Julia Habermann: Analysis of the usage and value of weblogs as a source of business news and information

German information science student Julia Habermann recently completed a thesis with the above title. She has given Jack Vinson (of Knowledge Jolt with Jack) permission to post an overview report and the data from the survey. She did a nice job. It looks like her n=415, but the respondants seem to be mostly librarians. A good next step would be to survey middle managers or upper managers in for-profits. BTW- the top blog is ResourceShelf by a landslide so the survey folks have good taste, too.

Common Craft: List of Business Blog Resources

A nice webliography of how enterprises are using blogs. Pointed out by KMD.

Ongoing > Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

Pointed out on Blogger Buzz (the blogger staff blog). A common question posed to bloggers is, "aren't you afraid you're going to be fired?" This list from Tim Bray of Sun says it all. Of course, he does present background assumptions ("Let’s assume that you’re reasonably competent, reasonably coherent, and reasonably mature.") Here's his list:

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted. 2. You have to get noticed to get hired. 3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.” 4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice. 5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage. 6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open. 7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people. 8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you. 9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled. 10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

It's worth following the link above to his original post and to his company's policy.
blog policies|corporate blogging|Business Blogging

StructuredBlogging.org > Semantic Web Comes to the Blog

SC (now at PubSub, the guys who are developing this) pointed this out. It's not as good as Reger was/is, but since it's a plug-in to WordPress it might get some play. I think that's been the problem with other tools -- they haven't caught on. You need a critical mass of bloggers adding content to make it really useful. So if you're blogging on WordPress, consider giving it a shot. I still need to find a book plug-in for my blogger blogs... one that links to Open Worldcat, of course. Update: This was posted to this blog by accident, but it still may be of some interest to the readers here so I'll leave it. It will be cross posted to another blog.

Slides from my presentation to the Potomac Valley Chapter of ASIS&T

I've forwarded the entire presentation to the PVC chair who will get them loaded on the website. Here's the html version:

Soup: Blog Basics in the Enterprise
Christina K. Pikas

About Me

• Librarian/researcher at APL in the Science and Technology section of the RE Gibson Library & Information Center
• Science and Navy background
• Blogger (http://christinaslibraryrant.blogspot.com/, http://cpikas.blogspot.com/)
• Fast follower in new technologies
• Personal research interests include information seeking by scientists and engineers andpersonal information management.

Agenda

• Introduction to blogs, blogging, and feeds
• Use of blogs and feeds
• Libraries
• Other organizations

We WILL run out of time. There is more here than can be covered. Stop me with questions! What is a Blog?

• Reverse chronological listing of discrete posts each having a permanent link.
• They use the technology of the web
• XML
• HTML
• CSS
• Back end is ASP .net, Perl, etc.
• Run on a web server, can be database driven
• Format, usage, methods of interconnection differentiate them from other web media

Anatomy of a Blog

Anatomy of a Post

Different Types of Blogs Setting

• Personal, public or private
• Corporate/enterprise/ organization, internal
• Corporate/enterprise/ organization, external

From: Frederik Wacka, Corporate Blogging Blog, August 10, 2004, http://www.corporateblogging.i nfo/2004/08/six-types-of-business-blogs.asp Contributors

• Automatically compiled from multiple sources
• Collaborative blogs
• Individual blogs

What Are Feeds?

• Generally, automatically generated XML files that provide titles, summaries, and links to full content
• Several competing standards
• Aggregators
• Where do feeds come from?
• Most blogging software automatically creates at least one type of feed
• Third party scrapers create feeds from web sites
• Newspapers, journals, databases create feeds
• Program your own
• RSS 1.0 specs http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/
• ATOM support http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/

Uses of Blogs in Libraries

• SDI, TOC alerts
• To promulgate results of environmental scanning
• Library news (new books, new hours, database updates)
• Internal communications
• Popular assignments
• Tricks of the trade
• Project management
• Shift logs (broken equipment, visitors, open tickets)

Important Things to Know to Get Started at your Place of Work

• The software/platform is the easy part
• When in doubt, use Blogger or Typepad
• Customize templates with brand information
• Policies are a hard part
• Public or intranet?
• IP considerations (may need access control)
• Levels of access/privacy, use of information
• Will anyone be allowed to post, comment, trackback?
• Time allowed
• Culture that supports knowledge sharing?

The Other Hard Part: Buy-in

• Management has to ok time and resources spent
• IT may have to support server
• Individual bloggers have to commit

More things to think about: Access and Preservation

• Re-finding posts
• An enterprise search may take care of this
• Changing the post template to add meta-data may help
• Start a portal site with a “blogroll” of company bloggers
• Categorization
• NOT assigned from above or default, assigned on the fly
• Crosswalks to existing taxonomies may be helpful
• Archives

Recommended Reading

• Baumgart, Eastman, and Pikas. ASIST K-Blog Panel. April 27, 2004 - . Available online (you are here!) http://asistkblogpanel.blogspot.com
• Cote, Michael. " Enterprise Blogging in Practice, Notes." January 2005. Available online http//www.drunkandretired.com/2005/01/enterprise-blogging-in-practice-notes.html.
• Nash, Jim. "Look Who's Blogging: How five executives got blog religion and are using it to their professional and personal advantage." InformationWeek (March 7, 2005): 47. Available online http://www.informationweek.com /story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60405714
• Wood, Lauren. "Blogs & Wikis Technologies for Enterprise Applications?" The Gilbane Report 12, no. 10 (March 2005) 2-9. Available online http//www.gilbane.com/gilbane_report.pl/104/Blogs__Wikis_Technologies_for_Enterprise_Appl ications.html.
• Zimmermann, Kim Ann. "Blogging the Competition - Weblogs Take Center Stage in CI." KM World 12, no. 10 (Nov-Dec 2003): 16. Available online http//www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readart icle&Article_ID=1638&Publication_ID=102.

Updated: added very necessary line breaks, tags. It's still ugly -- if you're going to print, maybe you should wait for the pdf to appear? Update: 3/18/05 - - the slides are up in PDF here. Update: Where did all the images go? asistpresentationscorporate blogging

CNET News.com > FAQ: Blogging on the job

Pointed to by the Topix feed, and About.com's Weblog thing.
A question that comes up quite a lot in discussions of blogging is, "will it get me fired?" My answer has been and continues to be: follow the rules of your organization for speaking/publishing in a public forum. In other words, would you get fired for saying the same thing in a letter to the editor of the local paper? Accept that it's much more likely to be found on a blog. Publish no trade secrets, news of upcoming mergers/acquisitions, don't berate your boss...
Update: Changed a word, added tags. Business Blogging|Corporate Blogging

InformationWeek > Look Who's Blogging

Jim Nash."Look Who's Blogging: How five executives got blog religion and are using it to their professional and personal advantage." InformationWeek. March 7, 2005.
Pointed out by R.A.
Here's a quote from Phil Windley, former Utah CIO and current BYU professor:

I blog to be part of a community of people whom I respect; I want to understand their thinking, and I want them to understand mine. I blog to be part of the conversation. I blog to remember. I blog to refine my thinking. I blog because I don't think I really understand something until I write about it.

The executive bloggers quoted in this article have all encountered issues and resolved them. Some of the uses are what we've heard before, but one from Pusateri (of Disney) stands out. A shift log. In the Navy, we had pass down logs which are informal notes to the ongoing watch of what events are expected, anything coming up on the schedule, and anything unusual with equipment, etc. Disney cable has "shift logs" for the same purpose. I tried to institute something like this at the public library because you have a huge shift change at a busy reference desk and customers get lost, the toner never gets changed...well you get the picture. If you could get people to blog the issues as they arise, and the oncoming people to read the blog as they take over the watch, then you'd be in better shape.
See also, the sidebar on blogging tools.
Updated: shortened URL. Business Blogging|Corporate Blogging