Blog On! Blog On!
As I’ve previously reported, we’ve been establishing blogs at my place of work. A few months ago, we started a staff blog on our intranet (which I can’t link to, because…well, it’s on our intranet, hosted on our own server). It’s going over very well, all things considered. Few people on the staff besides myself were all that familiar with blogs, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on the staff who was blogging before this. I’ve been told that the staff of one department are a bit wary of the blog, claiming it’s just one more thing they have to check throughout the day for workplace information. A valid complaint, really, since it’s true–at this point, the blog hasn’t replaced anything, it’s just supplemental. It was pointed out, though, that the more the blog is used, the more it will replace mass emails and memos.
But besides that one department, I’ve heard nothing but good things. Staffmembers who had never even heard of blogging are excited when they successfully post to the blog. Conversations are beginning between staffmembers and departments as people comment on posts and reply to other comments. It honestly seems to be taking off.
Which is good, because we’ll soon be starting a blog for the public on our website. The web committee, of which I am a member, decided that the supervisors of each department would be responsible for blog content and maintenance–but they could delegate to someone in their department if they felt they didn’t have the time, energy or interest to handle the public blog. I explained all of this to my supervisor, telling her I would love to be the delegated blog person for our branch library, but if she decided to handle the duties herself or give them to someone else, my feelings wouldn’t be hurt. Which wasn’t entirely true–I would be a bit hurt, especially since I’ve been the one pushing for this the most–but it seemed like the mensch-y thing to do. Well, no big surprise at all, she just told me she was “annointing me as the official blogger” for our branch. As I said, no big surprise…but it still made me as happy as a cat in a cradle.
I will, of course, post an announcement when our public blog goes live.
June 16th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Good for you, Josh!
We have added blogs to our neighborhood association’s Web site and many people had never heard of blogs, much less used them (I should point out most of the association is made of folks in their 40’s to 50’s). One woman and I (we both head different committees) have posted semi-regularly about work our committees are doing.
The blogs were supposed to help committee members stay on the same page. It’s not really turning out that way, but I’m hoping folks will stumble upon the blogs from the main neighborhood site and think we and our neighborhood are cool for blogging. We’ll see.
June 16th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Well, I think your neighborhood is cool for blogging.
(And here’s the link to Ray’s neighborhood association blog.)