The other day Gitte, one of my fellow students at Master of Management Development, asked me about blogging. She is considering how a blog could be used within certain parts of the danish public health sector. Especially by dentists and nurses working around the same patient. At first she thought it wouldn't be possible. How would nurses suddenly start blogging in order to share experinces and knowledge of their practice? And what about the visual part? They need to see what they're talking about.

But then she found that they were already doing this through email. Instead of sitting together to pass on information they are just emailing. And by using mobile phones with cameras they can share what a condition looks like. The handheld, digital community of practice is right there. Now.

I've been experimenting with taking pictures with my cellphone and sending them directly to a picture-blog (moblog) on 23hq

No, I’m not referring to an excellent movie although I certainly approve the cinematic “touch” brought in by Nicolaj’s movie experience on “Me and you and everyone we know”. It sounds like a movie I would enjoy! When writing Internal Affairs It’s more about “me and you and a few other people”. It’s about Internal Blogging within STAGIS. Does it work? How are we using it in our projects? And does it make the working process easier? (Rhetorical questions are extremely annoying – aren’t they?)

Cause the answer is of course YES! It is working very well…and maybe that is why there haven’t been a lot of posts on this blog lately. Sorry, but something is going on, on the internal side and we are on to something big! At this point in time we have to consider “the big project” confidential and that is partly why we have created an Internal Blog on which we can discuss our ideas, thoughts, contacts and budgets concerning the project.
I would very much like to share it with you but then I would have to kill you. So be patient – something is about to happen.

An Internal Blog is a bit of a paradox. In one way you narrow your space – your discursive forum and playground – by excluding a lot of voices. In another way you kind of extend your freedom of speech knowing that only a few people (to whom you feel close or with whom you are working on a project) are reading your posts. So it’s both a matter of intimacy and confidentiality: It’s both about being private as an individual as well as keeping some information within the company. Another perspective is the possibility of saving a process in a much more efficient way than for an instance when sharing information by emails. Emails disappear or is put in a thousand different maps and they are certainly not well-organized by category, time, subject etc. Well mine aren’t. When using an Internal Blog it’s a completely different story. Its right there! Everything, every thought, every email sent or received, every discussion and every name, number and shoe size on every contact. It’s right there!

I consider our internal blogs as writing a story together. Imagine how unique it is to have the process “written down”– not trying to recreate it but having it step by step and exactly how it happened at that time it actually did happen. I believe some of the thoughts and ideas is to be published on the external blog whenever the time is right and our “child” is big enough to stand on its own feet. I hope so.
Until then:
Keep up the good work – and bring an umbrella if you go out!

A lot of posts and comments these days are about the use of blogs - what are they for, what effects will they have, how can corporations use them to gather information, have customers co-create, communicate authentically and so on. There's even a tendency to try and condensate blogs or the use of them into either a single use or to correct anyone mentioning one use by listing a number of possible uses.

It's all true but one important point is that nomatter the great plans and intentions for any social software - including the corporate blog - it is not controllable. At least not in the fashion the use of the word "control" is usually applied. The point is that as people start conversations on a blog their common effort to create sense can go anywhere. And as it so happens, chances are that the owner or manager of the blog can't decide where it should go. Only nurture and care for the conversation.

So what is a blog? Well, besides technology I'd say it's anything that comes up in the relations of people using it. At the end of the day a blog is technology and what's really interesting about it is what people try to do together.

This is also why our blog doesn't have a specific purpose or one definition - it's a space for conversations and for making sense for both my colleagues and a wide range of people who want to understand us or try to contribute to our understanding of them or the world.

Last night I saw the movie Me and You and Everyone We Know. It was just an amazing movie - for once a piece of work that actually explores the art of moviemaking. The story is great and there's just this amazing variety of details in the language and the little stories within the story. The cast is incredible; six year old Brandon Ratcliff plays Robby. It's a touching part. But just as touching (and stunning) is this boys career plans: Since he was two and a half he wanted to appear on TV and in the Cinema. Now, having accomplished both, he is planning to be a movie director as a teenager and wants to become a doctor when he grows up.

The future plans of the rest of the cast? I have no idea but I hope they'll stick to what they're doing.

And now that we're at it: Writer-director-actor Miranda July has been blogging during the process. She's creative - check it out.

Following up on the discussion of what blogs can do to optimize businesses here is a few examples from the excellent read naked conversations by Robert Scoble. These examples show how companies can benefit from blogging externally and thereby be part of what the authors identify as a Communications Revolution.

Blogs are cheap - and the lowest cost-communications channel and more efficient than other corporate communications medium.
This means that it provides a great medium for especially small businesses and entrepreneurs that simply don´t have the means to use traditional channels of communications.

Blogs show people outside the organization an authentic view of the corporate culture.
I think this is a good argument because it is true that when you go on to a company blog you get a feeling of that companies structure strait away. For instance if a company only lets the marketing department blog it sends a signal that they might not trust all their employees to communicate with their costumers.

Blogs can create communities and if the companies are able to turn communities into products evangelists they will a huge benefit.
Product evangelists can help look after the companies reputation. They will even defend the company if something negative gets posted about the company or their products.

These are only a few examples...but read the book if you want more good discussions about how companies use blogs to talk with their customers.

Well, anytime I have the chance to talk about corporate blogging I emphasize the element of staying in touch with your end consumer – the valuable possibility to share views directly between two persons. That the conversation is “recorded” in text just ads to the value.

Now even McDonalds has seen that warming ray of light! You can visit their new Corporate Responsibility blog at: Open for Discussion

In this corporate blog McDonalds takes up the challenge of fighting for corporate responsibility through Bob Langert, Senior Director for Corporate Social Responsibility. It’s a great initiative – don’t misunderstand me. I can’t say that I dine every night under “The Golden Wings” – but I haven’t got anything against the company. We, The People, have our own free will even when it comes to the stuff we put in our mouth – if we eat too much, too fat or too sweet, we can’t blame Ronald McDonald.

But now to my real issue: The “Terms and Conditions” of using the blog. In the terms and conditions it says that any comment posted on the blog can be used either in its original form OR edited (modified/adapted) by McDonalds anywhere, anytime and in any which way they choose!

I’m not supposed to be “The Blogging Police” – knowing that the web, blogs etc. has it’s own free spirit. But still, blogging is to me a conversation between a number of individuals. The comments and postings are public, but they have their context and reserving the right to transfer them in edited or even modified form to another media (commercial?) is – I think – slightly out of line. They even reserve the right to use your name in connection with your modified comment!

I bring you this story to warn you that we will probably see more of these “Terms and Conditions” that not only reserves the right to remove comments that are unwanted due to corporate policies, but also reserve the commercial rights to comments made. SO, read the terms before you write a comment – or else you may see it in the newspaper tomorrow!

It's obvious that wearing a helmet is a big deal. But I think it's all about the haircut. I don't see Sinead O'Connor having any trouble.
It's only a matter of time untill Bree Van De Kamp is seen on one of these up and coming things - even a helmet wouldn't mess up her her flawless look. If Bree can wear a helmet, everyone can.

Some people don't even need helmets.

Scooters are not that bad, if you choose the right hair to go with it. Maybe hairdressers are the key to overcome the fact that girls fear to get their hair messed up. Perhaps we should make them invent some hairdos that are suitable for helmets.

As of march 14 only 4.6% of the Fortune 500 are blogging. The Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki shows 24 corporate blogs made by such companies as 3M, Apple, AT&T, Eastman KODAK, HP, Levi, Microsoft, Nike, Strauss & Co., McDonalds, Sun and UPS.

So I think it's fair to say blogging has become a normal thing (can we get over the "what-on-earth-is this??!"). The question is what is it good for and what potential does it help forward?

If the deeper mysteries of corporate bloggins still aren't crystal clear to you, I just want to share a very interesting link with you.

I haven't been too much around this blog, but enough to identify it as more than interesting to any blogger with just a hint of corporate blogging interest. Debbie Weil is an American consultant on web, blogging, rss, podCasting, email and much more tech-related communication. Her blog is a treasury of links and information on blogging.

Her blog is now an integrated part of my menu-bar. Read her views on just about anything blog-related, or go directly to the links along the right hand side of her blog: if there is someone CEO blogging, he or she will be in this links-list!

BlogWrite for CEOs

For eksample you can read her views on the danger of bloggers attacking your business or brand: Permalink

Why are we so afraid of sharing time? We are afraid of wasting time on someone or something that we find less important. We are scared to death when realizing that we haven’t got enough time. Time is in a really high rate of exchange these days. Isn’t it?

That is why it has become more and more difficult to get in touch with people you don’t have any personal connections to; people you know only by name or profession. It has become more difficult to establish connections to one another. Time is so precious to us.
You don’t have to be particularly known, rich or busy to be almost impossible to get in touch with – we are so many Very Important Persons out there who barely have time to check our emails and answering machines. Why is that?
It has always been common sense, at least to me, that the best way to approach other people is to show up in person (who said anything about authenticity?) or at least by conversation over the phone. And it is possible…if you are willing to spend a day or two calling, leaving messages, sending mails and then calling, leaving… It costs time to get access to other peoples “time”. Everybody wants a big piece of the time-cake.
I remember this book from my childhood, which by the way later became a movie (the book, not my childhood), Momo by Michael EndeThis is one of these stories told to children but really addressed to the adults reading them (like little black Sambo, Le petit prince and so on…). In Momo the grey men offers to keep track of the inhabitant’s time; to save it for them:

The odd thing was that, no matter how much time he saved, he never had any to spare; in some mysterious way, it simply vanished.

People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming even poorer, bleaker and more monotonous.
The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them any more.
But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had.

One could argue that by virtue of developments it has become easier to get in touch and reach one another; one could argue that technology actually has brought us closer to each other – but does the answering machine as well as the mailbox really works as bodyguards instead of making communication easier?
During the last week I have tried to get in touch with different more or less “important” persons, in connection with a certain project that I’m working on, and it has been more than difficult. In some cases it has been mission impossible. I feel frustrated because these people, whom I can’t seem to reach, really miss out something interesting. And what frustrates me the most is the thought of us being more and more selective when answering to peoples calls because we don’t want to waste time on unimportant phone calls…and unimportant people.
Are we in fact missing something here by being so tight-fisted when it comes to our time and sharing it with others? In spite of the fact that none of the people I tried to reach were royalties it was difficult to get past the secretary. Well, in one specific case I guess it was okay that the man himself didn’t have time to speak to me in person and that the chances of getting a meeting with him were rather poor. I will not go into details about this specific person. We can just call him Anders F.