has also seemed to go smoothly for others in the company who also maintain public blogs... I can think of only a few minor issues over the past two-plus years, which is smaller than the number of controversial incidents that came up on mailing lists or newsgroups.

Hmm, another surprise was when that WIRED "corporate blogging" article came out, and how some of the "blogging A-list" were initially confused by what I and my partners were doing. (One of my early mistakes was in assuming that people who weren't actively using Macromedia tools wouldn't have any interest in what I wrote here -- I was surprised when some early readers didn't already know me and my work here, for instance.) I've never been comfortable with that "corporate blogging" label because it seemed to put the cart before the horse... the big thing has always been whether there has been an online conversation, rather than the specific medium by which that conversation is pursued.

Hope this was helpful in some way....