corporate blogging

The most amusing part of CIO Forum for me was a passing comment about blogs. The speaker asked the audience, almost entirely CIO's of old-line companies, if anyone in their companies was blogging about the corporation. I was the only person who raised a hand. I was in a room full of 50 CIO's of companies including Yahoo, Xerox and Iron Mountain. It was such a surprising display of obliviousness to the world we live in -- when companies think the most exciting technology is sensor nets, and don't know their people are openly talking about them.

Bob Forbes confided in me that he would be mortified to find that his employees were talking about him. More startling than the naivete of our corporate executives in not recognizing the pervasity of blogging was their reaction against it. Ultimately, companies need to understand that the press office no longer has the only megaphone. Companies who try to quash blogging by firing for blogging end up as blog targets. It's critical that companies instead understand the power in the hands of their employees, respect that, and treat their employees accordingly. Much the same way that compliance is the excuse companies have wanted to shore up their infrastructure, blogging should be recognized as the excuse for transparency, honesty and communication within the organization.