MIS magazine has a good article from Monday (November 6th) with the title of ‘Building Blogs‘ written by Mark Jones of the Fairfax stable. It charts some of the issues around the fabled Telstra ‘Now We Are Talking’ blogsite, and in particular the trials and tribulations of one Tom Reynolds, who wrote a blog-piece that was, it seems, about how bloggers should be ‘transparent and clear’ it would seem. This is of course in the finest blogging tradition, and highlights the tension between an open and transparent corporation and the perceived ‘need’ for corporate secrecy.
Soon after that blog-piece, and completely unrelated, Mr Reynolds was pink-slipped due to a ‘cultural clash’. The Corporate Blogger – perhaps if you are asked by your business to actively promote and blog about your company, you should run screaming in the other direction. Or update your resume. It’s all good.
As a side issue, I note though that the piece quotes Frank Arrigo of Microsoft (he was a presenter at the RSS, Blogs and Wikis conference) – who has apparently had urgent health problems requiring surgery, so it was bye-bye to the appendix and, for Frank, what was no doubt a harrowing blog-withdrawal experience – there isn’t an entry for almost three whole days.