Blogging policies

Lori Dorn points to an interesting piece by Niall Kennedy (from Technorati) on blogging policies and how employers in his mind are not looking broader enough at their policies.

Naill touches on the different disruptive technologies that are entering the workplace, blogs, cameraphones, IM, P2P, CD/DVD writers etc. Each of these "new" technologies (I say "new" as they are not really new it is just that they are now becoming mainstream) has the potential for good and evil the trick is we all need to learn how to use them for good. Most of us know that giving a tip to a mate over a few drinks that your company is about to announce something good/bad and if they act quickly they could make some money is bad. How different is that to tapping out the same tip on your blog, even anonymously, or via IM, email etc? Do employees understand that everything is tracked, have we told them? Do you even know that this is the case?

What about snapping a picture of the office and placing it on Flickr? Many companies ban camera's on site for fear of trade secrets being photographed, does this mean we all now need to check our phones at the door? Or with the rise in DVD writers can employees now walk out the door with the payroll system on a single DVD?

As I said all of these technologies can be used for good or evil, we need to educate ourselves, management and employees on how to balance the good, bad and the ugly of each technology. The good can be seen when blogs help team/workplace communication, cameraphones assist in product development or marketing, IM enables collaboration across locations, P2P rapidly allows documents to move around the organisation, etc. Possible solutions are for induction courses to inform our employees on what is appropriate for each organisation, specific courses for our existing employees we did this when email and PCs were introduced.

Lots to think about for a Monday morning.

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