Archives for October 2004

I fear blogging about my job because what I say might come back around, but I would never know that the blog is what bit me. There’s a lot more to it than just convincing my manager (and his manager) that blogging would be good for the company’s relationship with its employees and customers; unfortunately, my company is in an industry which itself shuns change and fears that the public will discover their dirty secrets of inefficiency-at-the-public’s-expense. It’s a mess. We’re trying to fix it but you become like what/who you associate with and entropy is not on our side.

Corporate Fear.

Fear of being different. Fear of telling your boss your ideas. Fear of speaking up in meetings. Fear of going up to someone you don’t know and introducing yourself. Fear of doing something that might destroy your career.

Fear of weblogging.

It’s time we get over our fears.

I meet a lot of people around the industry. Almost everytime I meet someone, I ask them “do you have a weblog?” That’s my way of saying “I like you and want to hear more of your ideas.” Even deeper: I want a permanent relationship with you (and not of the sexual kind, either).

I’ve asked this question of people at Apple. Google. IBM. eBay. Real Networks. Cisco. Intel. HP. Amazon. And, yes, here at Microsoft.

Too often the answer is “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because I might get fired,” is often the answer. I hate that answer. It’s an example of corporate fear. An artifact of a management system that doesn’t empower its employees to act on behalf of customers.

I find this fear disturbing. Imagine being a flight attendant with this kind of fear. “Sorry, I can’t talk to the passengers in this plane today cause I might get fired.”

I’m not the only one who sees it, either. John McCain, in the September 2004 Fast Company, went looking for courage.

Lately, more and more people, both inside and outside of Microsoft, have been asking me for ways to convince their boss to “get” weblogging. Translation: they are trying to

…excerpt from: radio.weblogs.com…

I know this is extremely stale news by now, but for those who might not have otherwise known about it I think it’s worth posting…

September 1, 2004:

The waves of disappointment directed at Friendster this week illustrate the power of employee-driven community-building using blogs (good) and failing to comprehend and appreciate that power when things don’t work out between employee and employer (bad).

Friendster programmer Joyce Park has been an occassional blogger, writing mostly about programming issues that interested her. The company fired her Monday, she says on her blog, for a few posts about Friendster’s switch to a different programming language. Anyone with a beginner’s knowledge of programming would notice the change on the Friendster site, so it can hardly be deemed proprietary.

But that was the point. Or the lack of it. Park told ZDNet: “I only made three posts about Friendster on my blog before they decided to fire me, and it was all publicly available information. They did not have any policy, didn’t give me any warning, they didn’t ask me to take anything down.” That set off her online community — and by extension, the world of fanatical bloggers, or blogonatics.

One blogger is encouraging people to quit Friendster. News stories sprang up across the Internet. Bloggers howled. A fast-moving chain reaction ensued not just because someone lost a job, but

…excerpt from: Church of the Customer

If you’re interested in psychology and have ever taken a Myers-Briggs test (the one that classifies you as ENFP, INTJ, etc.), ACM’s Queue has a fascinating article on how these personality types function within effective software development teams, particularly small ones. Specifically, the author studied:

• The effect of the project leader’s personality on team performance;
• The effect of team members’ personalities on team performance; and
• The effect of heterogeneity of personalities on team performance.

t programmers are naturally introverted, or that development teams are led best by the “sensing” type who focuses on actual details and facts (as opposed to the “intuitive” type), be prepared to have your thinking challenged.

(Incidentally, the last time I took one of these tests, I came out as an ENFP, but pretty close to an INFP. This statement certainly speaks to me: ENFPs hate bureaucracy, both in principle and in practice; they will always make a point of launching one of their crusades against some aspect of it.)

…excerpt from: feeds.feedburner.com…

You know you play too much Scrabble when…
Caterina.net…: Freak Words
Scrabble maniacs who, when not competing at tournaments, hang out in coffeeshops, belch loudly and yell out things incomprehensible to even Jeopardy Prizewinners, such as: “GUACAMOLE with an F!” And their friends respond “CAMOUFLAGE!”