All in Blogging

As Senior IT Workers Retire, Will IT Expertise Also Disappear?

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Expertise Management, Governance, Knowledge Management, Retirement, , Web 2.0
Once upon a time I helped manage a complex post-merger system consolidation project where two mainframe based systems were being integrated. The client hadn’t done a lot of projects like that and hired outside consultants to help with the project planning, management, and execution. We found out quickly that a few key client staff members were extremely scarce resources. One was a senior consultant who had been brought back by the client after his retirement. He was, hands-down, THE absolute expert on the target system’s very large and very complex database. I’ll call him “Alex.”

Bringing Knowledge, Relationships, and Experts Together in the Enterprise

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Expertise Management, Governance, Knowledge Management, Network Effects, , Web 2.0
In the first article in this series I commented on the web based evolution of systems for matching up experts (and their expertise) with users based on relationship management and social software technologies. In this article I discuss the implementation of such systems within large organizations

Blog Page Doodads, ZoomClouds, and Strategic Blogging Policy

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Doodads, Tag Clouds, ZoomClouds
Readers of ALL KIND FOOD will notice that its pages are not encrusted with badges, tag clouds, blog rolls, linkbacks, permalinks, scrolling comments, advertising, Amazon links, dancing babies, and other detritus and ephemera. I call these "Blog Page Doodads." My blog doesn't go in for doodads. That’s by design. When Jeremiah Owyang recently announced to members of The Podcast Roundtable that he had added a cloud of tags supplied by ZoomClouds to his blog, I did wonder if I should add something like this to my own. I've decided not to, at least for the time being.

Enterprise Blogging and Corporate Ethics

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Ethics
Dave Taylor, a co-moderator with me of the members-only LinkedinBloggers Group on Yahoo!, has an interesting read on his blog titled "Walmart and Edelman PR lead the way on working with bloggers." Lately I've been reading about the increasing acceptance of blogging by corporations as an extension to their ongoing corporate communications with their customer and the public.

Web 2.0 Perils and Public Relations Realities

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Privacy, Web 2.0
In my article Web 2.0 and Maintaining the Integrity of Online Intellectual Property I discussed what happens when information flowing through the Internet can change between the time it is created and the time it is consumed. This can be both good and bad. Good aspects include the addition of new information and the resulting rich functionality and utility that can be created. Bad aspects include the possible loss of control over quality and authority as information "morphs" in ways that may have been unintended by the information's originators.

Monitoring the Blogosphere for Fun and Profit

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Industry Analysis
I've worked a lot with call centers and contact centers, primarily those that handle incoming calls for things like customer support, product purchasing, account inquiries, and trouble shooting. Many's the time I wondered, while poring over statistics on incoming call type, call volume, and call resolution, "I wonder what the rest of the people out there think of us?" Well, there are now ways to find out.

Influencing Link Counts - An Experiment

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Linkedin
Linkedin Bloggers is a members-only sub-group of Linkedin members who have created the group to discuss issues related to blogging and professional networking. The group is growing. We've decided to try an experiement we call "blog boosting." We've randomly selected one of the group members' regularly updated blogs -- in this case Itzy Sabo's Email Overloaded -- and group members have agreed to write about and link to Itzy's blog today, March 1, 2006.

Can Web 2.0 Co-Exist with Static Publishing Systems?

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Collaboration, Copyright, DRM, Web 2.0
If I write something that is likely to be changed by the distribution system or by the actions of collaborating authors, what do I own? What if, when I write a blog article I come back and regularly change, update, and correct the original, and add comments? Do I have a way of knowing if people who read the original will know that I've made corrections or changes? These are difficuly questions, and one way to help answer them is to develop registration systems to help identify and describe works and their owners (or creators).

Business and I.T. Must Work Together to Manage New "Web 2.0" Tools

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Enterprise 2.0, Governance, Web 2.0
Significant opportunities to meet market and customer needs are emerging as corporations harness the next generation of “Web 2.0” tools and applications. Many business units recognize this and want to move quickly. But are corporate I.T. (Information Technology) departments ready — and willing — to provide the needed support? This article discusses how business units and corporate I.T. departments can work together to leverage emerging “Web 2.0” applications.

Learning to Use Google Analytics

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Google, How To, Management Tools
A couple of weeks ago I signed up for the free Google Analytics service. This free Google service tracks web site usage including frequency, type, and source of visits, as well as behavior of visitors after they come to a site’s initial web page. I figured that, if Google was going to be knowing everything about my site in order to help it calculate advertising rates, I should at least take advantage of the data.

Corporate IT Governance and "Web 2.0" Applications

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Enterprise 2.0, Governance, Management Tools, Web 2.0
For a given technology-based application, system, or service, it's critical for a company to define who owns and is responsible for developing, managing, and running it. Failure to do so can result in "orphan" applications and systems that sit uncomfortably between business and IT, all the while consuming resources (storage space, updates, maintenance, communication costs, infrastructure costs, governance costs, etc.). Even blogs and podcasts can turn into "orphan applications" if we're not careful.

Feedjacking Rears Its Ugly Head

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Copyright
Fellow blogger Martin McKeay (this links to his blog) recently commented on "feedjacking" of podcasts and RSS feeds. He recently started podcasting and has been researching where links originate. He and others (just do a Google search for "feedjacking" to find out who) are noting that it is possible to "feedjack" links to podcasts and RSS streams.