Black Belt Dojo

Techno frolics

Well, we're back at Henley for module two, and Amy and I have just returned from a furtive but successful mission to nick all the chocolate eclairs from the Henley sweetie store. 

We're all getting quite excited about technology today. After Liam enthralled the room at the end of module 1 with exciting demonstrations of his new blog about his home town of Rickmansworth (Sal Pigot - in puzzled tone - "but who's the audience for this blog?" me - " he hasn't got one!"), we invited Melcrum's Alex Manchester in to talk to us about all things new media.

Learnt that the internet was 16 years old yesterday.  And all marvelled at Second Life. How can people pay for land and property that's not real??  How much will that site get sold for one day? And why didn't one of us think of it first??!

Alex recommended three more good reads for our bookshelves:

• The Corporate Blogging Book, by Debbie Weil (She's also got a good blog about corporate blogging)
• Naked Conversations, by Robert Scobie and Shel Israel
• The Cluetrain Manifesto by Doc Searles & David Weinberger

So enthusiastic did everyone get about technology that I now get to put my feet up for the rest of the afternoon while Tony from IBM gives everyone a demo of how to set up a blog.

UPDATE

Ten past five, and it appears we're quite a cynical bunch about blogs! One of the main questions this afternoon has been 'but does anybody actually blog about anything useful or interesting?'   

Challenged to find something of interest, Tony picked on Kath and asked her to reveal her passion! Turns out it's pop group Take That. So off we went to Technorati did a search, and lo and behold,  we were treated to a rendition of A Million Love Songs.

We were amused, but still not convinced, it seems. Technorati opens with the phrase "55 million blogs - some of them must be good."  "Yes," said one of the group. "But at those odds, you're probably slightly more likely to win the lottery."

There are some we think are worth a read over on the 'recommended blogs' section. Anyone else have any worth a read - business or IC related or otherwise?

Sue

blogs, blogs everywhere

The latest report from blog tracking firm Technorati shows the blogosphere (as we hip people in the know like to call it) is still growing scarily fast.

Apparently every day 100,000 new blogs are created and 1.3 million posts are made. Technorati is now tracking 57 MILLION blogs.

There's an interesting quote from the founder of Technorati saying that some well-organised blogs are now behaving "increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media". In other words, they are becoming a comms channel just like any other.

Strikes me that it's important not to get it into our heads that blogging is just about having another comms channel in our toolkit.  I heard the Head of IC at Yahoo say at a conference that social media is not about channels. It's about the whole idea that now everyone has the opportunity to have a voice and create content, not just those of us with 'communication' in our job title.

Sue

blog writing cats

An apology to anyone who has this blog set up as an RSS feed who might just have received a blank post - I'm afraid my cat managed to send it!  (yes, really)

I left a key with the neighbour to feed him whilst I was away at the summit for a couple of days. I couldn't get him to come back in when I left at 5.30am on Wednesday, and the neighbour didn't pick up my message that he was outside and went out for the day.  Apparently he caused quite a stir in the courtyard where I live by sitting on the doorstep and howling his head off for hours ... until one of the neighbours couldn't stand it any longer and opened a tin of tuna! 

Anyway, the upshot is, he now won't leave me alone and is walking all over me/the desk/the laptop, and managed to publish the entry I was about to write before I managed to write anything! So folks, it really is THAT easy to blog - even my cat can do it! (he just hasn't learned to type in the words yet). 

On that subject, last night at the drinks it emerged that some people were being put off writing replies to blog entries because they're not sure how to do it.  So here you go:

How to comment on a blog entry

1. Click on 'comments' at the bottom of the entry.  You'll then see a 'post a comment' section with various boxes.

2.  If you haven't got a TypePad account (TypePad is the company that makes the blog work, but you don't need an account with them to post a comment), put in your name and e-mail address.

3. Don't worry about the URL box - this is just if you've got your own blog or website and want to paste the address here

4. Type your comment

5. Preview it to make sure it looks pulitzer prize winningly brilliant

6. Hit publish ... and you're done!

Sue

When is a blog not a blog?

Interesting story in the UK news this week about two Labour politicians that posted a spoof video of David Cameron (leader of the opposition party) on YouTube.  Various apologies have been made and the offending item has now been removed.

The video was having a satirical dig at David Cameron's own (video and written) blog.   

I heard an interview with one of the politicians involved in the spoof blog. His argument was that David Cameron's blog was not a 'proper' one - just a managed communication channel cleverly targeted at a particular age group, which went against the whole spirit of blogging.

It's an interesting point, and it raises a dilemma that I've seen posed in various articles of late. The whole point about blogs is that they are written by ordinary people with no ulterior motive, and that's why we trust them. (The spoof blog continually showed the 'spoof' Cameron saying "I'm just like you".)  So if new media - blogs, YouTube and the like - are the type of communication a certain demographic are starting to trust, can we use them as channels without somehow going against the spirit of blogging?   

Is the Chief Exec. really just writing his/her own random thoughts about life in general, or are there discussions going on behind the scenes about objectives, messages and tactics? Have a look on Cameron's blog, in fact, and one of the video diaries has been shot in his kitchen. Cue various postings suggesting this was staged.  No, says Cameron in his commentary, we were just busy, so we shot the video in the kitchen because it was quicker.  Should we believe him or not?

Can we use blogs in our organisations without by implication undermining what they're all about?  Do we end up using tactics to make them look home made and informal, even though they're actually corporately managed? Is that called connecting with your audience, or is it manipulation? Any tips from anyone that's using them successfully/unsuccessfully or seen good or bad examples elesewhere?

Sue