Last night’s weblog panel at the Cal Journalism School was very cool. I talked very briefly before the session with Dan Gillmor about PhoneBlogger.
Unfortunately, Donna Wentworth and Ed Felten couldn’t be there in person, so they had to join by teleconference (keeping them up until midnight on the East Coast!). If anyone in the room made the slightest noise while Ed or Donna were talking, the feedback through the phone and the sound system was overwhelming.
Ross Mayfield gave a very interesting presentation on Social Software. The challenge he sees is getting people in organizations to participate as editors. He thinks you can do that by deploying tools that are easy to use, provide a sense of ownership, promote social engagement, and are socially rewarding to use. He also talked about how social connections form an emergent network, turning people into editors. He also talked a lot about the Social Capital of Blogspace. Great stuff.
John Battelle, Director of Business Reporting at the Journalism School, moderated the panel. After introductions, he asked the panelists how blogging had most changed their careers. I probably didn’t do them justice in these brief notes, but I got behind in my notes quickly.
- Donna – others perceived a greater separation of identity of her as a person from her as an employee
- Ed – blogging gave him a new set of people with very different perspectives to communicate with and get feedback from
- Scott – precipitated a move from being a writer to more of an editor
- Ernie – fellows of the Information Society Project at Yale Law typically did academic research. LawMeme and blogging allowed him to take the more informal role there that he wanted
- Dan – the more voices and info, the better. He has participated in many great conversations that he thinks he would not have had without his blog.
- Ross – no need for a PR agency at his current company
John also asked some of the panelists whether they communicate with co-workers via blogs. Ed said co-workers at Princeton tend to use his blogs less often than in-person communication. He also mentioned that his blog readers/commenters come from a much more diverse background and have a wider perspective.
Several panelists agreed that reading blogs can give you a huge advantage in your career. Colleagues who don’t read blogs miss out on the extra conversations you are having.
In case you were there or watched the webcast, I was the guy at the end of the session who asked the panelists what they thought about the future of blogs as a person’s interface to companies with respect to communication preferences. One aspect of this would be the blogger’s ability to own the rules by which she wants companies with which she does business to contact her (e.g., you can email at me this address 9-5 on weekdays, use this other address on weekends, you can IM me if I am online on this network, and you can call me at this phone number between 7:30 and 9 pm on weekdays) as well as exposing presence info. I’ll elaborate on this idea in a future post.