The Impact of Blogging on My Life
For me blogging has had an impact in two significant ways. First, as a blogger, blogging to me is a cathartic experience. Sometimes when you see your words in print you find a new way to look at them, and other times the very act of getting the words out of your head is a cleansing experience itself. Sometimes a comment from someone else is all you need to change your perspective. Second, blogging has allowed me to find many other members of the tech community who both mirror and oppose my viewpoint. Having so many people putting their real feelings and opinions online makes for a fascinating read, and offers perspectives that you could not get from any mainstream media outlet. Full Disclosure: I still start my day with the newspaper (not the digital kind) and a cup of coffee.
I started blogging a long time ago but for the past half a decade, I had taken a break from blogging to focus on my career; I was traveling around the world, and I just never seemed to have the time to dedicate to getting my thoughts out of my head. About six months ago, I decided to leave my employer and put an end to what was, in reality, five solid years of traveling around the world, and return to San Diego to take some time off and focus on my MBA. Well, the time off part was not entirely by choice, but hey that’s how it worked out and, it turns out, was a blessing in disguise, due to the increased course load last semester.
Upon my return to San Diego, I started searching for other blogs and tech community members, first to find out what was going on in the community and second to search for job leads. Although I am a still searching for that “dare to be employed” opportunity, I gained something far greater. As it turns out, San Diego has developed one of the most active tech communities this side of Silicon Valley, and very soon I found myself attending tweetups and geek bonfires, and other tech events. I have had a great time getting to know many of the local and national technology celebrities that call San Diego home and I am continuously amazed at the level of community that I sense from almost everyone involved.
I realized that spending 5 years on the road had deprived me of a very important component in my life, a community of peers. Through my return to the blogging community, I have found my community of peers and equals, some of whom have become friends not just within in the online community, but offline as well.
Refresh San Diego
Last night I attended Refresh San Diego for the first time. Several presenters gave an overview of how their companies are leveraging social network tools within the enterprise to encourage collaboration. Many companies are grappling with the issue of how to encourage enterprise collaboration and at the same time, maintain security and employee policies, although the price for ignoring the issue was clear; one major technology firm found that employees were using del.icio.us to post links to internal classified documents. I predict that this will be an issue which more companies will be forced to deal with, as employees increasingly blur the line between their online life and their work life.
I posed the question to a few of the attendees, “For a company in the technology field, how do you simultaneously encourage this type of collaboration, and at the same time, maintain control over the communications?”. As some of you know, I originally came from a retail and merchandising background, so my follow up to this question was, “how do you move from using social tools for internal communications to using these tools for communications with customers and vendors?” I know, huge can of worms here. But several companies have felt the pain of ignoring the issue, resulting in data leaks, customer alienation, or worse, industrial espionage. On top of all that, engaging with your customers using social media can mean closing more sales, and companies that lead in this area are already benefiting from increased customer evangelism (Zappos is a great example of a company that has used social media to encourage customer evangelism).
I don’t know what the answer is; what I do know is that that benefits to the successful execution of a social media strategy far outweigh the potential side effects. The key to successful execution is to have clear policies which embrace collaboration, establish a clear delineation between internal and public communications, and more importantly, provide an avenue for each.
How is your company encouraging social collaboration among employees? What about with external partners and customers?
