Corporate Persona
Bad Blogger! - I’m posting this now, but I’ve got too much to do today. This is my next post. It will be updated throughout the day.
Persona Management
People tell me that they like my blog when I post about New Orleans, but the rest of the stuff, it doesn’t mean anything to them. Sometimes those postings about installing this or that, or fixing some bug will get a response, but usually in e-mail. In fact, one of the first blog entries that every got comments was a blog entry on Crawfish.
This gave me a sense of how the blogometer was off the mark. Blogging wasn’t keeping me connected. I’ve tried blogging personal issues, but they don’t fit in the context of “The Engine Room”, a professional technical blog.
What I’d like to do is write a blog entry, and then assign it a persona. Then it could go to this blog, or if it is more personal it can go to a different blog. If you are interested in my different persona, there is an aggregate view of all entries.
Here’s the trick…
We’d have to learn to respect this division in the real world. One would not bring up blog topics from a personal blog, in a professional context.
Corporate Persona
CxO blogging is not the same as personal blogging. The CxO is blogging from a position where there is increased liability. They must watch what they say.
UPDATE
Got back from Bi Bim Bop lunch. I’ll flickr the photographs in a little bit. Everyone had something cool to say. I tried to talk about the persona management issue. Joe Coltron felt that the division between business and personal personae are night and day, which is understandable. I enjoy the personal interaction of blogging.
Also, raised the question of the overhead of maintaining multiple personae.
This is an interesting issue along the lines of corporate blogging. I’m going to have to revisit it in a different post.
December 24th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Alan, it’s an interesting point you raise, multiple personae and corporate vs personal blogging. I’ll often find I’ve written a thought on one blog (three are group blogs) and it’s more relevant to another. I look forward to your thoughts on this.
December 24th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
Niti
I didn’t know you were on group blogs. I’ve added The Prepared Mind, Does Size Matter?, and CPH 127 to my feed reader.
See? I didn’t know you had these other personae. At some point I knew you were affiliated with other blogs/sites, but I didn’t know you were contributing. How can I be reminded of this? The divisions in your case can be safely blurred.
You write personal blog entries that are interesting. Books you’ve read, thoughts about your identity, which have got me thinking about what, if anything, it means to be Mexican.
Your personal entries are not the sort that raise controversy. Nothing so racy that you must hide it, blog pseudonymously say, but it’s still personal.
You might discuss such things with co-workers over lunch. It’s not business, but it’s you.
Is it necessary to have silos, or can we instead have some decorum? Know that talking about what it means to be Indian is something to save for the gathering after the workshop on industrial design.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Alan,
Now that I can access your site once more ;) I’m astounded by your reply. Wow! Thank you for the support in adding three additional RSS feeds. And I didn’t know you were Mexican!
You ask an interesting question, one that I’m wondering if I should answer here, or trackback and pontificate upon. But just in case I don’t [it’s late here in S’pore] very quickly to your points - silos : there’s a fine line isn’t there, between discussing my sociocultural identity and thoughts and taking it further into the deeper issues that arise, topics that are rarely discussed in public, i.e. politics, sex and religion :) I wonder how much of decorum, call it professionalism, call it the hangover from the British - “it’s just not done” mentality of what’s propah - but those are the boundaries that we question on our blogs. I teeter between wanting to talk about professional achievements and a sense of humility that has been trained into me since childhood. You’ve read Seth’s post on his introspection re: self promotion? That conundrum, if solved, would be the answer to your other question, how you can be reminded of that - my writing.
I hope this makes sense, there’s no preview button :)